Green Wednesday is the day before Thanksgiving, and originating as an unofficial pre-holiday sales day, it has now become one of the biggest shopping events in the cannabis industry. Green Wednesday has created a prime opportunity for dispensaries to boost sales, connect with new customers, and enhance their brand presence just in time for the holiday season.
Why is Green Wednesday such a popular day for shopping at a dispensary?
- Early Holiday Shopping and Stocking Up: Green Wednesday arrives just before Thanksgiving, and many use it as an opportunity to stock up on products for the long weekend, whether for personal enjoyment, sharing with friends, or gifting to family members over the holidays.
- Exclusive Discounts and Promotions: Dispensaries often run major sales, from BOGO deals to limited-edition bundles, making Green Wednesday an ideal day to score big savings. These exclusive discounts make it a prime day for value-driven shoppers.
- A Little “Extra Cheer” for Family Gatherings: Let’s face it—Thanksgiving gatherings can be intense, and a little pre-holiday self-care can go a long way! Many cannabis consumers look to Green Wednesday to grab what they need to keep the mood light and the stress low, making it easier to relax and enjoy time with family.
- Avoiding Black Friday Crowds: While Black Friday is crowded and chaotic, Green Wednesday offers a more relaxed shopping experience. It’s a perfect alternative for those who want great deals without the frenzy of traditional holiday sales.
Here’s our guide, packed with insights from top dispensaries, to equip retailers, managers, and budtenders with everything needed to make the most of Green Wednesday.
1. Plan Early and Stock Strategically
To capitalize on Green Wednesday, start your planning and inventory orders well in advance. Look at last year’s sales data and consider trending products to help inform stock levels. Make sure your bestselling products, popular accessories, and any seasonal or holiday-themed items are fully stocked to meet increased demand.
Pro Tip: Utilize Meadow's inventory management features to track real-time stock levels, enabling you to make quick adjustments and avoid stockouts on high-demand items.
Looking for purchasing automation? Consider integrating Meadow with Headset to turn analytics into action. Stay ahead of cannabis marketing trends with the largest dataset in cannabis. With their Demand Planning features, keep your inventory stocked with the right products and understand when purchases are happening.
2. Gather Customer Emails & Phone Numbers Now for Effective Green Wednesday Outreach
Building a strong contact list before Green Wednesday is essential to reaching customers with promotions and deals that drive foot traffic. Start gathering these details early to ensure your audience is ready to receive these updates:
- Train Budtenders to Ask: Empower your team to collect email addresses and phone numbers by making it part of the shopping experience. Simple prompts like “Are you signed up for our text updates? We’ll be sending out exclusive Green Wednesday deals soon!” can make a big difference.
- Use Your Website to Collect Sign-Ups: Make it easy for customers to sign up for email updates on your website. Place sign-up options prominently, especially on pages with high traffic, to catch their interest early.
- Capture Data at the Point of Sale: Collect customer emails and phone numbers during intake or checkout without slowing down the sales process. With Meadow’s POS, you can seamlessly offer sign-up at each transaction, keeping customers in the loop on future promotions while maintaining a smooth, efficient shopping experience.
Starting this outreach now means that by the time Green Wednesday arrives, you’ll have a large, engaged list ready to receive your offers and promotions. Meadow’s Audiences tool helps dispensaries seamlessly segment these lists, enabling targeted promotions that keep customers engaged beyond Green Wednesday. Create an Audience in Meadow based on conditions and export a CSV to send targeted marketing promotions based on your customer data.
3. Craft the Most Enticing Deals and Promotions
Special discounts, product bundles, and flash sales are obviously effective ways to bring customers into your store or online. Build out your Green Wednesday-exclusive deals to encourage excitement and incentivize early holiday shopping.
“As we gear up for Green Wednesday, it’s clear that early planning is essential for a successful holiday season,” says Alicia Wingard, owner of three Flora Terra dispensaries in Santa Rosa.
“For a smooth Green Wednesday, it’s all about starting early. Coordinating with suppliers, preparing for larger orders, and making sure products are tagged and ready well ahead of time lets us meet high demand and deliver the deals our customers look forward to each year.”
