Most operators think about Terpli, AIQ's AI Sales Agent, as a recommendation tool. Ask a few questions, surface a product, guide the decision. That part is true, and it works. But the retailers seeing the biggest numbers aren't using Terpli as a single feature. They're using it as a system that plugs into three specific moments in their operation where revenue was leaking and didn't have to be.
Here's what those three moments look like in practice and what the data shows when you close them.
The situation: You have a segment of lapsed customers, shoppers who bought three or four months ago, received a winback SMS from AIQ, clicked through, and landed on your menu. The campaign did exactly what it was supposed to do. The open rate was solid. The click-through was there.
Then nothing. They browsed for a few minutes and left.
This is one of the most common patterns in cannabis retail, and it's not a campaign problem. The campaign worked. The problem is what the shopper encountered when they arrived, a menu that had no memory of what they bought before, no way of knowing what didn't work, and no mechanism to guide them toward something better this time.
What changes with Terpli: When Terpli is active inside the menu, that returning shopper isn't landing on a static catalogue. They're landing on a guided experience that asks what they're looking for today, maps their response to COA-backed chemistry data and verified reviews, and surfaces a recommendation matched to their expressed intent — not just to what's trending or what's on promotion.
For lapsed customers specifically, the guided experience is the difference between a second chance and a second disappointment. The first visit might have gone wrong for any number of reasons — wrong product, unclear effects, disappointing experience. Terpli doesn't know what happened last time, but it does ask the right questions to make sure this time goes differently.
The data: Retailers running Terpli report return rate improvements of 20–25%. At Noxx x Cookies in Michigan, reviewers — the most engaged segment of Terpli users — returned 55% faster and spent 49% more per visit compared to customers who didn't engage with the recommendation flow. The winback campaign gets them in the door. Terpli gives them a reason to stay.
The funnel connection: Winback is a re-consideration play. AIQ fires the campaign. Terpli owns the decision moment on the other side of the click. Without the second half of that equation, you're paying to drive traffic back to the same experience that lost them in the first place.
The situation: Your purchasing team just brought in a new brand, or your cultivator delivered a fresh batch you're excited about. You fire an AIQ campaign announcing it. Your loyal regulars who already trust your curation pick it up immediately. But the shoppers who are newer, less familiar, or simply more cautious? They click, they look at the product page, and they leave.
New products have a trust problem. They don't have reviews yet. The brand name is unfamiliar. The strain name means nothing to someone who doesn't know their way around a terpene profile. And your budtender, the person who could explain all of this in thirty seconds in-store, isn't on your website.
Most operators respond to this with promotion. They discount the new product, feature it in the header banner, or push it in a dedicated campaign. Some of that works. But it works on the shoppers who were already going to buy, not on the ones sitting on the fence.
What changes with Terpli: The pop-up feature changes the entry point. Instead of a shopper landing on a product page for a brand they don't know yet and immediately bouncing, they're met with a prompt that pulls them into the guided recommendation flow. From there, Terpli does what it always does, asks what effect they're looking for, what potency feels right, what they're willing to spend, and surfaces products from your live inventory that match.
Here's the key mechanic: Terpli isn't pushing the new brand. It's matching shopper intent to your inventory. If the new brand's products fit what the shopper described, and if the COA profile and chemistry data support it, they'll naturally appear in the recommendation. The trust that makes that recommendation land isn't coming from a banner that says "New Arrival." It's coming from a system that said "based on what you told me, this is the right product for you."
That's a fundamentally different reason to try something new. And it's one that converts.
The data: Average order value improvements of 10–15% are consistent across Terpli-powered retailers — not because the products are more expensive, but because the recommendation matches the shopper to products they're willing to pay for rather than defaulting to the cheapest familiar option. For new products specifically, the guided experience removes the hesitation that kills launch conversion. The shopper isn't taking a chance on something unknown. They're buying something that was matched to them.
