PET STORE
EMail marketing

“Email is dead!”

As marketers, we hear this every year as the next “new thing” rolls out: chatbots, text marketing, more social media platforms.

And yet… email is still here! We still check it every single day, multiple times. It’s often one of the very first and very last things we check as we get into and out of our daily routines. Email marketing doesn’t come without its own set of challenges, but it’s certainly not dead. Billions of emails are sent every day, and if they’re sent with the right purpose to the right audience, they can generate sales, event signups, awareness for your brand, build loyalty, make people smile, and keep your customers aware of what’s happening in your pet store.

Ready to transform your pet store’s email marketing campaigns? At Pet Engine Marketing, we are able to provide this service as part of our Full-Service Pet Store Marketing Partnership. You can always book a free call to get an audit, some quick recommendations, and a meeting with one of our pet store marketing experts absolutely, 100% free. Just contact us to set that up!

Pet Store EMAIL MARKETING

The Basics on Email marketing For Pet Stores

Email is still used by over 4 billion people worldwide, and that number continues to rise. The simple truth is that your customers are actively using email, and you should too.

Our general philosophy on email marketing is this: if it’s done right, it can be hugely effective. We also love it because it’s cheap or even free for emerging accounts!

Customers that subscribe to your email marketing lists are among the most brand-loyal customers that your pet store can have. Why?

Just consider your own inbox and your own concerns about privacy and data security. You rarely want to sign your email up for something unless you know you really need it or really want it. Other people think the same, and if those pet parents have opted in and are welcoming you to their inbox every week or month, you’re in a privileged position!

Successful pet store email marketing campaigns come down to three primary areas:

1. List Building

2. Segmentation

3. Creativity

Let’s dig into these three areas and you’ll get a better idea of how you can start building your own audiences for your pet store email marketing campaigns.

List Building

There are a number of ways to build your audiences for your email marketing campaigns. Some of these can happen digitally, others can be in-store. The next time you’re engaging with a new business, whether that’s on their website or picking something up at the store, keep an eye out for how, when, and where they ask for your email address. It works for them, and it can work for you too.

Ways to build your list:

There are many more, only limited by your ingenuity and relentlessness. Ultimately, it comes down to your value proposition. Why should people sign up? Will they get early access to deals? What’s so great about your VIP email list? Do you get a coupon when you sign up?

If you provide value, people will stick around.

Segmentation

Although this happens after you’ve begun building your list, you truly need to understand segmentation before you build your list! Segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups, or segments, based on common characteristics. By segmenting, you can market your pet store more effectively to each segment. Think of it like this: dog parents don’t care about discounts on cat products, so why would you send that information to them?

Segmentation is a way to personalize offers and create more relevant email marketing. With proper segmentation, you’ll drive better results with more effective and efficient pet store email marketing campaigns.

So, how can you segment your audience? Well, you have to collect data to segment it! You can collect that data at the same time/method that you’re building your list with.

From there, we have a number of ways to do this that we recommend to our pet store marketing clients:

• Pet type

• Pet size

• Pet age

• Pet sex

• Number of pets

• New pet owners

• Loyalty program users

• Event attendees

• Highest spending customers

• Customers that haven’t purchased in 6 months

These are just a few ideas to get you started! There might be a small segment built in your audience of pet store customers that you can drive a large amount of revenue from…but without the data to segment it, you won’t be able to isolate and communicate with them. This data can also be helpful and used in your pet store social media advertising campaigns.

Creativity

Speaking of communication… the last piece of our email marketing campaigns comes down to creativity. If you feel like you’re not sure what to say in your email marketing campaigns, we’ll give you a handful of ideas here. The other obstacle that we come across is that sometimes people think there’s “not enough going on” at the store to warrant a newsletter or an email. Well then, you should fix that! Create some excitement, host an event, have a sale, partner with another business! Inject some life into your business and your employees and communities and pets will all be happier because of it.

Here are some pet shop email marketing styles that are tried and true:

• Newsletter (monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly)

• Onboarding or new members

• Reminders

• Promotions

• Abandoned cart emails

• Milestone emails (these are HUGE!)

• Offers

• Surveys

• Requests

• Low or high inventory

• Giveaways

• Drip campaigns

Once again, you’re only limited by your own creativity! These ideas should be enough to get the wheels spinning. One of the great things about pet shop email marketing campaigns is that a lot of these can be automated! Set it and forget it.

Last but not least, your creativity is put on show through your design, layouts, and subject lines! These are some of the most important factors for getting pet parents to open your marketing emails and convert.

Understanding the return on investment of your email marketing

The million-dollar question. How do I get that fabled $42 ROI for every $1 spent on email marketing efforts?

Well, one good way is to outsource it and take it off your hands! Working with Pet Engine Marketing means that all you do is approve the emails before they go out. Doesn’t get much easier than that!

So, how can we track the effectiveness of our email marketing campaigns? Here are some of the metrics that we keep an eye on and report to you on a regular basis:

• List growth: Is your list stagnant or growing over time? It’s also not always a bad idea to trim your list to maintain optimal health over time.

• Open rates: How many people are actually opening your emails? There are industry standards for retailers that we consider the absolute bare minimum and we usually get 3x the industry average.

• Clicks: How many people are opening your email and clicking to another part? This might be one of your social profiles, a webpage or a blog post, a product, an event, a third-party news source… you name it! Whatever content you have, we want to drive conversions.

• Conversions: The bottom of the email marketing funnel is a conversion. If the goal of your email is to drive grooming appointments, event signups, or sales, then we want to know how many of those we got via email.

At Pet Engine Marketing, your account manager has their finger on the pulse of these metrics, campaigns, strategies, and knows how to ensure your pet store email marketing strategy is running effectively.