Fundamentals Still Work. Even in Cannabis.
Two Hemp Dispensary Chains in North Carolina
+26%
Web revenue
Jul + Aug vs the spring baseline
4.6x
Revenue per email
On 83% fewer sends
2x
Reviews, one store
22 to 45 in 25 days
Built For
Built for: multi-location hemp and cannabis retailers with two to ten stores, an online shop that underperforms the counter, and nobody whose whole job is marketing. If your email list is bigger than your open rate deserves and your Google reviews answer themselves, this is you.
The Challenge
What They Were Facing.
Two hemp dispensary chains in North Carolina merged into one company: ten storefronts, two online stores, solid house brands, and a team where everyone wore too many hats. Nobody owned marketing. The basics had slipped, and the leaks were visible from the parking lot.
205,000 emails a month were going out to a 10.9% open rate. 827 Google reviews sat unanswered, some from 2018. The online shop menu had 90 category pages merchandising about 300 products, organized the way a distributor files inventory rather than the way a customer shops.
Underneath all of it, there was no way to measure anything. GA4 had never been used, Search Console wasn't verified on either domain, and nobody could say what a normal month looked like.
Our Approach
How We Solved It.
We ran a sixty day sprint on fundamentals, in a deliberate order. Week one was analytics: purchase tracking fixed in GA4, Search Console verified per domain, Clarity session recording installed, and a revenue baseline the client signed off on before anything else moved.
Then three fixes, each with its own number to move. Email went from a blast cannon to engaged first sending with real automations behind it. Reviews became an operating system the store managers run. The storefront got a menu built around how people want to feel, filters on every category page, and clean product data so the filters work. Every result below was read from the platforms themselves on September 1.
Locked in engaged first sending as policy.
Campaigns stopped going to the full list and started going to people who actually open them. Volume fell 83%. Revenue per 1,000 emails rose 4.6x, and campaign opens went from 10.9% to 47%.
Rebuilt the welcome flow and built six automations.
One brand's welcome series was rebuilt (opens 12.4% to 29.2%, with a 24% click rate); the other brand's new signup capture was protected against bot signups. Six automations went live where two had existed. Monthly automation revenue rose 245%.
Standardized all ten Google Business Profiles.
One naming convention, correct categories, descriptions stripped of medical claims, and two hidden duplicate listings found. Weekly search clicks on the larger domain rose 3.8x inside the measured window, with 10,530 impressions for "dispensary near me."
Handed store managers a one page review playbook, and made reviews a store KPI.
Ask routine, response routine, done. One store doubled its lifetime reviews from 22 to 45 in 25 days, and 35 of the chain's 44 newest reviews were answered under the new operation. The consultant is out of the loop, which is the point.
Cut the navigation from 90 links to 36.
Six effect led lanes replaced catalog taxonomy. Filter rails went live on 32 category pages, and 228 products were tagged against a locked metadata schema with zero blanks so the filters actually work. Live August 21; the first full month is September.
Put bundle led promotions on a real calendar.
Average order value rose 15% combined, and most of that landed in July, before the new menu shipped. Bundles plus engaged first email did it.
Told the truth about what didn't move.
The same winback series ran on both brands. One made $933 on its first send; the other made $0. A merger puts two brands on one catalog. It doesn't make them one audience. The referral program shipped fully built (15 affiliates, QR codes in every store) and produced zero revenue in the window. Infrastructure quarter, not revenue quarter.
The Results
Numbers That Matter.
+26%
Web Revenue, Both Stores
July and August 2026 against the April to June monthly average, both online stores combined. Visits on the bigger store ran 2% below spring; the lift came from conversion, order value, and owned channels.
4.6x
Revenue Per Email
Revenue per 1,000 sends, on 83% less volume. Campaign opens went from 10.9% to 47%. Combined email revenue rose 35% per month while total sends fell by more than half.
3.8x
Weekly Search Clicks
Larger domain, inside the measured Search Console window. Now showing for "dispensary near me" with 10,530 impressions and clicks climbing week over week.
2x
Reviews at One Store in 25 Days
22 to 45 lifetime reviews after the playbook handoff, 4.9 average. 35 of the chain's 44 newest reviews answered.
Methodology
Revenue and order figures are all placed orders from the store platform, comparing July and August 2026 against the April to June monthly average. Search figures are Google Search Console domain properties from their creation in mid July. Review counts are complete reads of all ten profiles via the Google Business Profile API on August 7 and September 1. Email figures are from the email platform's analytics. Nothing after August 31 is counted. Client kept anonymous.
If you're ranking outside the top 10 in your local market, this is the kind of work we do.
What This Looks Like For You
How we'd approach yours.
Measure before you move
GA4, Search Console, session recording, and a revenue baseline you sign off on. Two weeks, and every later claim has a number under it.
Fix the leaks
We fix whatever is leaking revenue, usually a mix of marketing channels and merchandising, before building anything extra.
Then the fun stuff
Brand, creators, drops, and events land on a foundation that turns attention into orders you can trace.