The Business
With its wide range of pet supplies, Fressnapf | Maxi Zoo has been providing the best in pet care and accessories in Germany and Europe since 1990. The Krefeld-based retailer and franchise has adopted a business model that’s unique in the retail sector: the company doesn’t just want to keep its customers happy, it wants their pets to be happy too.
True to its motto, “Happier pets. Happier people,” the market leader in pet supplies offers a wide range of exclusive brands across all price segments with a particular focus on providing a personalized and customer-oriented omnichannel experience. The Fressnapf Group also supports various charitable animal welfare projects through sponsorships and continues to expand its social commitment as part of the animal welfare initiative “tierisch engagiert” (“fiercely committed”).
The Challenge
- Linking data to ensure a holistic approach to customer communication
- Scaling personalization without increasing work
- Automating complex customer journeys
- Improving customer loyalty and preventing churn
Like many other sectors, the pet supply industry is currently undergoing a transformation, moving away from traditional brick-and-mortar stores and toward seamless omnichannel experiences. Today’s pet parents expect relevant, personalized, and, most importantly, timely communication across all channels. At the same time, Fressnapf’s target audience differs from traditional B2C customers in that the focus isn’t just on the customer’s lifecycle — it is primarily on the pet’s lifecycle.
Fressnapf needed a solution that would allow the company to understand the needs of its customers and their pets in a more nuanced way. The first step was to collect the relevant customer data and link it internally. Next, Fressnapf wanted to achieve scalable personalization and automate complex campaigns, thereby strengthening customer loyalty and increasing engagement in the long term.
The Solution
To succeed in an increasingly competitive international market and provide its customers with a consistently personalized and relevant shopping experience, Fressnapf | Maxi Zoo began a partnership with SAP Emarsys in 2022.
Implementing powerful personalization and segmentation capabilities, applying comprehensive marketing automation logic — using pre-built strategies and tactics, for example — and integrating the platform seamlessly into the retailer’s existing systems proved to be an unbeatable combination for Fressnapf.
Unifying the database, leading to improved customer understanding
Fressnapf wanted to consolidate customer data from online and offline channels to gain a better understanding of the company’s customers. The SAP Emarsys platform made this possible.
Now, using the unified, cross-channel database within the platform, Fressnapf is able to gain important insights about its customers and their pets, and then deliver relevant content at the right time and using the right channel — whether that’s email, in-app messages, push notifications, or digital coupons that can be redeemed in stores.
This consolidated data also helps them surface insights to better understand where the highest potential is across channels and campaigns. They also plan to leverage the SAP AI Toolkit in the future to make sure they help deliver the best value for their customers at scale.
Delivering comprehensive, automated personalization tailored to each pet
When customers first register with Fressnapf | Maxi Zoo, they generally provide some basic information about themselves and their pets. If they also opt in to allow this data to be used, the Fressnapf team can then use the info they have on file — like the type of pet and breed — to personalize its communications.
Thanks to SAP Emarsys, the company can apply predefined rules to integrate dynamic content directly into its campaigns. For example, it can automatically display specific copy, images, or product recommendations based on the type of pet, the pet’s age, or its stage of life. In this way, Fressnapf provides consistently relevant and highly personalized communication that adds real value for customers.
A good example of this is the welcome message, which includes recommendations tailored to the customer’s pet, tips on caring for their pet, or special offers. This way, the customer feels they are being personally addressed, even in automated journeys, which in turn results in greater trust and increased customer loyalty.
Preventing customer churn early on
By integrating its own specially developed data model into SAP Emarsys, Fressnapf was able to implement an important project — a churn-prevention journey designed to proactively prevent customers from leaving. The model identifies customers with an increased churn risk and sends them automated motivating messages via email or push notification.The SAP Emarsys Automation Center made it easy to implement this cross-channel journey and allowed for flexible management.
Fressnapf | Maxi Zoo regularly conducts A/B testing with control groups directly in SAP Emarsys to monitor performance. This provides the company with data-driven monitoring and intelligent options for improving and optimizing its churn-prevention journey.
“Our measures have clearly proven successful: more than 15% of our communication-driven e-commerce revenue in Europe can now be directly attributed to automated campaigns implemented with SAP Emarsys. The automated journeys are performing particularly impressively — their click rates are more than double those of traditional, manually created campaigns. This clearly underscores the potential of data-driven, personalized automation when it comes to addressing customers in a targeted manner and creating sustainable added value.”
The Impact
Since adopting SAP Emarsys, Fressnapf has focused on intelligently combining automation and personalization to increase efficiency and relevance. The company wanted to establish seamless, personalized omnichannel communication along the entire customer journey.
By leveraging the capabilities of the SAP Emarsys platform, the company has achieved significant success in this area. More than 15% of communication-driven e-commerce revenue in Europe can now be directly attributed to automated campaigns implemented with SAP Emarsys.
The automated journeys deliver an impressive click rate, far exceeding that of manually created campaigns — more than double, in fact. Fressnapf | Maxi Zoo is confident that it has found a strategic partner in SAP Emarsys — one that not only offers technological expertise but also provides conceptual support to help grow and develop the company’s marketing, thereby delivering greater relevance and customer loyalty in the long term.
“Rather than working on individual projects in the traditional sense, we have a clear strategic focus: the complete automation of central customer lifecycle communications. This has already allowed us to successfully implement several important journeys, including welcome campaigns, birthday campaigns, customer reactivation, and churn prevention. […] SAP Emarsys not only supports us in terms of technology, but also conceptually, as a reliable partner in the ongoing development of our data-driven CRM approach.”