How We Helped Session Goods Increase 420 Sales Revenue by 191% YoY

This Case | TL;DR

Session Goods takes pride in the elegant weed stuff they create for modern cannabis connoisseurs, however, sales in 2023 were not looking great, particularly during 420.

As April is the cannabis industry's largest sales month we wanted to make sure that in 2024 Session Goods saw the revenue increase it deserved.

In tandem with Session's internal marketing team, we helped increase revenue during 420 by 191% YoY in 2024 by deploying a pre-tested email campaign calendar, altered flows, and attention-grabbing social media ads that were cooked up internally by the Session team.

This is how it happened.

About The Client

Unlike other smoking accessory brands, Session Goods focuses on the whole experience, from storage to cleaning. Every step of a customer's ritual is designed to be as seamless as possible with their elegant weed stuff.

The Challenge

At the beginning of 2023, several events took place that affected revenue growth for Session Goods. One of them was a price increase across a range of products. The other was neutral growth in website traffic.

This meant current subscribers on their list were less likely to purchase at the new price point and capturing new leads was at a standstill. Primary challenges included:

• Exposure to new customers
• Slow list growth
• Price anchoring
• Email campaign conversions

With this in mind, the road to growth began, however, it did not happen overnight. The process took 9+ months but culminated in an amazing 420 sales month in 2024.

The Solution

There are 6 parts to this strategy. It’s important to note that not all of these were executed by us. Some were done by the Session Goods marketing team. After almost 3+ years working together, our two teams are in sync for a painless execution.

Content Marketing

We started by increasing website traffic to top-of-funnel pages with SEO content marketing. We produced various content pieces related to Sessions' ideal customer profile to position the products as potential solutions to problems.

This increased new eyeballs on the websites’ products from organic search.

Product and collection pages were also optimized for keywords related to popular search terms by cannabis customers looking for various smoking accessories that Session’s products can satisfy.

This means buyer intent is high. While overall traffic might not increase that much, the quality of traffic is high.

Why is this important? While top of funnel content is great for increasing search traffic it doesn’t have a high conversion rate. Make sure to optimize your collection and product pages for commercial and transactional keywords to capture middle and bottom of funnel traffic.

TikTok Content

At the same time, the Session team began experimenting with posting various videos on TikTok. Although notorious for shadow banning and removing cannabis accounts, the Session team has been able to keep their account active by using clever content angles that don’t directly promote their products.

After trial and error, their TikTok account was able to go viral a few times skyrocketing new traffic to the website.

Much of this was captured using various email lead forms and converted into new customers.

Paid Ads

Content marketing was paused after 3 months and resources were deployed by the Session team to paid ads on Meta. The ads remained discreet and tasteful in line with the brands' aesthetics, keeping the ad account active.

This gave the website a constant stream of new traffic, again much of which was converted into email leads and customers.

Lead Capture

Most cannabis accessory websites deploy one email lead capture form across the whole website. This is a mistake as not all website visitors have the same intention.

We created and activated three different email popups on the Session website with different incentives to convert website traffic at each stage of the conversion funnel.

In the days leading up to the start of 2024’s 420 sale we activated a lead capture form that promised early access to a secret 420 collection that was up to 50% off. Thanks to 9 months of work before increasing website traffic using SEO, content marketing, and paid ads, this form alone was responsible for generating approximately 5,600 new leads.

Why is this important? People want to feel special and part of an exclusive group. By playing on human psychology you can significantly increase your marketing results and sales revenue. 

Email Campaigns

After 3 years of running 420 email marketing campaigns, we’ve fine-turned a tested and tried campaign strategy for cannabis accessory brands.

This campaign strategy started a week before the sale and continued for 2 weeks, with one campaign email sent every day.

Each campaign is designed to build on the previous one using a combination of storytelling and benefit-driven copy.

Using list segmentation we’re able to send multiple personalized campaigns based on historical first-party data and zero-party data collected from subscribers. This increases conversions as opposed to a batch and blast strategy like most email campaigns are executed.

9 months of previous work meant we had a large list that had been built up with leads eager to purchase at the discounted price during the sale. 

Why is this important? In 2024 email marketing is not like it was in 2015. High deliverability has become harder and buyer stimulus has increased. You’re fighting for inbox attention! The easiest way to capture the interest of your email leads and stand out from the crowd is to understand what your audience wants using data, personalizing content, and scaling volume.

The Results

• In one year revenue generated during 420 increased by 191%
• Email attributed revenue increase by 107%
• Approx 5,600 new email leads were acquired during the 420 sale in 2024
• Website traffic increased by 198% over 12 months
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Transformed

By investing in the long-term solution, we were able to help the Session team regain lost revenue growth projections and create replicable systems for future success.

This has given Session Goods the confidence to know that no matter what the future brings, they have the framework to repeat success.

If you want to achieve similar in your business, make sure you create systems that are geared towards growth and can be operated with minimal input from management teams.