For years, co-marketing has been one of the most effective ways for cannabis brands to reach retail customers.
By partnering directly with a retailer, brands could sponsor campaigns that introduced new products, promoted seasonal offers, and built stronger relationships with key accounts. It remains a valuable strategy for brands looking to deepen partnerships with specific retailers.
But today's retail landscape looks very different than it did just a few years ago.
Brands aren't just asking how to reach customers at one dispensary anymore.
They're asking:
Those questions require a different approach.
That's where AIQ Loops comes in.
Retail media has quickly become one of the fastest-growing advertising channels across nearly every industry.
Consumers spend more time shopping inside retailer-owned digital experiences than ever before, browsing mobile apps, opening marketing emails, clicking SMS campaigns, and shopping online.
Instead of interrupting customers somewhere else on the internet, brands can now appear directly inside the environments where purchase decisions are already happening.
AIQ Loops brings that same retail media model to cannabis.
Rather than sponsoring a single co-branded campaign with one retailer, brands can launch advertising campaigns that appear across retailer-owned customer experiences throughout an entire market.
It's the difference between running one campaign at one store and building brand visibility across a region.
Both Co-marketing and Loops help brands reach verified, opted-in retail customers, but they're designed to accomplish different objectives.
Co-marketing is ideal when your objective is to strengthen a specific retail partnership.
Brands collaborate with an individual retailer to subsidize a campaign that reaches that retailer's customer base through a co-branded experience. It works particularly well for:
The value isn't just customer reach, it's building trust and collaboration with an important retail partner.
Loops was built for a different challenge.
Instead of focusing on a single retailer, brands can expand their reach across multiple participating retailers throughout a region.
Your creative appears within trusted retailer experiences, including SMS and email landing pages, retailer mobile apps, ecommerce homepages and category pages, and AIQ's AI Sales Agent, keeping your brand visible throughout the digital shopping journey.
That means brands can:
Rather than creating one retailer-specific campaign, Loops helps brands create regional momentum.
As brands expand into new markets, the complexity of managing one-off retailer campaigns grows quickly.
Launching individual promotions with multiple retail partners often means:
Loops simplifies that process.
Instead of thinking retailer-by-retailer, brands can think market-by-market, delivering consistent creative and messaging across participating retailers while still reaching verified shoppers in trusted retail environments.
For growing brands, that shift can mean spending less time coordinating campaigns and more time building market presence.
Today's shopping journey rarely starts and ends in one place.
A customer might discover a product in a retailer email, browse it in the retailer's mobile app later that afternoon, revisit it while shopping online that evening, and ultimately make a purchase days later.
That's why visibility across multiple retail touchpoints matters.
Loops helps brands stay present throughout that journey, creating repeated exposure inside the retailer experiences customers already know and trust.
Rather than relying on a single marketing moment, brands can build familiarity over time.
The best strategy depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
Choose Comarketing when you want to build a deeper relationship with a specific retail partner, launch an exclusive promotion, or collaborate closely on a campaign.
Choose Loops when your goal is broader awareness, regional reach, and scalable brand visibility across multiple retailers, helping you engage verified shoppers wherever they're interacting with their favorite stores.
Many brands will find value in both approaches, using Comarketing for strategic retail partnerships while leveraging Loops to build awareness and drive engagement across entire markets.
AIQ Loops helps brands reach verified, opted-in shoppers directly within the retailer-owned experiences they already trust, from SMS and email landing pages to retailer mobile apps, ecommerce experiences, and AIQ's AI Sales Agent.
Whether you're launching in a new market or expanding an established presence, Loops gives you a scalable way to increase visibility where purchasing decisions happen.
