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The privately-held company, which has been around since 1986, reportedly brought in $2.5 billion in revenue in the second quarter of this year. But the retailer is also trying to stay relevant with its shoppers and find new ways to engage them. Stacia Andersen, PetSmart\u2019s chief customer officer, joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about her role and the evolving pet space.<\/p>\n
PetSmart is not a startup by any means. Its loyalty program boasts 55 million members, and it works with a variety of talent, like HGTV\u2019s Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent. But the landscape is getting more competitive. With that, Andersen said PetSmart has been evolving its marketing strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe evolved our brand voice most dramatically probably a couple of years ago, when we went back and looked at our customer base,\u201d she said. \u201cOur brand voice evolved from individually marketing different sales or individually marketing services \u2026 to this overall brand platform and voice about why customers do what they do.\u201d The idea behind it was to connect with customers. \u201cThis is really what our brand voice is about,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s far more emotional, it\u2019s far less transactional.\u201d<\/p>\n
With such a large business, figuring out the customer profile becomes difficult. But Andersen said the retailer has figured out a few things. For one, most of PetSmart\u2019s customers are female; they often have multiple pets; lastly, they\u2019re often from families with children. Understanding this overall profile, Andersen said, has helped PetSmart refine its overall marketing strategy, as well as its loyalty plan.<\/p>\n
One of Andersen\u2019s most important mandates is establishing a retail presence that is more than just a place to buy pet food. With that, she\u2019s been leading various campaigns and partnerships to make the company more of a lifestyle brand. The idea isn\u2019t just to grow sales, but to do something deeper and give the brand more credibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a buzz factor,\u201d she said, talking about PetSmart\u2019s influencer partnership strategy. \u201cThere is a wow factor. And it also lends credibility to our own design.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.<\/p>\n
PetSmart\u2019s customer profile<\/strong> How Andersen approaches customer data<\/strong> PetSmart\u2019s partnership strategy<\/strong>
\u201cWe really refer to her as she. \u2026 Our customers are much more likely to be female. And we are serving a lot of different customers. Obviously, they have pets in their home. They are more than likely to have children in their homes. And many times, they have multiple pets in their home \u2014 they might have a dog and a cat, and 25% of our customers also have specialty pets in their home. That means they might have a bearded dragon or a small animal or a snake, in addition to other things in their home. And so our customers are pretty wide-ranging.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not interested in a data hamster wheel. So I would say we are not at that granular [of a level]. We are on a journey. We need to be better, and we like to be more personalized. But we will never get to that level. With that many customers \u2014 and that many active \u2014 the amount of machine learning that you would have [to use] and the amount of offers that you would have to manage\u2026 There\u2019s too much room for error. We just want to be better tomorrow than we are today. And so today, we\u2019re testing modeling, we\u2019re testing things that will make offers more relevant, we will get better as our system learns.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always want to surprise and delight our customers. At the highest level, we want people to go onto our site and come into a PetSmart store and go, \u2018Wow, what is that? I can\u2019t believe Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Breton did that for PetSmart.\u2019 There is a buzz factor, there is a wow factor. And it also lends credibility to our own design. So we have 21 proprietary brands \u2014 we design a lot of our own product. We\u2019re sourcing product and designing product every day. We have a brilliant in-house team, but they are not well-known designers. And when well-known designers come and work with us and our team, it gives credibility to us as a brand and as a design house. Because when designers like that are willing to work with us and we create product with them, it gives us some design cred.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n