Petz Increases Product Sales by 300% With Personalized Cross-Channel Messaging

Founded in Brazil in 2002, Petz began as a single brick-and-mortar pet shop serving the São Paulo metro area. Between 2014 and 2020, the brand saw extraordinary growth—they partnered with an investment fund, overhauled their branding and in-store experience entirely, expanded to the online marketplace, launched a veterinary services brand, reached the 100-store mark, and ultimately issued an IPO.

Having been a multi-location, strictly brick-and-mortar business for more than a decade, the addition of eCommerce was accompanied by new opportunities and new challenges for Petz.

Their marketing team found themselves unable to pull and interpret customer data, limiting their opportunities to capitalize on behavioral trends and maximize revenue through strategic communication. Petz recognized that in order to execute their marketing effectively, they needed to begin leveraging data to help them send automated, strategic customer messaging. So they turned to Braze.

Developing a Data-Driven Customer Communication Strategy

Petz’s main objectives were to maximize customer lifetime value, decrease customer acquisition costs, and turn first-time customers into repeat buyers. As an example, customers feed their pets daily—pet food specifically is never a one-time purchase. The challenge didn’t lie in convincing consumers to buy food for their pets, but rather in strategically motivating new customers to create a purchasing habit, ultimately allowing Petz to capture more of the market long term.

Without in-house data engineers, they began looking at data-processing tools with which they could run experiments and interpret what they knew about their customers, allowing them to automate messaging that recommended products based on purchasing patterns. They searched for tools that were straightforward and efficient. Upon finding Braze, the team says the flexibility of the platform has been a major factor in their success.

By leveraging Braze Canvas, Petz was able to create intuitive customer journeys and segment, orchestrate, personalize, and test messaging experiences—all in one place. Petz focuses primarily on using data to make contact with customers with abandoned carts, as well as customers who are at the right stage in the purchasing cycle to be reminded to rebuy certain items. Canvas allows them to experiment with different channels—including email, Facebook, and even WhatsApp via webhooks—and analyze the effectiveness of each. They also sync Facebook and Google audiences when a Canvas is deemed ineffective for certain customers, which they say removes a significant technical burden. To better personalize messaging, Petz integrates Braze Content Blocks, manipulating variables to use content across different channels while ultimately learning what the best channel is to re-engage. Additionally, they turned to Braze for it’s powerful connected ecosystem of Braze Alloys partners. Now, Petzs utilizes Segment to collect, unify, and connect customer data, the Snowflake Data Cloud to store said data, Fivetran to replicate data from different sources into Snowflake, and AppsFlyer, a marketing measurement platform that helps marketers to get a clear understanding of every online and offline customer journey and create personalized experiences that optimize campaign performance at scale.

Petz Results: 3X’ed Sales through Strategic Messaging

With the powerhouse of Braze and Braze Alloys tech partners, Petz has been able to make data-driven decisions to upgrade consumer messaging, leading to a 737% percent increase in sales in just three years. By being able to connect data to generate personalized campaigns and evaluate results at scale, the Petz was able to test and learn quickly and efficiently—and ultimately driving more revenue.

Additionally, Petz was third place in digital sales in the pet retail category in Brazil by the end of 2019 and became the leader by the end of 2021. They achieved that by being more efficient than competitors with campaigns that rely on dynamic personalization and data-driven insights.

Key Takeaways

• A large presence in the market doesn’t suffice. Petz saw immense growth throughout their journey from one store to one hundred, but by upgrading their communication strategies, they’ve raised the bar on the lifetime value of their many customers.
• Messaging is never a one-size-fits-all component of marketing. In using a cross-channel strategy, Petz learned how to reach their customers in the most cost-effective way for each individual.
• Overhauling a major company’s growth strategy is no simple task. Petz takes advantage of a wide variety of Braze Alloys tech partners to maximize insight, efficiency and effectiveness of the Braze platform

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