Pet brands sit on one of the most retention-friendly customer bases in eCommerce, and the case study data backs that up. But most of the public case studies get read the wrong way: operators skim the headline number, try to copy the tactic, and wonder why their results look nothing like the source.
The pattern underneath these results is more useful than any single number. Every pet brand below fixed something structural before the flashy metric showed up. That order matters more than the tactic itself, and it’s the lens we’ll use to walk through five verified case studies, three additional proof points, and a self-diagnostic you can run against your own Klaviyo account.
What you’ll learn
- Why pet brands are structurally suited to compound retention returns, and where the benchmarks prove it
- How to separate platform-verified results from agency-reported claims without dismissing either
- What actually happened, broken down as broken → built → result, in five real pet brand programs
- The five mechanics that repeat across every case study, regardless of product category or brand size
- Which numbers to pull from your own account before deciding whether to fix it internally or bring in a partner
Why pet brands compound differently
Pet care is a consumable, emotionally-loaded category, and both halves of that description matter for email performance. Consumables mean repeat purchase timing is predictable at the product level. Emotional attachment means pet parents open, click, and buy from brands that talk about their specific dog or cat, not a generic customer.
Agency-published benchmarks for the vertical put pet brand campaign open rates between 32% and 40%, with click rates in the 3.5% to 5.5% range and unsubscribe rates under 0.2%. Those are strong numbers next to most consumer categories, and they exist because pet owners buy frequently and stay engaged between purchases in a way that, say, apparel shoppers don’t.
Klaviyo’s own benchmark data explains why flows carry so much of the weight in these case studies. Across its full customer base, the benchmark data shows flows generating roughly 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of total sends, and average flow revenue per recipient runs about 18x higher than campaign revenue per recipient. In a category where purchase timing is this predictable, that efficiency gap gets even wider. This is why every case study in this article leads with flow architecture, not campaign creativity. Pet care rewards systems built around behavior, not one-off promotional sends.
How to read these case studies (and what most brands get wrong copying them)
Two of the five case studies below are official Klaviyo case studies, meaning the platform published and stands behind the numbers. The rest are agency-published case studies, meaning the agency that did the work reported its own results. Both are useful. Neither is an independent audit. We’ll flag which is which as we go, because the distinction changes how much weight you should put on any single number.
The bigger issue with copying these case studies is the starting point. Every one of them describes a program that was broken in a specific, identifiable way before the fix landed. Petstop had a paid-acquisition dependency. Natural Farm had a deliverability problem masking a flow-coverage problem. Pets Purest had a blanket replenishment window that ignored actual purchase behavior. The result numbers are large partly because the baseline was low.
That’s not a reason to discount the case studies. It’s a reason to diagnose your own program the same way before you try to replicate a tactic. We run this in a fixed order for a reason: deliverability first, then list health, then flow coverage and trigger reliability, then creative and offer quality. Fixing a downstream layer without addressing the upstream problem produces a temporary bump at best, and it’s the single most common mistake we see brands make when they try to reverse-engineer someone else’s case study.
Case study 1: Petstop turns recapture flows into a paid-ads hedge
Broken: Petstop, a 13-location pet superstore chain in Ireland, watched Google and Meta acquisition costs rise 60% in 2023. Leaning harder on paid channels stopped being a viable growth lever.
Built: Working with Wolfgang Digital, Petstop rebuilt its abandonment and browse recovery flows using AI-personalized product recommendations through Shop Box, and folded a subscription promotion (10% off every purchase) directly into flow messaging rather than running it as a separate discount campaign. Time-sensitive incentives, like a 3-day 10% off window, were used selectively instead of running as a standing offer.
Result: Year-over-year, pre-purchase flow revenue rose 28.9%, browse abandonment revenue rose 94%, and a newly built abandoned cart flow grew 999% from a near-zero base. Customer lifetime value increased 39%, subscription renewals rose 86%, and email campaigns returned 31x ROI against a 20x goal. The program won Best shopper recapture experience at The Klicks 2024.
The chart below shows the YoY growth spread across flow types. Note the new abandoned cart flow is an extreme outlier precisely because it started from almost nothing, not because that growth rate is a realistic target for an established flow.
Lesson that compounds: When paid acquisition gets more expensive, the fastest lever isn’t a better ad. It’s recovering revenue you’re already generating traffic for. Petstop’s subscription framing (percentage off every order) also matters: it’s a retention mechanic, not a one-time discount, which avoids training subscribers to wait for the next sale.
Case study 2: HelloPets (WOOOF) builds its personalization engine on zero-party pet data
Broken: HelloPets, the Dutch cold-pressed dog kibble brand behind WOOOF, ran on Mailchimp with broad newsletters, no automation, and minimal segmentation. Every returning customer was being re-acquired through paid retargeting instead of owned channels.
Built: After migrating to Klaviyo, HelloPets collected “My Dog” data at signup and post-purchase, including dog name, breed, birthday, and allergies, synced from its Shopware store into Klaviyo profile properties. Replenishment flows were triggered using Klaviyo’s predicted next-order date rather than a fixed calendar window, and birthday-triggered flows delivered dog-specific offers. Klaviyo segments were also synced to Google and Meta specifically to exclude current customers from paid retargeting spend.
Result: The program returned 138x global Klaviyo ROI in 2025, with flow revenue up 39% year over year in the Netherlands store and Klaviyo-attributed revenue up 12% year over year overall. As the brand put it in its own case study with Klaviyo, the shift meant “using our own data, in our own ecosystem, instead of paying again and again to bring the same customers back.”
Lesson that compounds: Zero-party data isn’t a nice-to-have personalization layer here, it’s the mechanism the entire replenishment system runs on. Predicted next-order timing only works because the underlying data (breed, feeding pattern, order history) is accurate enough to predict against. And excluding existing customers from paid retargeting is a direct, measurable way retention work reduces acquisition spend, not just a “brand awareness” side effect.
Case study 3: Natural Farm fixes the foundation before scaling flows
Broken: Natural Farm, an organic pet chew brand doing $1M+ per year across 100,000+ orders, had only two flows running and email open rates stuck around 10%, a sign of an underlying deliverability and list-health problem rather than a creative problem.
Built: Working with Smartmail, the brand ran list hygiene and sunset flows to clean out unengaged contacts, then built engagement-tier segmentation before expanding from 2 flows to 8. The flow rebuild only happened after the deliverability triage, in the same sequence we’d recommend to any underperforming program.
Result: Open rates climbed to roughly 22%, flow revenue grew 22x, and flows went from generating 5% of total company revenue to 38%. Replenishment-flow entrants converted to repeat purchase at a 31% higher rate than baseline customers, and VIP-tier average order value rose 28%. Worth flagging: the published case study also includes a stat box claiming a 50% open rate elsewhere on the same page, which contradicts the narrative figure of roughly 22%. We’re using the narrative number here because it’s consistent with the before/after framing; the discrepancy is worth knowing about if you cite this case study yourself.
Lesson that compounds: This is the clearest example in the list of why diagnostic order matters. Natural Farm didn’t get a 22x flow revenue increase by adding six more flows to a broken list. It got there by fixing the list first, so the new flows had somewhere to land.
Case study 4: Dr. Harvey’s builds its highest-ROI asset out of education, not discounts
Broken: Dr. Harvey’s, an all-natural pet food brand operating since 1984, sells through a trial-size entry point designed to move customers from a small trial bag to a full recurring bag. That transition is where most of the brand’s revenue potential was sitting unaddressed.
Built: With Longplay Brands, the brand built a flows-first, education-heavy nurture sequence segmented by trial type, walking customers through the kibble-to-fresh transition and specific preparation instructions rather than pushing a generic “here’s 10% off your next order” sequence.
Result: Comparing 6-month before and after periods, trial purchasers increased 30.66%, trial-to-full-bag conversion increased 33.28%, and revenue from the trial post-purchase nurture flow specifically rose 404.84%, according to Longplay’s published case study.
Lesson that compounds: In a category where the product requires behavior change (switching a dog’s diet is not a casual decision), education outperforms discounting as a conversion lever. This is the flow-logic pattern we build into post-purchase sequences generally: education, then cross-sell relevance, then a review or feedback touch, then the bridge to a second purchase. Dr. Harvey’s result is what that logic looks like when it’s built around a specific product transition instead of a generic “thanks for your order” template.
Case study 5: Pets Purest proves predicted replenishment beats blanket timing
Broken: Pets Purest, a UK natural pet supplement brand with over 1 million customers and two consecutive years on the Times Top 100 fastest-growing companies list, ran a single Klaviyo replenishment flow on a blanket 30-day timer. Every customer got the same reminder regardless of what they’d actually bought or how fast they used it.
Built: Working with Relo, the brand replaced the fixed window with per-customer replenishment predictions based on the specific product purchased, quantity, order count, and seasonality, paired with a pre-loaded mobile “Magic Cart” checkout that removed friction from the reorder itself.
Result: Repeat orders rose 21%, the flow returned 4x ROI, and it became the brand’s top-performing Klaviyo flow, according to Relo’s case study.
Lesson that compounds: A blanket replenishment window is a guess. A 30-day supplement and a 90-day supplement don’t run out at the same time, and treating them the same way either sends the reminder too early (annoying, ignored) or too late (customer already reordered elsewhere or ran out). Precision in timing is its own compounding lever, independent of creative or offer quality.
Scale-stage proof points worth knowing
A few more data points round out the pattern without needing a full breakdown.
