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by Dab Riga

Partying, Marketing, and Offering

TLEHL’s First Sponsored Event Was A Success

On March 14th, 2024, on the one year anniversary of the Montclair Township Council’s unanimous approval of a local support resolution for TLEHL, we threw our first party. It just so happened that this date was available at our preferred venue, the Clubhouse private events space here in Montclair. You might know it by its exterior, which features the mural Gangs all here by the street artist Jerkface.

TLEHL had some guest artists doing live painting inside the venue that night as well. Shoutouts to them: @cent_pfe, @neo_negus_ and @d_a_illa, and also to DJ Ritters from Radio Free Montclair for keeping the tunes going all night, and to all the other staff, volunteers, partners and attendees that made this awesome event possible.

We basically had it all. But somehow, while the event sold out and a festive atmosphere persisted throughout the evening, I still ended up with a laundry list of improvements to make in the future. A small sampling:

  • More open communication lines between myself and volunteers/event staff
  • Preflight dry run of any new sound system or other custom equipment
  • Handling of fragile items with kid gloves throughout event lifecycle

Regardless, it was definitely a successful first event!

Drip, Drip, Buzz, Buzz…

Not only was our first event a success, but so was our first marketing campaign leading up to it. Many conventional digital marketing options such as paid social media are unavailable to the cannabis industry at this time, so companies like TLEHL either have to deal with the infantilizing use of spellings like “c@nnabis” and “w33d” to sneak under the platforms’ algorithmic radars, or, remove these industry-intolerant platforms from our marketing mixes altogether. We at TLEHL have opted for the latter route.

To take a closer look at one component of our three-pronged marketing strategy (email/organic/network), we did a drip email campaign to the subset of our email list subscribers believed to be located in or nearby Montclair, using the word cannabis as freely as we do on this website. The results are a beauty to behold:

The largest peak there was from the email on the day of the event, with the subsequent bump from the thank you email to participants. We now have a proven, cannabis-industry-friendly template to follow, which will make marketing for future events (and product launches, for that matter) a reliable, predictably executable, continuously improvable process.

The Startup Roadshow Has Begun

Not only was this TLEHL’s first sponsored event and first drip marketing campaign, it was also the kickoff to TLEHL’s first official startup roadshow. As you may know, TLEHL is currently in the midst of a private placement financing round, and my calendar of events has me shopping TLEHL’s offering all up and down the Eastern Seaboard this spring. Yesterday, I started off in Philly. I woke up today at the Jersey Shore. This evening I’m sitting here in a hotel room in Boston finishing up this blog post. And so on. Here’s the complete post-pre-construction-party TLEHL startup roadshow schedule: