Following up on part 1 of email content ideas for pet stores, we’ve got the second and final installment here to revamp, revolutionize, and rework your email marketing strategies for your pet store. You can check out the first installment HERE. Leave us a comment here or on our social feeds, we’d love to know which strategies you’re taking home with you to implement in your pet store, or which ones have worked/didn’t work for you in the past.

The email marketing at Pet Engine Marketing consists (currently) of a monthly issue that provides some of our most popular and most effective Insider posts delivered straight to your inbox. If you’re not on social media or would risk not seeing these posts, then we’d have to say email is the way to go. Join our free community for pet store owners to get started growing your pet store with improved pet store marketing tactics, tools, advice, and strategies.

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Email Content Ideas for Pet Stores
Part 2

Once again, going beyond the newsletter to provide some real value to your customers, increase your open rates, build your brand loyalty, and continue to bring in new and existing business on a consistent basis. Those are our goals with high quality email marketing, and here are some tactics to get you there:

Holiday Emails

Seems pretty straightforward, but it’s amazing how many businesses (in any industry) aren’t taking advantage of, or properly marketing, specific holidays. Here’s a few quick ideas:

Winter holidays: winter items on sale
July 4th: all American-made items on sale
Halloween: costumes on sale with a related Halloween themed costume contest

Flea and tick treatments for pets are seasonal promotional products

Seasonal Switches

We know that most pet stores have a form of seasonality, especially in product availability and inventory on the shelves. It’s important to let your subscribers know. If you have different hours during summer than you do during fall, send out an email to notify your subscribers.

Furthermore, if you’re trying to get rid of the last of your summer/winter supplies, that’s not a bad idea to talk about either (see the high- and low-inventory emails in Part 1).

Referral Programs

If they’re not the most effective, then referrals are up there in terms of the best ways to bring in new business. That’s partly why reviews are so important to pet stores.

Offer referral discounts to your customers — and also to the people the new customers successfully refer. Make it easy for customers to refer their friends to your business. This is especially effective for pet stores that have online store capabilities.

For assistance in setting up a process like this, schedule a call with us and see how we’d go about it.

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Drip Campaigns

This is another effective avenue to pursue for pet stores that sell products online. Drip campaigns are longer-term email marketing campaigns that nurture users through the sales funnel. Based on where a given subscriber is in your funnel, you can send them customized emails that encourage them to take the next step toward converting.

The reason this is generally more effective for e-Commerce rather than brick-and-mortar stores is that with brick and mortar stores and subscribers, it’s a bit more difficult to align subscribers with actual customers and figure out where they might be (both geographically and within the funnel). If they aren’t in your store’s geographical sphere of influence and you don’t offer an e-Commerce option, then it’s likely that they can’t be influenced to shop there anyways.

So here’s an example of a quick drip campaign:

Customer clicks on an ad regarding Fromm pet food
Drip email #1: Benefits of Fromm pet food
Drip email #2: Fromm loyalty program information
Drip email #3: Coupon or discount on first bag of Fromm food
Ideally, the next step would entail the customer purchasing a bag of food

Sweepstakes and giveaways

Sweepstakes and giveaways are, quite simply, lead magnets. They are a great way to capture new subscribers and generally have sky-high open rates on the emails.

We have clients that offer a $10 gift card to the “pet of the month” that visited their store. This is an awesome way to increase loyalty from that customer, get great social media interaction, and ensure that email open rates (which is where the pet of the month is announced) stay above industry average.

exclusive Access

Subscribers old and new will be excited for first access to events, sales, discounts, and sneak peeks. You can continue to provide value via this email marketing tactic by segmenting these audiences into very new subscribers, most loyal customers, highest spenders, biggest engagers, or something similar along those lines.

Make sure you’re spending the majority of your effort on the group of customers that are providing a big impact in your pet store! That’s important when it comes to ROI.

Testimonials

Most of the pet store clients we work with have a great deal of happy customers and positive reviews that speak glowingly on their behalf. Consider interviewing some of these customers and passing on their words, or featuring them in an email blast, to the rest of your subscribers.

Happy customers will help establish trust with subscribers who haven't converted yet. They’ll also appreciate being seen in your email marketing.

Additionally, providing links for subscribers to leave reviews with an email like this can be a great way to bring in new reviews and build your online ratings on places like Yelp, Google My Business, Trip Advisor, and other review-based platforms.

Email Content Ideas for Pet Stores
Part 2 conclusion

The bottom line is that sending out a monthly newsletter for your pet store’s email marketing should be the bare minimum.

Ensuring the best ROI comes from optimizing your email marketing strategy and getting creative with your email marketing, finding the perfect balance of tactics for your business by testing these 14 ways to reach your customers through email. We’re here with pet store marketing help to grow your pet business and hopefuly you’re willing to give one of these methods a shot. Don’t be afraid to try something outside the inbox!