Growth through retention with Pawp 

In this engaging webinar with our friends at Pawp, you'll uncover powerful strategies to enhance your customer retention. With insightful takeaways focused on the importance of maintaining customer relationships—specifically for SaaS and subscription-based businesses—you will learn how to harness personalized messaging to reduce churn.

During the session, you'll hear how Pawp, a telehealth platform for pets, leveraged Customer.io to deliver automated tailored messaging campaigns that increased retention and overall customer satisfaction. You'll also gain valuable insights into how Pawp used segmentation, event-based triggers, and A/B testing to optimize campaign effectiveness. By the end of this webinar, you'll have a solid understanding of how personalized communication can not only drive growth but also strengthen your relationships with customers.

Take a peek at what's discussed:

• Understanding the importance of retention. Discover why maintaining strong customer relationships is crucial for the success of SaaS and subscription-based businesses.
• Personalized messaging for reducing churn. Learn how to use targeted and tailored communication to increase retention rates and keep customers engaged.
• Success story from Pawp. Hear firsthand how a telehealth platform for pets successfully used Customer.io to enhance their retention strategy.
• Segmentation, triggers, and A/B testing. Gain insights into how these tactics can help improve the effectiveness of your messaging campaigns.

Full transcript:

Alright. Hey, everybody who is just joining in. Welcome to our webinar here today, growth through retention. I'm Cody at Customer.io, and I'm on the marketing team here. If you haven't heard of Customer.io before, we're a cross channel customer engagement platform. So, basically, you bring all of your engagement data in, the behaviors that your customers are taking in your app, the attributes that define them.

And then you as the marketer or product manager or whoever owns this part of your engagement strategy is able to build these workflows that adapt and react based on all of those different behavior points that you're bringing into the platform. It's all based on your data model and your behavior. So, it's really easy to come in here and build campaigns that are actually aligned to the goals that your company has. So if you haven't heard of us before, we work with a lot of different companies in different industries.

Today, I'm excited that we are going to be talking to, Jesse at Pawp.

Just to give a little quick intro to Jesse, she's a self proclaimed email geek. She also helped triple conversion rates in her first three months at Pawp, which I wanna hear about in just a second. And today, we're gonna be talking all things life cycle and retention marketing.

Jesse, thanks for joining us.

To start things off, could you give us kind of a quick minute elevator pitch on what Pawp is and what products and services you offer?

Yeah. So Pawp is an online, vet clinic, and, we have licensed vets available twenty four seven. And you can chat with them or video call, and we're just there whenever, and, it's subscription based.

And yeah.

That's what with that.

Yeah. I I think thanks for that quick overview. I think that's, just to set the stage here on what your product does. And I think it's cool that Pawp is kind of a disruptor in this space that, historically hasn't had this kind of digital experience.

So, yeah, really excited for what y'all are doing and really excited to get into more, engagement scenarios here.

The before we jump into life cycle stuff, I know you love email as a channel as well. So I wanna ask you a lot of questions there. Just to set a quick agenda, the golden question today as we lead into this and I think this is super important, especially as we're going through time of inflation, and, obviously, retention becomes more of a priority there. My golden question today is, how do you provide value and retain your customers long term?

So for the audience, what we're gonna do is we'll hear how and why Pawp is shifting their focus towards retention here more in twenty twenty two. Next up, we're gonna get tactical. So we're gonna throw some common customer life cycle scenarios that maybe your business has also, faced. We're gonna throw those at Jesse and hear her thoughts on the fly as we go.

And then we'll round things out with a little more tactical, section on tool tips. How Jesse actually uses Customer.io, to do some of the things that we talk about today. Quick reminder again, if you've just joined us, in the bottom right, there's polls, questions.

You can also throw things in the chat if you want us to talk about them as we go, or you can always show us some love by clicking that little react button in the bottom, if you just wanna send some emojis on something that you either are are resonating with or wanna hear more about.

Alright.

So, Jesse, again, the event is all around retention. Before we get to that, we gotta get a little bit of context.

I know we mentioned in your bio that you're able to triple your onboarding email conversion rates. Sure the audience would love to also do that. What first off, how do you count a conversion in that process? And then what did you do to accomplish that?

Yeah. So it wasn't the onboarding. It was actually, like, our conversion rate for new customers like I did in the first three months. Even better. Even better.

So I came in, and, Pawp is a start up, and we had just gotten our series a when I, joined Pawp. And, I took over email, and I built out our retargeting.

