It’s a love for dogs that brings customers to Natural Dog Company. And for good reason, who can resist this face?
That love is met with a powerful combination of high-quality, natural, and effective products, and a strong community of pet parents that believe in treating their pets like family.
The Natural Dog Company team often heard from customers that they loved the product so much, they told their friends and family about it. But they didn’t have a way to measure, incentivize and scale those word-of-mouth referrals.
They also found that when a customer purchased, it often helped clear whatever ailment they were hoping to solve for their dog—meaning they may not need to purchase again. So they needed a way to incentivize repeat purchases for their loyal customers and ultimately increase retention.
To help with that, their team has used Klaviyo as an email service provider since 2018, and have always been focused on closely tracking their customer data and segments.
“We really think about Klaviyo as a database for our customers. So it’s keeping track of dog ages, breed, products our customers purchase, and more. We’re able to target where they’re at in their dog's life and their dog's issues, but also in the customer journey with us. So Klaviyo really houses all of our important customer data.”
- Allison Kelly, Director of Creative Branding and Retention, Natural Dog Company
To build on and add to that strong foundation of data in Klaviyo, they needed to scale word-of-mouth referrals, retain and reward customers, and acquire high-intent subscribers.
"We’re very focused on when our customers are most active, or re-purchase, or leave a review, or are likely to leave a review. We don’t want to hit them with generic messaging all the time, it’s really tailored to what they’re doing. And Friendbuy, Klaviyo and Okendo are three tech stack pieces that have combined super well and have been really fruitful for us.”
- Allison Kelly, Director of Creative Branding and Retention, Natural Dog Company
Natural Dog Company implemented a referral program with Friendbuy in August 2021, and seamlessly integrated their referral program within their workflows with Klaviyo and Okendo.
With Friendbuy and Klaviyo, they were able to start acquiring high-intent email subscribers through their referral program. They’re also able to add personalized referral links generated for all Advocate email addresses and add them to each subscriber's customer profile in Klaviyo. Plus, coupon codes distributed through their referral program are automatically sent to Klaviyo and added to each subscriber's customer profile.
“I have worked with Allison for almost 2 years now and I have seen Natural Dog Company grow exponentially. Leveraging sophisticated segmentation and personalization in Klaviyo has helped them create a loyal base of customers. Targeting customers based on their behavior via flows improved their AOV as well as their repeat purchase rate.”- Nikita Vaidya, Senior Customer Success Manager, Klaviyo
"We’re really leveraging Friendbuy and Klaviyo together to drive a couple of different business outcomes, the first one being retention, because we want to incentivize our past customers to continue enjoying our brand. And then also on the customer acquisition side, to drive those strong purchases through a personal referral."- Erin Walters, Email Marketing Associate, Natural Dog Company
Their team uses Okendo to generate reviews from customers, and it’s helped them solve the problem of incentivizing reviews. With better incentives, they’ve increased their overall number of reviews and the amount of UGC they receive from customers. They then use that UGC to deploy better ads, emails, and marketing materials.
"We as consumers trust the opinions of our peers, and one of the best ways to collect and showcase that social proof is through reviews. By utilizing Okendo coupons to incentivize reviews, Natural Dog Company is not only generating more testimonials and UGC to use across their marketing campaigns, but they’re also collect valuable zero-party data that makes it easier to identify their most loyal customers."
- Mat Bingham, Technology Partner Lead, Okendo
They’re now leveraging the Friendbuy, Klaviyo and Okendo integration together to prompt a referral following a positive review of four or five stars. They ask the positive reviewers if they have a friend they want to tell about Natural Dog Company, which allows them to get those really high purchase intent customers and their friends, but also keep those 4 and 5 star customers around.
“We integrated Okendo, Friendbuy and Klaviyo together to help us find our happiest customers and leverage their brand loyalty to grow our brand through customer acquisition. But also reward those existing customers for their support.”
- Allison Kelly, Director of Creative Branding and Retention, Natural Dog Company
With Friendbuy, Natural Dog Company has seen a 20% higher AOV for advocates compared to their sitewide AOV. They find that when they reward their existing customers for referring their friends with a $10 credit, those customers then come back and spend on average 20% more than they would have otherwise.This also increases their customer retention and loyalty. They also see an 11% higher AOV for referred Friends when they use their discount code on their first purchase.
Another benefit of using Friendbuy and Klaviyo together is the seamless subscriber acquisition. Approximately 5% of all of Natural Dog Company’s email subscribers come from their referral program, with high purchase intent.
“CPA is a big driver for us, we do a lot of paid advertising and organic social. But to have the measurable impact of word of mouth referrals is also really important to understand what’s happening, how it’s happening, and to consistently acquire customers with a low CPA.”
-Allison Kelly, Director of Creative Branding and Retention, Natural Dog Company
2516 Via Tejon
Suite 201
Palos Verdes Estates, CA 90274
