The Pet Parent's Journey to Loyalty (Part 2)
Back at it with part 2 of The Pet Parent’s Journey to Loyalty. You can find part one HERE and be sure to join our free community of pet store owners by subscribing to monthly (yup, just once a month) emails and give us a follow on your social channels.
In part 1 of The Pet Parent’s Journey to Loyalty, we focused on Acquisition. Essentially, it was all about the kind of data that brings new pet parents into your pet store. Part one was quality, so if you haven’t read it, do go check it out. We covered purchasing decision factors, the power of convenience, and how to make the most of your current customers. Final plug, here you go.
The Pet Parent's Journey to Loyalty
Again, we try to break these into bite-sized chunks. We know that as a pet store owner you don’t have a ton of time, so just a few minutes here and there or you can skim this article and still get something out of it. Our second piece of the pet parent’s journey to loyalty is on Retention.
Retention
Current customers present the greatest opportunity for revenue growth. After all, it costs five times more to acquire new customers than to nurture the ones you already have (Source: Forbes). However, you can’t rest on your laurels once you’ve convinced shoppers of the value of your brand. To retain customers, you have to consistently deliver relevant and personalized content based on their preferences and past behaviors.
hitting the right frequency
Take a look at this data really quickly. No seriously, really look at it.
When we are talking about frequency, we’re talking about how many times a brand’s message is received by a consumer. It’s important to understand your pet store’s customers in order to inform your pet store marketing strategy. Your customers will have individual preferences for your frequency - too much can turn people off, whereas too little risks your pet store falling off your customers’ top of mind.
According to the data, on average, about six out of 10 customers say they receive marketing messages across channels at the right frequency (Source: Yes Marketing).
That means, 40% of retailers are NOT getting it right. We can help you with that! Give us a call to see what Pet Engine Marketing can do to help grow your pet store.
So, how can you make sure you’re hitting the right frequency? Well, you’ve gotta track engagement across your marketing channels. By the way, we’re all about tracking.
Similarly, you have to pay attention to where they’re not engaging. You can also segment your audience based on engagement - those that tend to respond positively to more content versus those that don’t. MailChimp is good for things like that, and we use MailChimp.
Content (Relevancy) is king
After a pet parent makes a purchase or engages with your brand, delivering relevant communications should be a given. And yet, we oftentimes see retailers pass up on the opportunity to acquire valuable customer data that helps make content relevant.
Lack of relevance, just like not having the right frequency, can be a major turn off – even for customers already familiar with your brand. For example, dog parents who have never made a cat-related purchase shouldn’t receive communications featuring cat items or promotions. Don’t lose potential long-term customers to competitors by sending irrelevant messages.
So, how do you ensure that your content is relevant to your audience?
Personalized marketing messages. Use your data to segment your audience based on pet type, pet size, pet age, and more to provide resources, products, knowledge and expertise (build credibility) with the help of this data.
Collect data in creative ways. If your pet store marketing strategy doesn’t utilize data collection in some form, at the very minimum in-store (you can be sure the big box retailers are doing this), then you are handicapping your pet store’s marketing efforts. It’s true.
Ask your customers to provide the info! Given the chance (or the potential for a reward like a $10 gift card, and it’s worth $10), collect more information on your customers. Learn about their preferences. Then tailor your messaging accordingly.
The Pet Parent's Journey to Loyalty
CONCLUSION
Some major takeaways from part two of the Pet Parent’s Journey to Loyalty:
Strive to hit the right frequency when it comes to your marketing messaging.
Content relevancy is critical in your messaging, and you can use data to help inform both of these decisions so that you aren’t stumbling around in the dark.
As always, we here at Pet Engine Marketing are here to help and we’d love to learn from our readers. Feedback and input are always welcome! Hopefull you can use one or two tidbits in here to help your pet store marketing moving forward. Stay tuned for Part 3!