Before it was, like, three or four messages over, I think, five days and then nothing and maybe, like, a, you know, newsletter every once in a while. And so I dug more into sending out up to twenty seven emails over fifty days. And it was based off of their interaction with the email or their lack of it, and then, you know, where they were as far as, like, a pet parent.

So that was just really important. And then, as Pawp has been progressing and as the economy has been depressing, I guess, It's been really important to keep our members.

You know, we're subscription based, so getting people to sign up is great, but they need to stay. And a big part of that is using our product. And, I realized that I was kind of not treating our customers the right way where I was, you know, constantly messaging them, send sending, like, articles that are adding value to get them to convert, and then sending them five emails in a welcome series and some newsletters.

And it'd be more of a secondary newsletter after the, leads newsletter.

So we kinda switched around and created a thirteen part onboarding email series, and have are still building out other campaigns that encourage people to use Pawp.

And then now when I write my newsletters, I do customer first newsletters, and then I will rework that newsletter for our leads. But, I think overall, just for our leads as well, like, it doesn't feel like a sales pitch. It's just real content that vets have written or helped us write on our blog, and things like, big questions that we're getting from our customers.

So Yeah.

I I hear you talk through that too. And, we frequently hear alright. I hear a lot of talking to marketers who say, how do I do personalization in a way that doesn't feel quote creepy? Is is how it's framed a lot of times, but also it's, like, very much, like, I'm not forgetting the value that the customers I'm I'm forgetting my own conversion rate for a quick second and thinking about the the customer's value first.

So I love hearing hearing you kinda talk through that. When you were rebuilding some of those things, what, like, specifically or, like, when you're building those emails, was it personalization in the actual email that helped you think, you know, triple that conversion rate? Or do you think it was just, putting people down different campaigns completely based on different criteria? Or what would you say is kind of, like, the thing if you had to narrow it down?

Gosh.

I think, really, the thing is just better quality content because it went from, you know, talking about, like, our three points of who we are, you know, with the telehealth and emergency and, just being here twenty four seven and then digging, like, out, like, what that actually means. Like, what does twenty four seven health mean?

And then also making it timely. So, last year on Labor Day, we sent out an email, I think, on Saturday that just was like, hey. We're here all weekend because a lot of vets are closed on Labor Day, and emergency clinics will be backed up because of that because you're not just going there for, like, life threatening.

You might be going there for smaller things.

And so that was just really successful to be like, hey. We're here. You can ask us, and then we give them questions, that are, like, related to that. So, like, more around barbecues at that time.

Like, did my dog eat, like, a hamburger bun? Are they gonna be okay? Like, you know, grapes are extremely toxic to dogs. Like, one grape can be very bad for a dog.

So, just having things like that, to kinda spur why they should use pup.

And do people always come in the same way? Or I know you also have a trial.

Talk to me about kind of during this, like, phase of acquisition, like, what did you learn about your different customer groups and maybe the needs that they had coming in, and and what did that kind of teach you?

Yeah. The first two our two main groups, when I started were are, like, homepage, general, overall, like, excited about Pawp. Usually more of someone who's googled something and then found us because of our blog having the information about us or maybe clicked on our Instagram and then come to our home page. And then the other one was our emergency funnel where people are looking for emergency protection, or have a distressed animal.

And those were the two main funnels. And so, you know, the one that was, like, more homepage, that's where we were talking more about, like, using papa's telehealth and, you know, like, testimonials about using the telehealth and how it helped them. And then, like, our emergency funnel has FAQs about how the emergency fund works. Like, that's, like, the second email which performs really well because that's a big question.

And then testimonials about people using the emergency fund and the process of that.

Cool. And it sounds like I I guess transitioning this this conversation a little bit more back towards the retention now as we get going.

But it sounds like you've acquired this initial batch of customers.

You've learned a little bit about these different funnels of of folks coming in from the web page versus the emergency fund.

Okay. So now twenty twenty two, why has your focus switched over to retention?

I think it's just natural. You know? As we grew, like, exponentially on our user base, you know, our data team saw trends of people leaving, because, I mean, subscriptions, people leave. We just know that as a fact, but, like, what is that churn rate? And so it was, like, really helpful, when one of my data guys, like, came in and was like, hey. Let's tackle churn rate. And then he figured out, like, source and, like, all of these different things for me.

And then, I was like, a big one that stood out was just, like, people who use Pawp stay with Pawp. And that's kind of every subscription. Like, I have lots of subscriptions personally, and I've also canceled a lot because I didn't use them. So that's kind of what we've been focusing on as far as, like, life cycle marketing is, creating that welcome series based off of the actions that are gonna add value, and then creating those other campaigns or triggered emails based off of their interaction with POP.