At Flora Terra, they’re offering an impressive 50% off everything in-store, with special deals launching on Wednesday and continuing all weekend long. This marks their sixth Green Wednesday, and the team is excited to create another memorable experience for their customers.
Jackie Marciano, General Manager of WHTC LA emphasizes the value of loyalty programs and early sign-ups for exclusive deals, sharing that customers who join their email list get early access to Green Wednesday deals and other perks.
WHTC is a dispensary serving the Los Angeles area with “the lowest prices ever, at all times” as Jackie puts it. This Green Wednesday, WHTC LA is running a BOGO on Jeeter products (buy any two baby Jeeters, receive a third full-sized for $1), along with BOGO on Wyld and West Coast CurePens (Buy any 2 West Coast Curepen and receive a West Coast CurePen for $1).
Learn more about 6 Dispensary Deals that Boost Sales and your Bottom Line
4. Encourage Shopping All Week
Many dispensaries start rolling out deals earlier in the week to manage high customer demand. Clients tell us this “Green Week” approach helps balance foot traffic and boosts overall sales. By offering weeklong deals, you can encourage customers to take advantage of daily promotions, both in-store and online, and keep the excitement going right up to Green Wednesday.
Creating and setting discounts in Meadow is simple—just set it and forget it. Meadow’s integrated promotions engine allows you to quickly set up and manage these multi-day deals across multiple sales channels, providing a seamless experience for customers.
Pro Tip: To make the most of these promotions, Meadow’s robust reporting suite offers powerful sales reporting tools to track performance, making it easy to gather vendor credit reports for reimbursement on major deals. With Meadow, you can confidently run high-impact Green Wednesday promotions, knowing our reporting tools streamline the tracking and documentation needed to maximize your returns.
5. Make the Case for Order-Ahead Convenience
On the second busiest shopping day of the year, wait times can get long. To help alleviate in-store congestion, dispensaries are increasingly encouraging customers to use online order-ahead options. This approach is a win-win: it saves customers time and gives dispensaries a real-time view of demand, helping to streamline inventory and staffing.
Prepare Your Website for Success: Make sure your website is user-friendly, fast, and intuitive to ensure a frictionless customer experience. The easier it is for customers to place their orders online, the less wait time there will be inside the store, allowing for a smoother experience all around. Investing time in optimizing your website encourages customers to feel confident about ordering online, which helps reduce lines and improve service.
With Meadow’s Menu Pro, online ordering is fast, simple, and seamless. Menu Pro allows you to customize your online shopping experience to reflect your brand, and its streamlined design ensures customers can quickly find and order what they need.
6. Leverage Customer Loyalty Programs
Encourage repeat visits and customer loyalty by enrolling Green Wednesday shoppers in your rewards program. Offer bonus points for purchases made on this day, or exclusive benefits for loyalty members.
Meadow’s built-in CRM and loyalty features make it easy to enroll customers at checkout, manage points, and offer rewards.
7. Maximize Engagement with Drip Campaigns
With a robust email list in place, Green Wednesday can be an even bigger success by using drip campaigns and strategic promotions. A drip campaign is a series of automated emails that send targeted content to customers over a set period, gradually building excitement and engagement.
- Plan and Schedule Drip Campaigns Early: Set up a sequence of automated emails leading up to Green Wednesday, delivering valuable information and highlighting must-see deals.
- Market Your Deals in Advance: Start sending promotions a few days ahead to give your customers time to plan their purchases. Make sure these offers are competitive, compelling, and exclusive to your email subscribers.
- Drip Campaigns Save Time: Rather than manually emailing every customer, drip campaigns automatically send messages on a schedule you define, helping you nurture customer relationships and drive repeat purchases with minimal effort.
With Meadow’s integration partners like Alpine IQ and Happy Cabbage, setting up and running drip campaigns is straightforward. You can easily customize each message, ensuring customers receive relevant, timely content that brings them back on Green Wednesday and most importantly—beyond.
Green Wednesday is a golden opportunity to amplify your dispensary’s reach and make the holiday season even more profitable. By planning ahead, creating appealing deals, and utilizing the robust features of Meadow POS, your dispensary can make this year’s Green Wednesday the best yet. Don't miss the chance to connect with customers, increase sales, and kick off the holiday season in style!
