PMW Awards Grand Prix: Go Inspire Group and Pets at Home

In a year of cats and dogs photobombing Zoom calls, it’s fitting that the biggest prize of the night went to the Go Inspire Group for their work with Pets at Home, driving loyalty well beyond a CRM programme. See why they won the PMW Grand Prix Award below…

02 December 2021

Grand Prix

Go Inspire Group

Very Important Pets (VIP) Club, Pets at Home

Retailer Pets at Home operates in a very competitive market, but it has demonstrated strong growth on a number of levels by differentiating through expertise and shared empathy for pets, using data-driven marketing. Its membership scheme, The VIP Club, is operated in conjunction with Go Inspire. Members receive highly personalised CRM across direct mail, email and the app.

This is demonstrated not just through personalised imagery by pet type, but goes further with specific pet breed type and name, where members have given this. Other elements of personalisation include types and numbers of offers, the frequency, the strength and even the voucher background colour and size. For example, less loyal customers respond better to a yellow highlighted background on the ‘hero’ voucher, whereas loyal customers are turned off by this.

Channel preference is also expressed through responsiveness of direct mail versus email versus the app. Pets at Home’s approach to CRM has driven a significant amount in incremental revenue and also increased retention, while VIP Club sign-ups have swelled in the last 12 months.

Members join to benefit from Pets at Home’s expertise, delivered in store and through CRM and for the shared empathy. Through the VIP Club, members give £2m to local pet charities of their choice. Existing members have registered more of their pets to get more from the VIP Club, resulting in Pets at Home having details of more than 24 million pets. This demonstrates the extent towards which insight can be used to deliver tailored, personalised and relevant CRM communications across a range of channels.

Judges comments included:

"This is the strongest submission I've seen this year. Outstanding use of data planning and analysis, to drive a very impressive personalised communications strategy which has delivered results at the very highest level. Love the consideration for the full user journey beyond just CRM, and how that data should influence the holistic piece. Award winning work! Well done."

"This is an inspirational entry. The results are breathtaking with over 60% customer engagement and 2M going to charity as a result."