Got it. So I think this actually, transitions perfectly into I'm gonna throw the first, scenario at you of our life cycle scenarios that we're gonna scatter in, throughout today. But let's say a customer what are you trying to get them to do first to help them find that initial value? Yeah.

Very first thing is having them start a call with our Pawp vets just and, you know, we tell them what to talk about if they want.

So it's to develop, like, a care plan, which, is this custom care plan that the vet will build after they're done with the call based on where their pet is as far as health goes or activity or behavior or anything like that. And it gives them articles or products to buy or, just notes, and it's all there. And, you know, we send off a transactional email as soon as that's ready, and it's usually, like, five minutes, I think.

And then it has the basics of of the overview, and then they can click on it and see even more. So and then we send them reminders to follow-up if there's a follow-up date.

And if folks aren't doing those things, that's where they're getting something different or they're getting you know, you you wanna get them to those key milestones before moving them to other things or suggesting other deeper types of product adoption? Or how are you, like, holding people back versus moving them forward in these journeys?

Definitely, like, another big one is downloading the app. So, that's why we're creating our like, it's still in the welcome series, but we're creating our own app adoption campaign as well that's going to check, you know, have they downloaded the app, and then do a split from there of, you know, sending them either a text message if they have their phone number or an email, telling them to download the app. But if they have downloaded the app, sending them a push notification to start a call, and sending them another one to check out care plans, you know, or check out an article based on dog or cat.

So, that's really important because having an app on your phone and being able to contact people that way, push notifications, to me at least, are way less annoying than text messages. So it's nice to have that, in your pocket.

Yeah. I I'm curious to, the audience. Feel free to jump in as we chat on this too, as far as channels. But would love to hear, what channels audience members y'all are using or wanting to use more of, as we chat more about this. Jesse, what do you find?

I really like the the comments there about push notifications.

Have you been doing any testing around different channels at different stages of the life cycle? And is there a channel that's more associated with early life cycle versus later? Or Yeah.

Or is it per customer?

So definitely emails just dominant, especially because, we don't get people's emails when they're just, you know or we don't get their phone numbers when they're just, you know, filling out a form to find out if they want Pawp, for the retargeting campaigns. Some of them, we might get it because you can you have the option to, but it's less, prompted than when we onboard people.

So definitely email and just doing all that testing. And then I've just started using Push, but I did a little testing on fourth of July. And, it it was nice because I've learned that people just wanna hear about our vets rather than doing something cute. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it's fun to do something cute in an email or in push notification.

But when you're talking about, like, we're here, which was another thing, like, it's every holiday, we wanna just tell people we're here. You don't have to wait for your vet. Don't go to the parking lot. Like, don't stay up all night waiting to know if your pet's gonna be okay.

And so we just wanna reiterate that and having that push notification was great. And then we also send an email.

When you say that people wanna hear about your vets, instead of something cute, what what told you that? Was it click through rates or open rates, or was it a conversion rate you're tracking based on how that message drove an action?

So it was click rate or open rates, I think, is how it's measured for push.

But it's, like, people, like, clicking and opening and opening and ending up in the app.

And we did also, like, see more people starting calls. Like, I did an event based conversion, which I really like.

A new feature, Customer.io, and it was like, if they had a call with a call or a chat with Yvette within twenty four hours of opening that push notification, then I counted that as a conversion. So, yeah, that's the easiest way for me to track things.

Yeah. And and thanks for the shout out on on the event based conversion. That's a cool one because, you're aligning each campaign with actually what action you want them to take versus just, like, you know, an open and and a click are great, but did they actually do the thing? I also wanted to say that that's seems like something we're always thinking about is how do we stay in tune with what the customer is wanting during, like, seasonal type things. And I know, my dog during fourth of July does not like fireworks, and there's sometimes adverse reactions based on stress, like, physiologically. So I'm also, as you're saying that, like, that's really cool to hear that you're you're putting those things out there and you're putting value out there, during moments where you know that your customer might really need them, especially.

And that was the email that we actually sent was tips for managing stress for fourth of July with dogs or cats.

So it's definitely I think fourth of July is the most dangerous holiday for pets for running away and just Mhmm. And eating wrong things. So it's a scary holiday.

Yeah. Being accessible during that time. Mhmm. Okay. Let's jump in. I wanna get more, like, middle life cycle.

