Dear Ms. Katie Nauman, CMO at Petco,
I’m writing to you because on June 30th, 2020, we at PostFunnel – a publication dedicated to everything relationship marketing – analyzed your brand’s site experience according to the “7 commandments for basic CRM”. These are the basic principles brands should follow in today’s zeitgeist to improve their chances of building meaningful customer relationships.
You can read more about the method at the bottom of this page.
Since we ran the CRM analysis on your brand a while ago, we wanted to revisit it today to see what has changed. After all, we know these things are dynamic.
You can find the original analysis here.
Back then, your brand was only the 7th we examined. It was very early on our ongoing “& Commandments of Basic CRM” series, which today has reached 66 brands! At the time of Petco’s first analysis, we gave you a marvelous score of 90%, which was enough for 1st place! Now, 66 brands into our series, Petco is still holding high, sharing second place with Lowe’s, trailing only Pets at Home and their score of 91%.
Now, let’s re-evaluate those scores, shall we?
1) Transparency – funny thing, since our original analysis, Petco became a public traded company, which only helped you sustain the perfect 10/10 score we gave your brand almost two years ago. Following, or even actively searching content and announcements published by the company, gives a strong sense of familiarity with the brand and its inner works. 10/10.
2) Incentives and Perks – here we feel comfortable improving the original score, even though it was a high 9/10, to begin with. Different offers are natively apparent all throughout one’s visit to the site, and there’s no reason why Petco won’t receive another perfect 10 here as well.
3) Relevancy – when we gave you another perfect 10 for this commandment back in mid-2020 it was driven mostly by your brand’s reaction to COVID19’s outbreak. But now, scrolling through Petco’s website and social media pages does feel a little detached from reality. Because, while winter and Super Bowl content are nice, there are still other things that happen in the world. And customers love a brand that shares their worlds. Making animal adoption-related content more visible would help here, especially at a time of mass abandonment. The new score here is 7/10.
4) Helpfulness – When it comes to providing different ways to really help your customers and their pets, Petco’s wellness, donations, and adoption initiatives deserve yet another 10/10 (same as the original score).
5) Realtime Personalization – while product recommendations were pretty relevant, nothing we did on the website was translated into a more personalized experience in realtime. Not browsing only cats-related pages and products, not filling up our basket with only cats products. Not even creating an account, and then abandoning a cart full of cats stuff. The different recommendations, components, and offers (banners, pop-ups) we saw stayed general. And, when we hopped off the site and onto our social media accounts (using the same email we used to open our new Petco account), we were not retargeted by Petco ads at all, not to mention personalized ones promoting the products we browsed and added to our basket. What was enough for a 7/10 score almost two years ago, can’t merit more than 4/10 now – as the bar of customer expectations is only moving upwards.
6) Master UX – a solid 7/10 can perhaps improve to an 8/10 today, as the site is incredibly jam-packed with information, offers, products, and different ways to find what you want. It’s not a 9 or a 10 as the UX in itself isn’t innovative or especially memorable.
7) Leverage Social Media – With most content appearing across all different platforms, we deduct some points for lack of platform-dedicated content, which misses an opportunity to provide content and experiences that are more personalized to each social media platform’s audience and characteristics. We’d also reduce a point for low frequency. It’s a 7/10.
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Overall, the new score we’d give Petco now is 55/70, which translates to 78%. That’s still a solid score, enough for a joint-20th place among our 66 analyzed brands. But it’s obviously far from the original score of 90%, which gave you first place at the time and was enough for 2nd place even after so many more analyses.
Most points were lost on realtime personalization, relevancy, and social media. All things that can be quickly fixed – something that will help Petco strengthen its customer relationships.
Today, we know the importance of personalized experience and its role in getting visitors and customers to come back for more – brands that deploy hyper-personalized CRM Marketing strategies can see a 33% increase in their Customer Lifetime Value. Some, even more.
To learn more about how you and Petco can take full advantage of all the latest, cutting-edge realtime marketing personalization and customer segmentation practices, feel free to reach out to the folks at Optimove at any time. That happens to be their expertise!
About the 7 Commandments for Basic CRM Tactics in A Post-Coronavirus World:
We have a saying here at PostFunnel: All marketing is relationship marketing. Why? Because every touchpoint with a potential customer impacts the kind of relationship, they will have with a brand, if and when they become customers. Even branding has. It’s like what people hear about their upcoming blind date can determine the actual meeting’s success.
In recent years, it meant that the ways brands support global, social, environmental, and even political causes have become increasingly critical to their relationships with customers.
Then, 2020 happened. With its global pandemic’s tragedy, economic downturn, and historical social and political turmoils – people turned their eyes to brands, almost as much as they have to governments. Expecting and judging brands by how they conduct themselves throughout such events was never more crucial to a company’s CRM success.
One after the other, the internet got flooded with articles advising marketing and CRM leaders on making sure their brand is suited for this new reality. So, we combed dozens of them – and came up with a list of 7 staples that appeared in most of those articles.
The seven most essential commandments a brand must follow these days to make sure they put themselves in the best position possible to develop long, meaningful relationships with their customers.
The 7 Commandments:
1) Transparency. Show the human side of your brand
2) Give incentives and perks (that make sense)
3) Be relevant (with your language, offering)
4) Be helpful (improve your communities’ lives)
5) Personalize in realtime (cause, duh)
6) Master UX (slow, clunky websites are no longer an option)
7) Leverage social media (don’t just treat it as a sales channel)
Yup, that’s all. Your CRM efforts will struggle to achieve their full potential without being at least decent at all of these.
And, let’s be honest, it’s not too much to ask of a brand, right?
Yet, you’d be surprised how many well-known brands fall short too often when analyzed through these lenses.
Still, it makes some sense – these changes are happening fast, and not all brands can react and adapt quickly enough and on all fronts.
And we’re here to follow these reactions and adjustments as they happen.