Coming soon — more control over what gets seen: The next evolution of this takes it further. A new set of visibility controls launching as part of the updated Terpli in May/June will allow operators to give priority placement to specific products or brands within matched recommendation results. The recommendation engine still does its job, it only surfaces a product if it genuinely matches the shopper's profile. But when a new drop arrives that you want to move, you'll have the tools to ensure it gets in front of the right shoppers at the right moment, not just any shopper who clicks. No forced placement. No compromise on trust. Just more intentional visibility for the products that deserve it.
Operators who sign before April 20 get first access to these new controls the day they launch.
The funnel connection: New product launches are a consideration play. The campaign creates awareness, AIQ handles that beautifully. But consideration requires trust, and trust requires context. Terpli provides the context at exactly the moment the shopper is deciding whether to try something unfamiliar and closes the loop by ensuring the right products get seen by the right people, not just the loudest banner in the menu.
The situation: It's a Friday afternoon. Your dispensary is busy. There are six people in line, two more browsing, and your budtenders are doing their best. But there's a category of customer that every busy dispensary knows well: the shopper who has never been in before, who has no idea what they want, and who is going to take fifteen minutes to get there.
These shoppers aren't a problem. They're an opportunity. They're exactly the customer who, if they find the right product today, becomes a loyal regular. But on a busy afternoon, they're also the customer your budtenders don't have time to fully serve, which means they often leave with something mediocre, have a mediocre experience, and don't come back.
What changes with Terpli: The guided recommendation experience isn't limited to your online menu. Smart operators are extending Terpli into the physical store, through kiosks in the waiting area, iPads at the counter, or QR codes that pull up the flow on a shopper's own phone. However it's deployed, the idea is the same: meet the undecided shopper before they reach your budtender, not after.
A first-timer sitting in your waiting area with two minutes and a phone can answer five simple questions about what they're looking for, desired effect, potency, price range, and have a confident product recommendation in hand before their name is called. The guided flow does the discovery work. Your staff does what they're actually great at.
The budtender's job changes entirely. Instead of spending fifteen minutes on discovery, what do you like, what have you tried, what are you trying to feel, they spend two minutes on confirmation, upsell, and relationship. The conversation that was a friction point becomes a fast, confident transaction. The shopper leaves having found something matched to them. The budtender moves to the next customer without the conversation having felt rushed.
The data: Customers who complete the Terpli recommendation flow before purchasing show higher average spend than unguided shoppers, a 10–15% AOV lift that holds across regions and retail formats. More importantly, they return. The review loop that follows a successful purchase feeds back into a smarter recommendation the next time, and the next. Each visit improves on the last. That's not a single-transaction win, it's a lifetime value play that starts at the counter on a busy Friday.
The funnel connection: This is a retention play disguised as an operational one. Bringing Terpli into the physical store extends the guided experience beyond the website and turns the waiting area into a pre-purchase decision environment. The shopper who discovers the right product in-store through Terpli is more likely to return online next time, because they now trust the system that helped them find it. The in-store session and the online session feed the same loop. Every touchpoint makes the next one smarter.
What connects these three scenarios isn't the feature set. It's the loop.
In every case, Terpli is capturing something that would otherwise disappear, a returning customer's intent, a new product skeptic's hesitation, a first-timer's confusion, and converting it into a guided decision. That decision generates a review. The review feeds a smarter recommendation. The smarter recommendation generates a better experience next time. The better experience generates loyalty.
The retailers who understand this aren't thinking about Terpli as a recommendation widget. They're thinking about it as the intelligence layer that makes every other part of their operation, campaigns, product launches, in-store experience, more effective. Each touchpoint compounds. Each session builds on the last.
With 4/20 approaching, the highest-traffic, highest-intent, highest-first-timer concentration day of the year, the value of having that loop running before the rush arrives isn't incremental. It's exponential. Every guided session on April 20th seeds a smarter recommendation in May. Every review captured that day feeds a better experience in June.
The retailers who close the loop before 4/20 won't just have a better holiday. They'll have a better summer.
See what this looks like on your menu.
Schedule your Terpli demo today >
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