So talking about, deeper adoption, getting more, as some folks call it expansion, getting people deeper and deeper into the value of the subscription. So this next scenario, let's say that a customer has been a member for a month.

Maybe they visited with a vet once and maybe done so with just one pet so far. Maybe they have multiple, but they've just got one on there. What's kind of your approach to guiding them towards deeper adoption during kind of this they're onboarded, but now here's the middle phase.

Yeah. So definitely, first month they've had a visit. That's great.

But the next thing would be, you know, reminding them, which is in the welcome series, reminding them to check off their checklist, which is, like, adding up to six pets for free on your on your account, checking out the pharmacy because we everything's at a discount, but it's only for our members, and, making sure they've downloaded the app because that's a big one.

And just that's, like, the big things. We also send them, like, art of article options based on cat or dog.

And, yeah, just getting them to sign in and check out their care plan too is important.

We talked briefly, right before this about those event conversions or setting a a goal, conversion goal. How are you, I guess, to get them to do those type of things, like download the mobile app or or schedule more with the vet?

Are you building campaigns around those each one of those specifically or tactically, what does that look like on your end?

So because I don't wanna kick people out of a campaign with a conversion goal of an event, I'm just tracking that with my own segments on the side, and within, like, a kind of repeated campaign like that. So, with the welcome series, it goes up to ninety days of checklist and everything, and I'm sure I'll just keep on adding more to that, because why not?

And then, getting them through that.

And then for the, like, app adoption, everyone's dumping into that, and then it's just gonna be continuous of, like, did they use it? And then I love the wait steps based on events.

So, that's why I use a lot even just in my emails is, like, did they open it? If they did, then skip this step. If they didn't, send them this email. And then did they receive that second email, Then they wait two days. Otherwise, the people who didn't don't wait for four days. So doing different, wait periods based on their status within the campaign is key.

Mhmm. I've heard folks use the term microconversions for what you're describing as kind of having these many points throughout maybe an overall night like, you're saying a ninety day, complete onboarding journey. But there's these little points to get people to, yeah, cool to hear how you're using the wait wait until, feature to kind of hold people at specific points.

I'm curious to is in this part of the journey, let's say they have, download the mobile app or something. Going back to channels, if they have download the mobile app, do you prioritize more, like, push?

Or is that an indicator that guides you that direction or not?

It would be a it would be a branch of, like, sending them push. And then if they don't have push, send them this email. And then if they didn't click on the push, I would just send them the email that they didn't get before because maybe they have notifications blocked or, you know, my notification center is horrible. I have, like, a hundred and fifty notifications at all times, and I just see a few of them, and then the rest of them get cleared out, like, once a month.

So just keeping a channel open, and then also text messaging. But, I like to keep it under, like, six per month for SMS, especially because, like, it might be an account based notification.

Mhmm.

Yeah. I've I've heard, lots of marketers talk about SMS as, the one that they tiptoe a little bit more about because it is a bit more of an intimate, dive right into somebody's, personal, SMS inbox.

So that's It's definitely it's key golden rule, I'd say, because I there's some companies where I'm like, you're doing it right.

Like, thank you for letting me know that my subscription is about to charge me. If I don't skip, that's great.

But then the other ones, it's like I get a text message every three days about a new offer, and I don't like that.

Yeah. I I the way you said it is perfect. Like, when it's done right, you know. Like, you you know as as the consumer, oh, that would that was a value add, SMS right there versus just something that's filling up the inbox.

I wanna hear about, upgrades, this topic. So, if you're in the audience, folks, you might have different plans, or or different levels of complexity in how your plans are tiered. Jesse, I know you have a little bit of, like, the trial and then the main package.

What I guess, how do you upgrade folks who maybe come in as more of a trial status member to a a full on subscriber?

Yeah.

So we just launched that. Last week actually was, an upsell of, like, adding the emergency fund to your base plan. So people who come in through the trial, they're usually coming in, to talk to Yvette immediately, like, just the way that we've set up the website.

So they'll probably be gluten, like, talk to Yvette now. And then they use the trial. They talk to Yvette immediately, and then we email them four times, you know, reminding them that's gonna charge them. And then if they, you know, don't cancel, then they get their free trial, converted to a membership.

And then, I wait one day until they've converted, and then I put them into this emergency upsell campaign. And, it focuses on okay. You're already prepared. You have the vet right now part of Pawp, But you can be more prepared because that vet call might be an emergency. And then, doing the emergency FAQ and engaging them kind of like my other retargeting campaigns, I just treat it like that. So, and they're still getting the welcome series inside of that as well.

