How to Build Long-Term Relationships with Your Pet Parents

Imagine if you could be by your pet parents' side as they bring home their new furry, scaled, or feathered friend? As a pet store owner, operator, or business you would be able to provide the most useful, relevant, and helpful tips, tricks, recommendations, and more.‍

 

Are you ready to improve your customer’s satisfaction and engage with your new pet parents from day one? ‍

 

Blustream recently hosted a webinar with Pets+ to educate pet companies to do exactly this. Here are some of the top takeaways from the session. Click here to watch a replay of this informative session. ‍

 

We help pet companies build lifelong relationships with pet parents in three key ways:‍

 

 

Now, let’s dive into each of these areas and how Blustream can help you!

 

To begin, in order to build lifetime relationships with your pet parents, it’s vital for pet companies to understand their customers and to personalize experiences to an individual’s pet(s) and preferences.

 

Why the focus on personalization? More than 80% of customers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences. Additionally, 89% of companies that lead with customer experience perform better financially than their peers. For pet companies, that personalization of customer experience is no longer “nice to have.” Personalized experiences are now a must for success.

 

But, how exactly can pet stores and pet companies personalize experiences for pet parents? With after-sale experiences that focuses on pet parents as new owners.

 

The online market is crowded and customers can easily be overwhelmed with the onslaught of information about pets. For example, a recent Google search for “dog food” turned up about 4,510,000,000 results in 1.44 seconds. For customers, this access to information is useful, but for pet companies, the ease of online shopping creates a disconnect between your brand and the customer. Personalization creates that crucial connection.

 

Let’s take the example of dog food. As a business owner you could send recommended dog foods for a pet parent’s specific breed of dog, suggested frequency of feeding times, and even regularly send reminders to buy a favorite brand of dog food monthly or bi-monthly. This kind of attention to a customer’s unique preferences and pet sows the seeds for a positive, long-term relationship - and keeps the customer visiting your store, shop, or website.

 

With the personalization of individual experiences, pet business owners can always create unique, personalized owners’ journeys to meet pet parents exactly where they are, exactly when they need it.

 

We discussed after-sale engagement above, but now let’s explore this subject a little more deeply.

 

Another key way pet companies can connect with customers and form lifelong relationships with pet parents is by tending to after-sale engagement with customers from day one. We all know the importance of first impressions. In order to create immediate value for pet parents, pet business owners and operators should focus on creating incredible first impressions.

 

For example: by sending personalized messages as soon as a pet parent walks through the door with their furry, feathery, or scaly friend, pet businesses have the opportunity to create an immediate impression with their consumer. Or, perhaps your brand could direct a pet owner directly to a display of toys.

 

Long-term relationships are always in reach when you focus on after-sale engagement. One of the best ways to knock after-sale engagement out of the park? By using customers’ personalized pet data to drive long-term relationships and shopper retention.

 

Blustream uses unique pet-specific data, like the length of ownership, location, size, breed, personality type and more, to ensure pet companies can engage and remain engaged with new pet parents from day one, all the way through a pet’s life.

 

By understanding the specific qualities and characteristics of a customer’s pet, pet businesses can sell and recommend the products new pet parents actually need. This kind of useful, relevant shopping experience and after-sale engagement makes customers feel great and fosters the kind of long-term relationships pet business owners need to succeed in today’s crowded marketplace.

 

Even better? Pet businesses can double their revenue by sending purchase recommendations to customers at exactly the right time.

 

The bottom line is that after-sale engagement with customers is key to succeeding as a modern pet business.

 

Now, let’s delve into a case study of how Blustream helped a pet business owner establish connections with customers and create lifelong relationships with pet parents. ‍

 

Working with Blustream has allowed Emily Lagasse to dream up new ways to both educate and connect with her customers at every stage of owning a pet – from taking care of a new puppy to grooming, and everything in between. Emily previously owned a pet food company, and one of the first ways she used Blustream to foster customer connections was with a diet and exercise messaging module. ‍

 

As a pet business owner, Emily knew a lot of her customers had questions about how to switch their dog to a new diet. So, she helped prepare them for that journey by starting with the scan of a QR code, which would allow them to receive SMS messages. The QR code went on the package of Emily’s dog food, but QR codes can also go on boxes shipped to houses,  incorporated into a POS system, or set up as a sign on a countertop. ‍

 

Immediately after scanning the QR code, the customer instantly received a warm welcome message. The welcome message also included the question: “how much does your dog weigh?” to quickly engage the customer. This information then helped Emily to create the next, most appropriate, personalized message to send next. The following message Emily sent, about a week later, then asked the pet parent questions about the dog’s exercise habits. ‍

 

Once the customer replied with their dog’s exercise habits, Emily was able to send personalized, tailored messages to the pet parent about specific diet and exercise needs. These messages were educational and informative, and provided relevant information to the owners, which helped to create a positive, engaging relationship with Emily’s business. ‍

 

Plus, every time Emily sent a message with a question she accumulated more information on her pet parents, which was kept and tracked in her Blustream dashboard. This knowledge allowed her to better understand her customers and their pets and provide the best, most personalized experiences and recommendations.‍

 

By crafting a customer journey of education and helpful product recommendations and tips, Emily was able to engage her customers and build lifelong relationships. Meanwhile, Emily’s customers were best able to care for their dogs. Now that’s what we call a true win-win for pet business owners, pet parents, and pets.

 

Blustream builds active, ongoing connections between product companies and their customers using personalized product messages to drastically improve customer experience.

 

Get started with Blustream today: https://meetings.hubspot.com/tcraig3 ‍