PROFITABLE RETENTION FOR INDEPENDENT DISPENSARIES · 1 TO 10 LOCATIONS
87.5% of repeat dispensary customers shop every few weeks. If one hasn't been back in 60 days, a competitor has them.
Our free Retention Audit reads your POS data and shows where you're losing customers and margin.
The elite retention team behind cannabis' most recognized dispensaries.
As of October 2026.
Revenue comes from customers. Profit comes from the ones who come back. Most dispensaries lose them to competitors at three points, then give away margin at a fourth.
Click each number to see the leak.
Customer leaks
Margin leak
Leak 1
The opt-in
Critical Opt-In Rate
A customer you can't email or text is a customer you can't win back. When they drift, nothing stops them from becoming your competitor's regular.
Why it's not normally measured: Retail teams look at customers as a whole, but don't separate them between those you can reach and influence and those you can't.
Low sender reputation hides your emails before anyone can open them. The audit checks it.
58.5%
Across 81 stores, 58.5% of first-time customers were still unreachable by email or text a week after their first visit.
428,600 first-time customers at 81 stores (38 dispensaries), first purchase October 2025 to July 2026, opt-in on record within 7 days and not opted out since, measured October 2026.
Leak 2
The first visit
Every first visit is a trial: your store against the competitor down the street, and most first-time customers never come back for a second purchase.
Why it's not normally measured: Your reports count the customers who walk in. Nothing counts the ones who never return.
64.3%
Across 55 stores in different markets, 64.3% of first-time customers never made a second purchase.
At one single-store New Jersey dispensary, 58.5% of first-time customers never came back, and 85% never reached a fifth visit.
Across 55 stores (19 dispensaries): 356,669 first-time customers, each with at least 60 days to come back, measured October 2026. The New Jersey store: a Tact Retention Audit, April 2026, with under a year of sales history.
Leak 3
The regular who stops coming
Your lost customers aren't strangers. Some bought from you 10, 20, even more than 30 times. Then they never came back.
Why it's not normally measured: You don't get notified when a regular who stops coming in. They just stop, and no report flags it.
200K+
lost customers had made 6 or more purchases.
Across 20 dispensaries and 1,132,074 lost customers, measured October 2026.
6.8% of lost customers had made 6 to 10 purchases.
4.9% had made 11 to 20.
6.0% had made 21 or more.
At one two-store Massachusetts dispensary, 3,108 customers with five or more visits had lapsed. Regular customers that lost their loyalty.
The Massachusetts dispensary: a Tact Retention Audit, June 2026.
Leak 4
Your discounts
Anyone can discount, and a competitor can always go one deeper. Most stores cannot tell whether their discounts made money: how deep they cut against the storewide average, how often loyalty rewards stack on top, and how many rewards went to customers who would have bought anyway.
Why it's not normally measured: Your POS shows each discount. It does not show how many other coupons were stacked or how profitable each customer group is.
23.2%
At one dispensary, the discounted baskets of its regular customers were 21.7% bigger and earned 23.2% less gross profit per order.
Customers with five or more purchases at one audited dispensary, October 2025 to April 2026, on orders with recorded product cost. One dispensary, not a fleet figure.
Every store has its own version of these numbers.
Our free Retention Audit finds yours.
The data behind the audit
Customers analyzed
25,619,680
Distinct customer records across every program and audit we have run. As of October 2026.Transactions analyzed
$3,780,114,430
Every POS and CRM transaction in our records, net of discounts. As of October 2026.Your email platform was built to send messages, not to read your sales. It shows opens, clicks, and the revenue it gives itself credit for. That's Level 1. The four levels below it are where retention is actually won or lost. No platform measures them. We built the tools that do.
Level 1: Engagement Metrics
What your platform shows: Opens, clicks, platform-reported revenue.
Level 2: Tact Retention Metrics
Critical Opt-In Rate, First Time Churn Rate, Lost Customer Rate, and more.
Level 3: locked Charts
Inside your audit.
Level 4: Profitability locked
Inside your audit.
Level 5: Strategy locked
Tact's Retention Engine
Most reports stop at 'did they open it?'
The Retention Audit answers 'where are you bleeding money?'
Dispensaries have trusted us with 25,619,680 customers and $3,780,114,430 in transactions. That data is behind every benchmark in your audit, and no agency can build it overnight.
September 2026 Activity
September 2026 Results
What is Revenue Recovery? Our flagship strategy: we bring lapsed customers back into your store and measure every dollar they spend after they return.