I know you also you might have mentioned this briefly before too, but, I know that you said that, before this that, people can have up to six pets on on on the same plan with the same price point. So whether you have one pet, you know, added to your account or six, like, you're paying the same. Obviously, it seems like there's a ton more value if if you have all of your pets on there. Mhmm. Because then your your price you're paying spread out across my five dogs versus my one. Is is that another point that you're looking at, as far as, like, getting people deeper into the product? Is is how many pets they're using, or how do you use that data point?

Haven't yet, honestly, but that's an amazing idea.

Yeah. So right now, it's just, you know, I usually do, like, do they have a dog, cat, or multi pet households, and then content based on that. But, that's a really good idea, Cody.

I'm just yeah. I I'm thinking of, subscription services I use. And, yeah, just thinking about which ones I'm personally, you know, least likely to cancel because I'm getting a ton of value.

Mhmm. I've currently got Stranger Things and a few other shows going on on Netflix. So I'm I'm very much not gonna cancel those because I have a vested interest in multiple different, you know, avenues of value in that platform. So I'm just thinking, man, if I had I don't have five dogs, but if I did Yeah. That would definitely keep keep me in.

So, always brainstorming different data points.

Okay. Let's switch over to our, final scenario to throw at you. This is more late life cycle. So talking retention, churn, this kind of phase. Obviously, how do we prevent churn?

So let's say a customer has been with Pawp for five or six months, maybe talk to a vet for a few months pretty consistently, ordering prescriptions during that time pretty consistently.

This last couple months, they haven't logged in or interacted with a vet. Are you segmenting that customer and calling them maybe a churn risk? Or, like, how are you kind of capturing these folks who are in danger of of falling out?

Yeah. I I would definitely dump them into, like, a nurture campaign, and try to get them to convert into our, like, high engager group, that I have just as a segment in Customer IO.

So definitely reminding them about our care plan and how that works or if they haven't used it yet because that's only two months old at this point, and then checking to see if they have the app. If they don't, they're gonna keep on repeating in the app adoption campaign and just sending them relevant things. So kinda just based off of the dog and cat and now multi pet.

So Yeah.

Yeah.

How do you run tests either at this phase of the life cycle or if it's, you know, you do more of your testing in the the middle or earlier stages? But just in general, like, what types of things are you testing? And can you give us an example of of a test that you ran and what the result was?

Yeah.

I think the biggest thing that I've just been testing consistently is plain text versus designed emails. Mhmm. And it's from what I'm discovering, it's like, plain text can be very powerful, especially if it's a, timely thing, or it needs to have more of a, like, laid back feel. So, you know, I made a template that looks like a Gmail send, and it just has our unsubscribe at the bottom with the address to be compliant. But, you know, I have it come from, like, a Pawp support team or something or Pawp notifications.

And just, like, being able to put in, like, their first name in the email, and then putting their pets' names, like, and adding in, those personalizing details is powerful. It's also something that Google like, Gmail prioritizes.

It can end up in your primary rather than your actual, like, promotions.

But then, like, the designed emails, it's they do work, like, especially for, like, our FAQs because you break up information. And I think just overall, like, a lot of information is better in a designed email rather than plain text because you're just trying to, like, connect with them and get them to do one thing, and you might only have, like, one highlighted, you know, hyperlinked text.

And same with, like, subject lines. For a while, I was testing, like, putting pet name versus, like, the customer name, and, putting the customer and pet name is what works best.

So yeah.

It's amazing how, like, sometimes less design is is actually more, it comes to the engagement, at just different scenarios. But, yeah, like you're saying, there's only one way to find out, and it's test it out, see what works.

I'm curious to audience. We haven't heard much from y'all. But at at this point too, if you have any, thoughts around how to determine a winner of your test, would love to to hear from you in the chat if there's certain things that point out a a winner of a engagement test, whether it's click rate, open rate, is it conversion rate?

Chime in if anybody has anything. Jesse, I also wanna ask you that as a follow-up question. On when you're running those tests, what is it that says, hey, a plain text email performs better than a designed one. Is it is it purely just open rate, or is it deeper like we've discussed earlier, like, into do they actually convert and do the thing?

So Which wins the test? It's really like, what are we trying to test? So, like, it's like, is a plain text probably getting seen more versus, design one? That's gonna be more of, like, am I seeing a large difference in open rates? Because as we know, iOS fifteen kinda messed up open rates. So Mhmm. I usually like, if it's, like, a five to ten percent difference, I'll just be like, that might just be iOS fifteen messing up that moment.

