Photo: PetSmart
Will ‘Treats’ Make PetSmart a Pet Parent’s Forever Friend?
PetSmart launched its Treats Rewards program in August 2018, intending to build deeper connections with the pet parents that shopped at the chain. More than four and a half years later, it seeks to deepen those connections with the more than 60 million members who have joined the program since its inception.
The retailer earlier this month launched its first-ever Treat Members Month. Members in the free program have been receiving weekly deals, opportunities to earn bonus points on purchases and entry into PetSmart’s “Treats Super Giveaway” contest with a chance to win one million Treats points.
Bradley Breuer, vice president marketing – loyalty, personalization, and CRM at PetSmart, told RetailWire that the retailer is pleased with the response of its Treats members to the month-long promotion.
“I would say that in most cases, we’re achieving expectations or exceeding them. We have a few offers where we are learning great things and they’re a little bit softer. But in the overall portfolio, we’re really pleased with the engagement,” said Mr. Breuer.
PetSmart emphasized frontline involvement to make Treat Members Month work at the store level.
“We spent a lot of time and energy engaging our store associates because they are truly the biggest ambassador for us telling the loyalty story and getting people engaged,” said Mr. Breuer.
“I’ve seen stores who’ve taken the training materials and made awesome chalkboards explaining the offers. This morning I saw a post of a store associate on our internal comms channel explaining to a customer how to activate an offer,” he added.
PetSmart, understanding that its employees are pet parents too, provided store-level workers with a special Treats offer to see first-hand how it worked and better explain offers to members who had questions.
Mr. Breuer said Treats is integral to PetSmart’s marketing.
“We’ve spent a lot of time really integrating Treats as sort of the full offering. So you see Treats come through in our email marketing, our SMS marketing, our push marketing, our direct mail marketing and then our on-receipt marketing,” he said.
Mr. Breuer said PetSmart also works Treats into paid media placements. He pointed to the program being part of PetSmart’s holiday season commercials offering double-point rewards for purchases from the chain’s Merry & Bright proprietary brand collection.
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What are the keys to maximizing retail loyalty/rewards program performance today? What is your assessment of PetSmart’s approach to customer engagement with Treats Rewards as a tool to achieve that?
Poll
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Ken Morris
Managing Partner Cambridge Retail Advisors
Chuck Ehredt
CEO, Currency Alliance
Gotta love how PetSmart has empowered front line store employees to be the primary ambassadors in engaging customers. Discounts and deals and treats are all terrific, but at its core, pet ownership and care is emotional, and PetSmart is tapping into those emotions.
PetSmart’s Treats program is “Best in Show” loyalty marketing. What’s especially important is the omnichannel approach, from in-store training to ad campaigns. They’re covering every angle and connecting the dots wherever possible, making it seem almost illogical for Treats members to go anywhere else. Considering that the global pet care industry is headed toward almost $360 billion by 2027 (per Globe Newswire), it makes a lot of sense to put this much focus on and innovation into their loyalty program.
I believe this holistic strategy of rewarding customers and associates across all touch points is the way to go, and it’s a huge bonus that PetSmart appreciates the value of their in-store ambassadors as well. A key to loyalty success is obsessively engaging with participants in your loyalty program and keeping them in the fold.
Great points Ken! We recently joined a loyalty program at a retail brand “because” the employee explained the benefits and showed us how we could use the benefits that day. She also explained how to maximize the benefits of our points. It sure makes a difference when employees embrace the loyalty program and explain it enthusiastically to customers.
This has been a very good program for years and because they have fairly high frequency with customers, and interesting rewards are accessible — which is an important flywheel to drive customer engagement (and kind of create lock-in, even if that is not an explicit goal of the program). Obviously, educating the front-line staff and encouraging them to promote the program is key, so PetSmart’s Treats program is a category leader. The only thing I think could take it further is to extend the ecosystem of partners, so customers could earn even more points from the grooming salon, pet care facilities when the family is on vacation, veterinarians, and other complementary businesses — that I am sure would be happy to fund more points in order to attract PetSmart’s customers.
As a new puppy owner (Cavapoo), we have become PetSmart enthusiasts. While the Treat Rewards is a terrific program we were most impressed by the welcoming, enthusiastic & helpful staff! The Treat Rewards program is an excellent example of a company being loyal to its customers, by constantly & consistently delighting them.
Smart move to empower and engage the store employees in the program, who can then turn to the customers with a full understanding of how the program works!