Revenue Recovery, all time
Revenue recovered
$10,576,977
Lapsed 60+ days, first return and every later purchase, net of discounts, confirmed at the POS.
As of October 2026.Recovered customers who bought again
56.1%
Second purchase within 90 days of returning.
As of October 2026.A free, deep read of your POS and CRM data: who comes back, who leaves, and where your list, your sends and your setup lose customers along the way.
The audit finds both kinds of leak: the customer leaks and the margin leak.
Thirty-plus pages, every number measured from your own data.
You get it in 4 to 5 business days, explained in depth by Steve (Tact's Founder).
665 store-locations audited. As of October 2026.
Patterns like these only show up after you've dived deep into hundreds of stores' systems. It's why our free Retention Audit knows where to look in your data.
50% of second purchases happen within 32 days of the first visit, and 75% within 118. Only 46.0% of first-time customers ever buy again.
1,485,329 returning customers at 46 dispensaries, active clients only.
A seven-store Michigan dispensary group averaged a 14.25% email open rate over 11 months. 85.75% of its sends were never opened: about 86 cents of every dollar it spent on email bought a message nobody opened.
3,504,352 sends, October 2025 to August 2026. Anonymised audit client.
Four leaks. Four real stores. Measured through the POS.
When your POS records cost, we report gross margin. When it doesn't, we report discount depth against your storewide average.
Sweet Flower, 6 stores, California
Fixed opt-in capture at the counter and rebuilt the welcome flow, then measured new-customer opt-in month by month.
Opt-in rates above count email or text, as on record today. In August 2026, 60.7% opted in within 7 days of their first purchase. Email-only baseline 15.6% = January and February 2025.
The leakA two-store dispensary
Built the first-purchase follow-up and counted the second purchases the POS recorded in May 2026.
Second purchases the email platform credited to a Tact-built campaign. Further purchases counted through October 4, 2026.
The leakRemedy, 2 stores, Maryland
Sent win-back emails to customers who had not bought in 60 days, and matched every return to the POS.
Cumulative, all history to September 30, 2026. Each customer counts once, at their first return. The 90-day share counts returns matured by July 2, 2026.
The leakA Northern California 4-store client
Compared the store's own second and third visit offers with Tact's second, third and fourth purchase funnel, on the same discount-depth basis.
Discount depth
Measured as discount depth against the storewide average, where the POS records no product cost.
June 1 to July 16, 2026, Pacific dates. Discount depth is the discount as a share of the price before discount.
The leakLapsed customers won back, by state. A state appears only when two or more of our clients are in it.
California
In California, our programs won back 8,375 lapsed customers who went on to spend $2,232,176.
As of October 2026.Colorado
In Colorado, our programs won back 938 lapsed customers who went on to spend $77,824.
As of October 2026.Connecticut
In Connecticut, our programs won back 117 lapsed customers who went on to spend $22,880.
As of October 2026.Illinois
In Illinois, our programs won back 183 lapsed customers who went on to spend $63,919.
As of October 2026.Maryland
In Maryland, our programs won back 6,605 lapsed customers who went on to spend $1,444,414.
As of October 2026.Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, our programs won back 11,732 lapsed customers who went on to spend $1,747,330.
As of October 2026.Michigan
In Michigan, our programs won back 11,745 lapsed customers who went on to spend $1,689,403.
As of October 2026.Missouri
In Missouri, our programs won back 100 lapsed customers who went on to spend $9,393.
As of October 2026.New Jersey
In New Jersey, our programs won back 8,194 lapsed customers who went on to spend $1,855,640.
As of October 2026.New Mexico
In New Mexico, our programs won back 1,149 lapsed customers who went on to spend $209,915.
As of October 2026.New York
In New York, our programs won back 1,063 lapsed customers who went on to spend $235,179.
As of October 2026.Ohio
In Ohio, our programs won back 58 lapsed customers who went on to spend $11,440.
As of October 2026.Oregon
In Oregon, our programs won back 621 lapsed customers who went on to spend $65,542.
As of October 2026.Washington
In Washington, our programs won back 2,835 lapsed customers who went on to spend $340,810.
As of October 2026."We thought our store had better retention until Tact discovered we weren't looking at the right metrics."
"Our Lost Customer Rate was above average, and Tact Firm helped us win back tens of thousands of lost customers."
HOW WE WORK WITH YOUR STORE
The audit decides what's worth fixing first. Here's where most stores your size begin.
Starts with
Why
Build the repeat habit first. Turn first visits into second and third, and keep your regulars from drifting to the store down the street.