But if there's, like, sometimes, like, a twenty percent difference in open rates with, like, the plain text versus the designed or, like, a friendly from can be really powerful too, then it's probably going in the primary inbox.

And then if we're more of testing just subject line, open rate is a nice indicator, but, really, click rate is something that, is really important. Like, yes, conversion, but if they're clicking on the links that I want them to click on Mhmm.

Then I know that, like, I'm doing my job on the email, and then maybe I need to figure out what the disconnect is on the landing page.

And then a conversion rate that's higher is always great.

But sometimes the conversion rate, just because it's so far down that funnel, isn't as conclusive as, like, a click rate would be.

Mhmm.

And, like, a click to open rate is, something I really like.

Got it. So sometimes it's just, can I get them to the page that I want them to? Even if they don't take the action yet, I'm still happy with them getting there, consuming it, digesting it. Maybe later, they'll come back and do something. Yes.

Yeah. That was one thing also when I started was just I realized sending people directly to, like, the warm checkout was jarring for them. And so I was actually sending them back to the page that they had filled out their information on, and a lot of conversions were taking, like, thirty minutes before they'd actually convert because it is such, like, a personal decision of how you're gonna protect and care for your pet, and there's so many different options out there.

And, you know, just being able to read and understand all of the differences because we are a pretty low priced, option, especially compared to, like, other programs or, like, insurance, which we're not, but, like, we have the emergency fund, and it just works differently.

And so when people understand it, it's great value, but they have to read about it. And so that's what I try to get them with on the retention or the, retargeting and retention, but, they're still gonna take a while to read something.

Mhmm. I think as you're talking through that, for folks in the audience, great takeaway right there. Even if you're not in, you know, pet health care industry, like, listening to you, Jesse, talk through that of, like, that that's jarring to the customer maybe to make that ask so abruptly.

And because a pet is a part of their family and it's their pet's health, which is such an important intimate thing. I think that probably applies across, you know, finances, talking about people's money. Mhmm. Education, talking about people's, like, maybe career growth or or path, or just education in general.

So regardless of industry, I think the takeaway from what you just said, Jesse, there for folks in the audience is, like, really knowing your customer and knowing what their buying decision is actually like. And no and if it is a long one, if it is a lot of consideration steps, like, providing value at each point rather than making asks too early or Yeah. Yeah. Prompting them forward one.

So I'm assuming that they have lots of tabs open when they're looking at us.

Like, they're probably, you know, looking up reviews, which I always do, and just other companies. That's what I would do.

So Shopping around, making the best decision.

Yep.

Cool. Well, Jesse, thanks for talking through all the different life cycle steps. We're gonna jump over to a tool tip, to get a little bit more tactical here with some of the stuff. But, first off, I appreciate you letting us throw these different, scenarios at you on the fly and and hear your responses. It's been super valuable.

Before we actually, had this webinar, when we were doing our our little rehearsal, you had a great quote, that you said that I'm gonna paraphrase a little bit here. And you said that great life cycle marketing is impossible if you don't have timely and relevant data.

And I think a key part to this that you said was and alignment across teams. So do you have the data in the platforms that you need to be able to, as a marketer, act on it? And then also, are you all working in sync with with different teams? So I think as we jump into your tool tip today, I know you've talked about the various teams that Pawp that contribute in different ways to how you, as a marketer, are able to actually use custom layout to build out these life cycle campaigns.

For your tool tip, walk us kinda through how each team interacts with your work, and maybe we can start with, you too just to kind of, like, set the stage.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, just like working with everyone, the best thing is just knowing what's going on, and reading through, like, release stacks or staying up to date on the home page, like, what language is changing, and then just listening to my support team. Honestly, like, they've changed a lot of things recently for me just because I'm hearing what the customers need.

So, yeah.

Kind of iterating on those things. I think the next team you mentioned was the data team. Yep. What how do you interact with them, or or what do they do with you inside of CustomerO?

Yeah.

They're kinda like my mini manager, I'd say.

So they're telling me if like, what's working and what's not as far as, like, the full, like, experience and value of the customer.

And then, they're also driving the business as well.

And so understanding these, like, changes or updates to our company, from their side of things, and then just them sending the data, in, like, the timely and relevant manner. And data can be really, like, expensive, I guess, as a a load. Like, it takes a lot of time, and so there's some things that we've worked on and, like, what needs to be prioritized for me of data and then, like, the other things that I can wait a few hours for. Maybe it's, like, adding a pet or just, like, viewing, their care plan and actually buying the product or something, like, rather than someone converting that's, like, so important or someone, like, coming in and adding their, emergency fund. So just working on what is possible. Mhmm.

