Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / Why Marketing Automation Ignores Customer Pet Ownership
Transcript
- Lucas: So it's mid-2026, and according to the American Pet Products Association, roughly 70 percent of US households now own a pet. That's nearly 90 million homes with a dog, a cat, a fish, a lizard — you name it. Luna: And yet most marketing automation platforms treat pet ownership like a static checkbox. You either have a pet or you don't. But the reality is way more dynamic. Lucas: Exactly. Let me give you a concrete example from a major pet food brand — I'll call them 'PetFuel' because the real name doesn't matter. They had a loyalty program that asked, 'Do you have a dog or a cat?' and then sent a monthly newsletter with breed-specific nutrition tips. Luna: Sounds reasonable. What went wrong? Lucas: Well, they never asked for the pet's age. So when a customer's 14-year-old labrador passed away — and the customer kept buying cat food because they also had a cat — the system kept sending 'Senior Dog Care' emails for three more years. The customer had already buried that dog. Luna: That's not just a waste of marketing dollars. That's painful. You're reminding someone of a loss every month. Lucas: Right. And the brand had no way to know because the only data point was 'pet owner = true.' They didn't capture the lifecycle of that relationship: acquisition, aging, end of life. So the automation became insensitive. Luna: I've heard Chewy does this differently. They actually send a handwritten sympathy card when a customer calls to cancel autoship because their pet died. Lucas: Chewy is the gold standard here. But even they struggle at scale. The sympathy card is human-initiated. Their automated system still has blind spots. For instance, if a customer stops ordering dog food but switches to cat food, the system might not infer the dog is gone — it just sees a category shift. Luna: So the core problem is that most CRM systems don't have a 'pet object' with attributes like species, breed, birth year, and health status. They just have a binary flag. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a data architecture issue. When a customer buys a bag of puppy food, the automation should trigger a 'new puppy' journey — not just a generic pet food campaign. But to do that, you need to link that purchase to a pet profile. Luna: And what about multi-pet households? The brand I mentioned earlier — PetFuel — had a customer with three cats. Each cat had different dietary needs. The system sent one generic 'cat lover' email. It missed cross-sell opportunities for senior cat food versus kitten food. Lucas: That's the lost revenue angle. But there's also a trust angle. If a customer feels like you don't know their pet, they'll go somewhere that does. A 2023 survey by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council found that 68 percent of pet owners said they'd switch brands for a company that 'understands my pet's individual needs.' Luna: So how do you fix this in a marketing automation platform like HubSpot or Marketo? Those tools weren't built for pet profiles. Lucas: You have to build a custom object. In HubSpot, you can create a 'Pet' custom object with properties for name, species, breed, birth date, and health conditions. Then you link it to the contact record. Every time a customer buys something, you update the pet object. Luna: But that requires the customer to provide that data. Most people won't fill out a long form about their pet. Lucas: You don't need a form. You can infer it from purchase patterns. If someone buys grain-free cat food every month, you can create a pet object with species = cat and diet = grain-free. Then you can ask one question: 'Is that for a new pet?' and let them confirm. Luna: What about the emotional sensitivity piece? When a pet passes away, you need to detect that and stop all pet-specific communications. Lucas: That's the hardest part. You can look for signals: a sudden stop of recurring orders for that pet's category, a call to customer service, or an email with subject lines containing words like 'passed' or 'died.' Then you flag the record and suppress the pet journey. Luna: But automating that detection is tricky. I've seen cases where a customer just switches to a different brand of food for the same pet, and the system incorrectly assumes the pet died. Lucas: You need a grace period and a manual override. Let the customer tell you. In Chewy's case, they wait for the customer to initiate. But you can also send a gentle check-in: 'We noticed your food orders have changed. Is everything okay with Fluffy?' That opens a dialogue. Luna: And that's where the marketing automation can actually strengthen the relationship instead of damaging it. Lucas: Look, if these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work — maybe a smarter way to handle customer data — we want this show to stay available to everyone, without ads getting in the way. Luna: We deliberately don't run ads on these. It keeps the conversation clean. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: No pressure. Just if it's useful to you. Back to pets — let's talk about the lifecycle trigger. Instead of just a pet ownership flag, you want a milestone-based journey. Luna: Like a one-year birthday campaign for the pet? Or a 'graduation' from puppy to adult food? Lucas: Exactly. If you know the pet's birth date or adoption date, you can automate a 'Happy Gotcha Day' email with a treat coupon. That's a genuine delight moment. And it's only possible if you track the pet as an entity over time. Luna: But most brands don't even ask for the adoption date. They just ask 'do you have a pet?' and move on. Lucas: Partly because legacy CRM systems treat pets as demographic data, not as ongoing relationships. There's also a privacy concern — some customers don't want to share detailed pet info. But you can earn that trust by showing value first. Luna: Give them a sample of personalized content before you ask for more data. Lucas: Right. Start with the purchase signal. If someone buys a leash, send them a 'new pet parent checklist' — no form required. Then, in that email, offer a 'create a profile for your pet to get age-specific tips.' That's a low-friction ask. Luna: I was at a pet store last week and they had a QR code on the shelf that said 'scan to tell us about your pet.' It went to a one-question survey: 'What's your pet's name?' That's it. They used that to personalize the receipt email. Lucas: That's smart. Because once you have the name, you can do a lot. 'We hope you and Max enjoy the new bed.' That tiny personalization builds emotional connection. Luna: And if Max passes away, you can stop that. Otherwise, you're sending 'We miss you, Max!' emails months later, which is devastating. Lucas: There's a startup called 'Petaverse' that's building a universal pet profile API. The idea is that a customer can create one pet profile and authorize multiple retailers to access it. That could solve the data silo problem. Luna: But that requires industry-wide adoption. In the meantime, brands have to build their own systems and handle the sensitivity manually. Lucas: And get the architecture right. Custom objects, lifecycle stages, suppression rules. It's not a huge technical lift — it's a design choice. The question is whether marketers see pet ownership as a checkbox or as a relationship. Luna: Given that 70 percent of households have a pet, it's a massive audience. Ignoring the nuance means leaving money — and trust — on the table. Lucas: Next time you look at your automation workflows, ask: are we treating customers as people with lives that change? Or are we just collecting flags?