Dog-eat-dog: Ren’s Pets selects Emarsys to replace soon-to-be obsolete Bronto

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Dog-eat-dog: Ren’s Pets selects Emarsys to replace soon-to-be obsolete Bronto.

Omnichannel customer engagement specialist Emarsys has entered into a new partnership with Ren’s Pets, the Canadian pet feed and supply store, as a means of centralising and drastically upscaling its customer outreach to accommodate for drastic growth.

With consumers stuck at home due to the pandemic, the huge investment in pets and related items was an economic shot in the arm to Ren’s Pets, which has opened seven stores a year – with thirty-eight by the end of 2021 – to meet demand.

As a result, Ren’s Pets had reached a point at which its customer outreach systems were no longer suited to the highly-tailored communications that the brand desired for its customers. The decision was also influenced by the pending ‘end of lif’ of Oracle Bronto, one of several tools in Ren’s Pets legacy martech stack.

Rather than opting for multiple single-channel providers, Emarsys has been selected as a means of consolidating email outreach, cross-channel communications, personalisation elements, and the famous loyalty programme – Ren’s Rewards – into a single platform. 

Time will be saved across teams thanks to streamlined scheduling – driven both by the accessibility of the Emarsys platform and the simplicity of developing both outreach campaigns and personalised content. 

The de-siloing of customer data onto a single platform will also ensure that successful email outreach can be disseminated across other channels such as social, where Ren’s Pets has experienced great success via platforms like Tik Tok.

“The pandemic has proven to us that consumers will shop around. They’re smarter and more perceptive than ever before when it comes to value for money,” commented Larissa Wasyliw, VP of Ecommerce and Marketing at Ren’s Pets. “Ren’s Rewards is the engine that drives our business – if it performs, the rest of the business does too – and that means that we can’t afford to keep still when it comes to keeping our customers appreciated and engaged.”

“Our customers shop on a 4- to 6-week food cycle, so we have to produce the heartfelt communications and genuine value-for-money offerings that can fill that gap. Emarsys gives us the clarity and the agency to do that faster than ever before.”

Commenting on the partnership, Sara Richter, CMO, Emarsys added, “Ren’s Pets characterizes the right approach to retail in 2021 in both its ecommerce plans and its careful attention to customer loyalty. The brand has a strong recognition of the need to value loyalty at an individual level, and of the required data and digital infrastructure needed to support that loyalty offering.”

“It’s that commitment to customers, and to that personal touch regardless of the medium, that is delivering the predictable and profitable growth that is enabling growth at such speed.”