Springbig Raises $5 Million In Latest Series A Round

Cannabis loyalty software company springbig completed its latest Series A fundraise for $5 million bringing its total amount raised to $11.3 million. This round was led by venture capital firm Altitude Investment Partners which has behind several winners in the cannabis industry.

Springbig is a technology company that provides SMS, loyalty marketing, and other tools to help encourage repeat business for cannabis retailers. The company grew 685% from September 2017 to September 2018 when it hit 1.9 million consumers on its platform.

Not only does Spring big create loyalty among the customers for the dispensaries it works with, but it also inspires loyalty among its own investors. The company said that a majority of its original investors also came back for this round, including Green Acre Capital and members of The Arcview Group.

Altitude partner Rod Stephan said, “Jeff Harris is an experienced and a motivated loyalty industry leader who has mastered the art of customer acquisition and retention. Springbig’s fully-integrated loyalty and customer relationship management tools set the standard for the industry.”

Altitude has had a hand in such cannabis leaders as BDS Analytics, Grassroots, The Green Organic Dutchman, Flowhub and Canndescent.

“The opportunity to partner the breadth and depth of springbig’s loyalty platform with Altitude is a significant milestone for the company,” said springbig founder and CEO Jeff Harris.  “We believe that cannabis is only getting bigger, and as new markets come online, loyalty marketing services will be in high demand for retailers just starting up. We plan to fill that demand with innovative solutions custom-fit for the industry.”

One of the reasons that cannabis companies have found these types of programs beneficial is that they can’t advertise in traditional methods. Even using social media is a challenge since sites like Facebook and Instagram are known for shutting down accounts associated with cannabis. With a loyalty program, dispensaries can text customers with discount offers or announce upcoming events.

Springbig says that its program has resulted in a 25% increase in sales for each promotional campaign. Businesses have said that it more than doubles their number of repeat customers. This is becoming more important as some states begin to expand the number of cannabis businesses that are allowed. The competition is heating up.

The company has hard numbers to back up the claims. One business in San Diego said that a typical day without sending an SMS campaign brought in approximately 175 visits. However, when the business embarked on a promotional campaign, the dispensary received an additional 40 visits.

Springbig has meshed its technology with 11 of the leading point-of-sale and compliance platforms in mature and emerging legal cannabis markets. The most recent of these is BioTrack THC, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Helix TCS Inc. (OTCQB: HLIX). BioTrack is one of the top point-of-sale and seed-to-sale tracking programs and will expand springbig’s presence even further.