It's really important.

The screenshot that's on here for folks watching, is just completely example data, not actual data. But it just shows a view of the segmentation builder and customer out where you can kind of stack these different like, Jesse talking about if they are a customer, if they're not, if they're, you know, on have performed this event or not, if they downloaded the app or not. So kind of able to grab those. Jesse, like, when you're building out segments like this and you don't have a piece of data, what's the workflow like? Is it you'd bring that to the data team and and get them to send that in, and then you're off and rolling again? Or kinda how does that work?

Usually, what I do is I just kinda, like, try to make it in the segment thing and then look at people who are close or something and then look at all of their attributes because we have, like, hundreds of attributes and events within Customer.io and, like, seeing what they've done and seeing if the data team has already figured it out. Because, a great thing in Customer.io as well is, like, you can go to that next level of, like, a sub attribute. And so, like, one thing I didn't understand which plan people had, and it was because it was, like, a sub attribute of an attribute of an of an event.

And, like, that was important for, like, our data engineering to, like, keep everything buttoned up in one place, but it wasn't obvious to me because I just see event converted.

So, getting that. And then once I find out that that something isn't there, I'll just go to my team and, like, the best way is just explaining what I want the customer to do and how I want that information. Like, how do I get that information?

And then they can figure out, the best way to do it.

I love that. Starting with the the the end goal and then working it backwards with the data.

Okay. Flipping over to, we have the data side. Now we'll flip more over to the creative side. So how how does the design and content team, kinda work with you and utilize the platform?

Yeah. So our design team, I work super closely with, especially our brand designer, but also, like, our head of, content and our head of design or creative. And, it's just, like, been very important to get on brand with Pawp, because, like, that's kind of what happens when you're a startup is, like, I have a logo, so I'm just gonna put that logo on there. And then I don't really know, like, the right font or, you know, those things that I don't notice, but they do. And so, I'll usually, like, put in a design kit ticket and, you know, have the copy in there, and, maybe I'll send an example of an email that I'd like from someone else. And then, they turn something around within a few days, and we go over it.

And then I build in customer IO, and then I send it off to, actually, email an asset first, and then I send it to my designer to make sure that everything looks good.

So you're building out the advanced logic that says, if they have the mobile app, do this. If they don't, do this. But then what do we fill in the the inside of the content with? Is is that's where the content team comes in.

Yep. Yeah. And the content of, like, that kinda possible disconnect between, like, my email and what the page is telling them to do. Mhmm.

Love it. Okay. Engineering team is, actually the second to last one we have on here. Yeah. But what do they do with you in as far as Customer.io and and what you're doing life cycle marketing wise?

Yeah. So the biggest thing has been our transactional.

It's been really helpful to get a lot of back end support.

I feel like I work with them probably, like, thirty percent of my week now is just figuring out how to make our transactional messages, more relevant for the customers because, it kinda goes to the next slide of, like, if it's not relevant for the customer and if we're not sending, like, receipts or explanations, within our transactionals, people are just gonna call the support team. And I don't blame them. It's just, you know, like, there is so much work on the back end of getting that information in a format that is readable to a member versus, like, what a vet might click or write because they have more of a medical background.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

I I think, as you're saying that too, folks, if you see on the screenshot on the far left there, it's campaigns, broadcast, and transactional.

Jesse mentioned the engineering team sending some of those more transactional kind of type messages. Another thing, at the way we kicked off this little tool tip was talking about alignment across teams. Jesse, I frequently hear folks talking about how product teams may be sending out push notifications.

E like, marketing's owning email, and then engineering's owning, you know, transactional, but they're all in different platforms. So you look at your customer's inbox, and they got five messages in the same day versus having them in one place is definitely value. Just saving the customer's inbox, making sure that everything's, coming from one place. So Yeah. Just as you're saying that. Yep.

And, there have been, like, things that we've discovered along the way very much around that. Like, I've found out that we were sending SMS about, like, their bill gonna go through, like, at midnight. And so it was just like, okay. Let's change this to be, a decent, like, time frame for our members. So, things like that because I don't see, like, SMS transactionals on my end.

Got it.

I know we're almost at time. So I think, Jesse, you talked a little bit. The one slide we'll skip here really quick was the talking about your customer support team. I think you talked about them a little bit at the start, how giving that constant feedback, to help you make your messages better.

