• by Jess Nelson , December 22, 2016

Purina Animal Nutrition doubled email engagement this year after partnering with Salesforce to drive more relevant communication. 

Headquartered in Shoreview, Minnesota, Purina Animal Nutrition offers a variety of animal feeds and health supplements for livestock. Purina leveraged the Salesforce Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Pardot to at first improve data quality, and then to leverage that data to make marketing content more personalized. Purina also worked with Magnet 360 as a Salesforce consulting and implementation partner.

Brandon Leander, director Digital Technology & Analytics at Purina, was the lead on Salesforce implementation for Purina Animal Nutrition. 

“As customers trust us with their information, we want to provide better information in return for their animals,” says Leander. “It’s not just about selling feed, but making sure that they’re taking care of their animals.”

Someone who has two chickens will need a different type of feed, and communication, than someone with a thousand head of cattle, says Leander. 

By capturing customer information in Salesforce Pardot, such as how many animals someone owns, their ages or whether they have any food allergies, Purina can provide personalized content that benefits the pet owner and their animal charges. Purina captures information through a variety of channels, including paid media and SEO, but Salesforce acts as its centralized customer data hub. 

Leander describes how Purina previously sent non-segmented “shotgun blast emails” that averaged a click-through rate of 2.2%. Purina was able to boost engagement 83% to a 4% click-through-rate by segmenting communication.

In the last two months, Purina has averaged an even higher 5% click-through rate. Open rates have also increased from 13% to 28%, says Leander.

Another helpful addition has been to differentiate between qualified and unqualified leads, says Leander. He says that around 13.5% of Purina Animal Nutrition’s leads are qualified, but 59% of those qualified prospects are then converted. By prioritizing resources into qualified leads and adding more segmented communication, Purina has witnessed its email engagement double.

“Imagine being able to whisper in a customer's ear while they are shopping online,” says Leander, describing the functionality of being able to track customer activity on the company’s Web site. 

In the future, Leander emphasizes how he would like to do more geotargeting in Purina’s email marketing programs. The company has also recently starting A/B testing, and Leander expresses excitement about digging into different capabilities in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.