Bully Beds, a premium pet bed brand, generated $893,000 in Klaviyo-attributed revenue, up 65.6% year over year, according to GOSH Digital’s case study. Flows accounted for $495,000 of that (55.43% of attributed revenue, up 79.9% YoY) against $398,000 from campaigns. Klaviyo overall represented 41.47% of the brand’s total $2.15 million in store revenue. SMS, launched in March 2025, added $73,900 in its first year at roughly $1.55 per recipient, illustrating how a second channel gets layered in once email fundamentals are working, not before. Notably, three of the highest-performing flows generated $161,400 in revenue while still partially in Draft status, a reminder that flow performance often outruns the brand’s own sense of how “finished” the program is.
Little Hunter, a DTC raw pet food subscription brand, reports email revenue growing from $850 to over $220,000 per month in roughly five months without increased ad spend, per SalesIgnition’s published case study. We’re flagging this one explicitly as agency-reported and aggressive relative to the other cases here; treat it as directional rather than a benchmark to plan against.
The Farmer’s Dog offers a useful qualitative reference rather than a performance number. A third-party teardown of its welcome sequence highlights dog-name personalization in subject lines, longevity framing tied to healthy weight, and consistent value propositions across every send, while also noting some repetitive personalization blocks worth avoiding. It’s a good example of what best-in-class pet-specific personalization looks like at the creative layer, once the structural work underneath it is solid.
The pattern across all five: what actually compounds
Strip away the individual tactics and five mechanics repeat across every case study in this article, regardless of product category or company size:
Flows-first architecture. Every brand’s biggest gains came from behavior-triggered flows, not campaign creativity. Petstop’s recapture flows, Natural Farm’s 2-to-8 flow expansion, and Dr. Harvey’s nurture sequence all outperformed anything a manual campaign calendar could produce at the same volume.
Pet-level zero-party data. HelloPets’ “My Dog” fields and Dr. Harvey’s trial-type segmentation both work because the brand captured specific, usable data about the pet or the purchase, not just an email address.
Predicted, not blanket, replenishment windows. HelloPets and Pets Purest both moved from fixed timing to purchase-based prediction, and both saw meaningful repeat-order lift as a direct result. This is one of the most replicable mechanics in the entire list because it’s a timing fix, not a full program rebuild.
Deliverability and list health treated as upstream, not optional. Natural Farm’s result only exists because the list got cleaned before the flows got built. Skipping this step is the most common reason brands copy a tactic and get a fraction of the reported result.
Subscription and replenishment framing over blanket discounting. Petstop’s 10%-off-every-order subscription mechanic and Pets Purest’s replenishment precision both avoid training customers to wait for a sale, which is what happens when a promotional calendar leans on discount-only messaging month after month.
None of these mechanics are exotic. They’re available in Klaviyo today. The gap between brands that get Petstop-level results and brands that get a fraction of them is almost never the tool. It’s whether the diagnostic sequence was followed and whether the data feeding the flows was actually good.
The loop below shows how these mechanics fit together as one system, from pet-level data capture through predicted replenishment and back.
Benchmark your own program
Before you decide whether your program needs a rebuild or just a tune-up, pull four numbers from your own Klaviyo account and compare them against the ranges above.
First, check what share of total revenue email is driving. Klaviyo’s cohort average sits around 27% of total store revenue, but high-repeat consumable verticals including pet care can sustain 30% to 45%. If you’re a pet brand sitting well under 27%, that’s a structural signal, not a creative one.
Second, look at your flow-to-campaign revenue split. Across Klaviyo’s full customer base, flows generate about 41% of email revenue from roughly 5% of sends, with flow revenue per recipient running about 18x campaign revenue per recipient. If your campaigns are still carrying most of your email revenue, your flow coverage has gaps.
Third, check your campaign engagement against pet-vertical ranges: 32% to 40% open rates, 3.5% to 5.5% click rates, and unsubscribe rates under 0.2%. If you’re meaningfully below those numbers, look at list health and deliverability before touching creative.
Fourth, and most specific to this category, check whether your replenishment flow uses a fixed time window or purchase-based prediction. If it’s fixed, that’s the single highest-leverage change available to you based on every case study above.
When to bring in a retention partner
Email via Klaviyo is where the retention system starts, not where it ends. Every case study in this article eventually needed more than a single flow fix: coordinated deliverability work, list segmentation, a diagnostic sequence applied in the right order, and in some cases a second channel layered in once behavior data justified it (SMS, in Bully Beds’ case).
The brands that get Petstop or Pets Purest-level results aren’t running a better individual tactic. They’re running a system where deliverability, list health, flow coverage, and campaign strategy are all being monitored and adjusted together, with channel expansion following actual audience behavior rather than a generic playbook. That’s the same structural work we specialize in at Retention Side, particularly for established eCommerce brands, including pet care brands, where flows have gone untouched for a year, campaign sends aren’t segmented, or deliverability hasn’t been actively monitored in longer than a quarter. If your own audit against the benchmarks above turns up more than one gap, that’s usually the point where a structural review is worth more than another round of creative testing.