Always love our our customer support teams. But for the sake of time, wanna just, wrap up here, and then we will stay on for a little bit of q and a. So if if anybody who doesn't have a hard stop here as we hit the forty five minute mark, please stay on, and we'd be happy to answer some questions.

But, Jesse, really appreciate having you on. Before we get to q and a, we just wanna say to everybody in the audience, we gotta have our quick, Oprah moment here. We're sending everybody a retention recipes guide. So if you are inspired by stuff you've heard on this call and wanna kinda take some tactical next steps to, putting some of that strategy in play, we're gonna send you all that guide and the email that will trigger here right as we finish the event.

If anything in here has sparked, enough interest that you want to see how customer could work for your business or actually see some of these campaigns mocked up by somebody on our team, for your business, a demo is a great, next step as you kinda get to see inside the platform, inside the segmentation builder, and all those things. So, if you are evaluating, that's a great next step. If you're not evaluating platforms really right now, totally fine. Just say show me your top three in the comment section of the demo request, and we'd be happy to just kinda give you a gist of what the top three campaigns look like for your specific industry. So a great way wherever you are kind of in your evaluation process.

Yeah. I will say, like, I was really excited when I joined Pawp because Customer.io was the ESP. So I've been looking at them at my other job and switched over here, and it's been great.

Love to hear it. Yeah. And I think, as we've kind of shown a couple times, the visual workflow builder, pops up, and it's kind of like a a great visual way to build campaigns. So, yeah, I I've always found that those demos are really great as far as just seeing it in action. Like, it's one thing to see a static image, but show me actually how you're dragging and dropping stuff in there. Yeah.

Cool. Well, let's open it up to q and a. I know we're a little over time. So any folks that don't have a hard stop, we'd love to hear any questions you have as we count things out. So go ahead there in the bottom right. You can use the questions tab or the chat tab, if there's anything that we haven't covered yet.

Give it just a minute here for folks to chat anything.

Actually, as people if anyone else has anything to ask, Elijah posted a question here. When you're a oh, wait. That's, our AB testing question. Okay. Here's the one.

It says, what's a must have customer data point for life cycle marketers? Jesse, is there any any data points that you, like, couldn't live without when you're building out these these journeys?

I think it's just your most value added event. Like, it's, like, for us, just using Pawp. Like, have they started and completed a vet call? So whatever, like, is the best thing about your product that keeps people engaged and your data team has told you, that's it. So, yeah.

Love that. I'd I'd my follow-up question is we sometimes ask this, the desert island style question. But if you're on a desert island of customer engagement, you could only take one campaign building action with you, like an email or a wait until or a branch or a test feature?

What would be that one feature that you can't live without?

I think the a b testing because, Customer.io figures out the CTBO for me, and so I don't have to do math, which is really great.

So and it's just really nice because I can just promote it, and it has that data in the background still without me having to panic, and copy everything because that's what I was doing at first before I realized I could just export it.

So, yeah, AB testing.

Yeah. I again, that was a great, part of this conversation and talking about testing. Just, yeah, I think every mark good marketer knows, like, when when in doubt, test it out and see see what works.

So Yes.

I like, it's a great way to settle arguments, honestly. Like, it's like, oh, which color is better? I'll try to find that out for you guys. And then sometimes I'm like, sorry. I don't know.

No one Yeah.

No one decided for you.

So And I'm thinking about moments where you've done something in design.

It looks all pretty, and then, you know, I'm confident that's gotta be the one that's gonna do the best because it's so pretty. And then you're talking about the plain text emails performing better in some locations. Yes. Yes.

I would be somebody who would need that AB test to say, no. Look. The pretty one doesn't always work the best. Yep.

But good to know.

Luckily, like, people do have, like, a very open mind about that, and I think, you know, they understand the technical background. But I do still involve my design team because I do have, like, our logo in there, and they can get the spacing right because it's not exactly from Gmail.

So I have to, like, make sure the font looks good and, like, everything. So Still some behind the scenes?

Yes. Still some behind the scenes.

Cool. Well, I don't see any more questions coming in. But, Jesse, thanks so much for the conversation. I think we it was really cool to go through it in kind of a chronological life cycle order, and to get your thoughts at each stage of that. And like I said earlier, appreciate you letting us throw some stuff at you on the fly as far as life cycle scenarios. And, yeah, thanks for coming on as a guest.

Yeah. Thank you. It was really fun.