Does Pets Deli Have a Strong Bond With Pet Parents?

We analyzed the basic CRM tactics of the premium pet food brand. Check how they score against other brands we graded so far

Adebisi Adewusi

September 29, 2021

Pets Deli is an e-commerce D2C pet food brand. Let’s see how well the retailer treats its customers.

1. Be Transparent 7/10

On Pets Deli’s Linkedin page, the brand frequently showcases the people behind its products. This type of content makes customers feel like a part of the company and improves customer engagement.

Moving on to internal operations, we saw a Linkedin post from the Pets Deli’s CEO Tania Moser, announcing the brand’s 4th birthday and Pets Deli’s new stores around Berlin.

From sharing dry financial statistics to exciting new product releases, brands that talk publicly about their internal operations build trust. While Pets Deli seems to be open, we knock off a few points for not seeing any news about the brand’s internal activities beyond its social media pages. But that’s a cute start nonetheless.

2. Incentives and Perks 10/10

When it comes to giving treats (perks and incentives), Pets Deli is quite generous. On the top of the brand’s HP, we saw a site-wide banner with the caption “free shipping from €50” and customers can get a 20% discount on all trial packages.

As we moved through various product categories, we saw a lot of discounted products – so there’s something for bargain shoppers.

At the bottom of all the pages we clicked on, we were encouraged to sign up for the brand’s newsletter in exchange for a 15% voucher.

The brand has a Refer a Friend Program. Customers who refer a friend receive a credit of €20 from their Pets Deli account.

Pets Deli also has a bonus program to help customers save money.

While Pets Deli offers a decent amount of perks and incentives to its customers, we think the brand should consider having a dedicated sales page to help customers easily find offers. But it’s still a 10 in our book.

3. Be Relevant 10/10

Keeping up with pet parents’ demand for sustainability, Pets Deli has a sustainable green line.

The brand also uses 100% recyclable packaging and climate-friendly transport of its products. In addition, with the rising popularity of natural products among pet owners, Pets Deli offers healthy food ingredients and supplements for dogs and cats.

Moving away from sustainability, Pets Deli has a useful information section at the bottom of its website where customers can find helpful guides on how to care for their pets.

The brand also offers free expert advice to customers on how to choose the right product for their pets.

Asking any more “relevant” activities would be rude.

4. Be Helpful 10/10

Pets Deli is big on contributing to marine and forest protection. The brand supports three climate protection projects through ClimatePartner. The projects are:

Marine Conservation – Plastic Banks
Healthy mixed forests as habitats – The German Mountain Forest Project eV
Forest protection – Rimba Raya

When it comes to being helpful and building multiple ethical facets in its business operations, we think Pets Deli is on the right track.

5. Master UX 7/10

Time to check out Pets Deli’s UX Performance. The brand’s Homepage & Category navigation experience is decent. We explored the site’s categories and range of products without feeling confused or visually overload.

Pets Deli’s customer’s product browsing experience is great as we could narrow down products by specific filters.

When deciding on what product to choose, the product page was really helpful. Product features were clearly communicated through images and text. And the user reviews and ratings section had enough information to help us evaluate the product products on the site.

In all, Pet Deli’s website UX performance is good but not breathtaking or uniquely memorable like some other sites we’ve analyzed. Fantastic UX can be a reason for customers to come back, this is not the case here.

We take off a couple of points for not seeing some website innovation and creativity.

6. Realtime Personalization 0/10

Here at PostFunnel, we live realtime personalization! So we were eager to see how Pets Deli does here. And we think we never gave a zero in this category before.

It starts with the fact that Pets Deli’s website is automatically in German.

We were only able to navigate the website with the help of Google Translate. Even with Google’s help, some content on the page remained in German.

Pets Deli could easily have offered us some realtime website personalization here by changing the language and other content on the site based on our locale or region. Or, at least let us choose something else.

To test Pets Deli’s more advanced (but still basic!) realtime personalization efforts, we placed a can of dry dog food in our cart. Sadly, we got a one size fits all experience. The images, messaging, and content on the home page and site weren’t personalized to give us a custom experience.

While we got some upselling and cross-selling on the product page, the products we were shown weren’t personalized to match our site behavior or anything, really. The most basic product-based recs.

For instance, we spent a lot of time browsing the sustainable food category. Pets Deli could have used our site behavior to offer us relevant personalized product recommendations.

After leaving the site, no ads tailed us on social media or the internet for the item we placed – and left – in our cart.

These things should be basic.

Pets Deli needs to up its realtime personalization game ASAP if it wants to make more sales and build stronger relationships with its customers.

7. Leverage Social Media 5/10

Pets Deli has an active presence on social media with almost 37k followers on Instagram and, and more than 73k likes on Facebook. The brand isn’t on Twitter.

Pets Deli’s Instagram page is active and filled with promotional posts featuring adorable animals.

The brand decently uses Instagram features such as stories, IGTV videos, and reels. But we would have liked to see more user-generated content or content that isn’t promotions.

Pets Deli posts regularly on Facebook but the content is the same as what we found on Instagram.

In all, Pets Deli does a decent job of connecting with its audience through social media. We love how Pets Deli uses social media to engage its audience by asking fun questions and sharing educative facts about our four-legged friends.

However, the brand should execute a social media strategy for each platform to drive more engagement.

In addition, Pets Deli is a German brand, so most of its social media content is in German. But we were able to figure out the brand’s post using Facebook’s translation feature.

If Pets Deli is considering expanding into foreign markets, then a multi-lingual social media strategy will help in building the brand’s social media community.

Time for Pets Deli’s CRM health check.

Pets Deli is getting 49/70 (70%) on our scoreboard – enough for joint 35th place out of 57 brands analyzed thus far, and far, far from Pets at Home and Petco that capture our 1st and 3rd place.

We noticed the brand has a realtime personalization deficiency. So its relationship with customers isn’t as strong as it should be.

To improve its CRM, Pets Deli has to embrace realtime on-site personalization to deliver tailor-made customer journeys. One way to do this is by capturing data for known and anonymous web visitors and using it to optimize its site and content. Find out more about website realtime personalization here.

Fingers crossed, Pets Deli takes our CRM improvement tips and gives customers the 1:1 experience they deserve.