Starts with
Why
At your volume, lapsed regulars are the fastest money. We win them back first, stay in front of the rest 3 to 4 times a week, and run deeper automations for every stage of the customer journey.
Starts with
Why
Every location leaks differently. Recovery and reporting run store by store, so you see which location needs what.
5+ locations or multi-state? We work as retention consultants alongside your team. Talk to us
Not sure which one you are? The free audit tells you.
Wins back the regulars who stopped coming. We find every customer who hasn't shopped in 60+ days, confirm the lapse at your POS, and incentivize them to come back with many not even needing a coupon to purchase again. We measure what they spend after they return, margin, discount rate, redemption rate, and more.
These are NOT blasts of deals and promos. Email and text campaigns built from your live menu and a deep analysis on customer behaviors: the features that hook, your top brands, category spotlights. We build, send, and match the revenue at your POS, campaign by campaign.
Automated funnels for the moments that decide whether a customer stays: welcome, second visit, points milestones, and birthday. They run every day, without anyone pressing send.
Everything in Lifecycle Automations, plus Post-Purchase Funnels, First Timer Funnel, and more.
Every campaign tied to revenue at your POS, with every number traced to its source. You see what worked, what didn't, and what we change next. Includes new customer breakdowns, customer loyalty ascensions, Churn Intelligence, and much more. Quarterly for single stores, monthly per location for multi-location operators.
Hover a state for our all-time impact there.
Our programs have run in these 23 states.
"TACT helped us recover revenue from customers who had previously churned, and they did so in a way that was strategic, efficient, and grounded in solid analytics."
"We've had a great experience working with Tact Firm on our email and customer retention marketing. Their team is responsive, knowledgeable, and easy to work with. They understand our business, bring thoughtful ideas to the table, and help us execute campaigns efficiently. They've been a great partner in strengthening our customer engagement and retention efforts. Highly recommend!"
"Every month, they over-delivered on results. We saw a great return for the work they did."
"Steve and his team are of the best partners/vendors in the cannabis industry. I've been doing this for 13 years and Steve and his team take great care in ensuring all details are correct each and every week. Couldn't ask for a better team to deliver a program that is essential to any cannabis retailer's growth."
Yes, it's free. The catch is that we're betting what we find will make you want to work with us. Either way, you keep the findings, and you get them in 4 to 5 business days.
Independent dispensaries with 1 to 4 locations, 5+ locations, and even MSOs. If you already pay for Alpine IQ (AIQ) or Dutchie and can't tell whether it's working, the audit is built for you. Running 5+ locations or a multi-state operation? We work with you as retention consultants to amplify your current marketing team. Ask us on the first call.
Access to your platforms for a thorough audit. We confirm the details on the first call.
Your data is used only for your audit and your programs. We never sell or share it, and you can revoke our access at any time.
Pricing depends on how many locations you have and which programs we run to solve the issues we discover in the audit. You'll get exact numbers on your audit call.
Yes. Tact is a Dutchie Certified Partner. For Dutchie stores, we credit each sale to the last email or text a customer actually engaged with, not every purchase after a send.
Yes. We help you choose a loyalty platform that fits your store, launch it, and build your opt-in list from the first day. If you're on another platform, we'll tell you on the first call whether we can audit it.
We work alongside in-house teams. We sync to your promotional calendar and handle the platform work, so your team can focus on your website, social and everything else. And the audit shows your team exactly where to focus, whether or not you hire us. We have a team of 20+ retention experts and all we do is retention every day, so it allows us to go deep in retention at your store and your team can focus on other productive areas.
The audit needs at least 3 months of sales history. Until then, start with opt-ins. We work with your retail team to get new customers to opt in at the counter, then start the welcome flow from their first visit.
Steve Riparip brought 15+ years of creative experience into cannabis in 2018, and watched great retailers bleed customers they'd already paid to win. Their dashboards showed loyalty points and open rates. Nothing showed them who left, or why.
He started Tact Firm to fix that: retention systems that drive profit, measured at the POS. No generic best practices. No vanity metrics. Since then, Tact has audited 665 stores and run retention programs for 297 dispensary locations across 23 states, and every audit is reviewed by our team before it reaches you.
The Retention Audit is a free, deep read of your POS and CRM data. It shows where you are losing customers and margin, and what is worth fixing first. You get it in 4 to 5 business days. We take a limited number each month, for owners and operators of licensed dispensaries.
Rather pick a time now? Book a call.
