Zootovary.com is a full-cycle pet store that operates a network of retail pet stores and provides courier delivery service.
In 2023, the pet niche showed record-high growth in ad budgets up to 900% compared to the year-over-year 2021 data. With that, user acquisition costs hiked by 200-350% compared to 2022. These tendencies are signaling growing competition across the pet care market in 2024.
To keep up with the rivalry, market players should follow trends to retain their customers and attract new ones.
We have worked with the Client for quite a while. Previously, we set up a successfully performing retention channel.
The market situation requires a permanent search for new ideas. While the Client’s team trusts our expertise and is open to exploring new formats of interaction with their customers, we proposed trying a new eSputnik feature - App Inbox by adding it to the Client’s core Retention channel.
App Inbox is a mailing channel that combines the advantages of mobile notifications, web pushes sent to the notification center, and stored in a user account until they get irrelevant.
The case study reveals how we mixed a new feature with the client’s retention channel and the outcomes over February-October 2023.
Before launching App Inbox, we explored how the tool would improve the Client’s active Retention channel and its capacity to generate promotional and triggered emails.
The Client expressed interest in App Inbox owing to its omnichannel nature, unobtrusiveness, and way more targeted actions by subscribers. Its connection ensured targeted conversions: in addition to the message counter next to the bell icon, App Inbox does not provide sound or pop-up notifications. That indicates that the users clicked on the notifications in a targeted manner.
Among the Client's marketing anticipations was to reach more users by vastly communicating with the inactive audience across its customer database through various contact identifiers.
Tech limitations of active tools, or the use of a sole contact identifier like a customer’s email or phone number often affect the number of contact points with the audience. This is to emphasize that while an online store may enjoy a large subscriber base, it does not communicate with its whole audience.
Our idea was to use App Inbox to attract an inactive audience of the Client’s email subscribers and embrace a larger part of the customer base by using phone numbers. We opted for App Inbox as an effective marketing tool that enables applying various contact IDs for notifications.
It may initially seem that App Inbox is the same as any other popular web push tool. However, that’s not true.
Among other benefits, App Inbox allows clients to communicate with subscribers regardless of device and operating system, send emails at any time, and preserve brand identity in notifications.
On the tech end, we had no trouble connecting App Inbox. Neither had the tool seemed resource-intensive for the Client. Save as our recommendations, the Client would launch iron on its own, though the value of our case is in the integrated approach.
In due case, the new tool complemented other communication channels in the Client’s Retention strategy.
Among the most interesting aspects of using notifications in App Inbox was solidifying the Client’s newsletter with the AMP interactive "Feed the Cat".
Reaching users equally via email and phone numbers through App Inbox, we chose the tool as a feasible alternative to the way expensive Viber channel. Namely, the client regarded Viber as a cost-effective channel.
The idea of ‘the interactive’ well resonated with the Client’s subscribers. We offered a game where they could get a promo code for an additional 5% discount summed up with all other discounts on the Client’s site.
We kicked off several supplementary App Inbox email campaigns to reinforce the client’s core email campaigns, which generated +51.3% of revenue in February-October 2023.
We added App Inbox messages to trigger chains. That way, we expanded the omnichannel communication model for the following trigger chains: "Abandoned view" and "Promo code reminder after subscription".
The novelty of the App Inbox tool is in its unobtrusiveness and the effectiveness of the implementation confirmed by our hypothesis about the importance of testing new channels of brand communication with customers.
App Inbox helped our Client to communicate with its inactive audience through email during promotional campaigns. The tool also serves as an independent channel that complements the Client’s omnichannel communication model in trigger and promo emails.
Owing to App Inbox, we achieved a +28.4% increase in turnover from the Retention channel in nine months.
Given the astonishing outcomes of App Inbox performance, we are considering new applications for the Client’s trigger chains. We are also up to improving the existing triggers with supplementary messages in the App Inbox.