How to Run Email Marketing Campaigns (What Petboost Doesn't Do)

Customers ask how to send email marketing campaigns such as newsletters and promotions. Petboost does not send marketing campaigns. It exports your customer list, puts your clients in BCC for an email from your own address, and writes personalised templates from your own data. For hosted sending, use a purpose-built marketing tool alongside it.

What you're trying to do

You want to send promotional or informational emails to your customers, such as:

• A monthly grooming tips newsletter
• Seasonal promotions, such as Christmas specials or summer coat care
• New service announcements
• Customer appreciation messages
• Educational content, such as training tips or pet health information
• Birthday wishes and special offers

What Petboost does offer

Before you look at other tools, this is what Petboost already does:

For promotions by text, Bulk Send on Messages sends a marketing message to the customers who have opted in to marketing. It needs Communications Booster. See Bulk SMS and Pet Owner Communications.

Export your customer list

Do this to load your customers into a mailing tool, or to pick a segment to email.

1. Open Customers & Pets and open the gear menu beside Add New.
2. Select Smart Export.
3. On Export Type, choose Customers, then select Next.
4. On Segment, choose any Quick Segments, such as No Visit in 60+ Days, then select Next.
5. On Preview, check Columns to include, then select Download CSV. The button shows how many customers the file holds.

Quick Export: Pet Owners, in the same menu, downloads every owner's name, phone and email without the steps.

Email your clients from your own email app

Send bulk email is the BCC method many businesses use by hand, done for you. Petboost does not send the email: it opens a message in your own email app, with your business address in To and the clients you choose in BCC, so clients do not see each other's addresses.

1. Open Customers & Pets and open the gear menu beside Add New.
2. Select Send bulk email.
3. Choose the clients, or use Select All.
4. Select Open Default Email, then write and send the email in your email app.

Copy BCC List to Clipboard copies the addresses instead. With more than 400 addresses, it offers batches of 400 for Outlook, which struggles with large BCC lists. To email one segment, open Smart Export, choose the segment, and select Send bulk email under Bulk communication on Preview.

Send a ready-to-use email template

Do this for a targeted email, such as a win-back to clients who have not visited in 90 days.

1. Open Reporting & Intelligence and select the Marketing Ideas tab.
2. If the tab shows Generate Marketing Ideas, select it.
3. Under Ready-to-Use Email Templates, select View Details on a template. The button shows how many customers it covers.
4. Choose Bulk Draft (BCC) for one email to all of them, or Personalised for an email to each client with their name, pets and details.
5. With Bulk Draft (BCC), select Open Email Client (BCC All). With Personalised, select Draft beside each client.

Each email opens in your own email client, where you review it, edit it and send it.

What Petboost doesn't offer

Petboost does not include:

• Hosted email sending. Emails are composed in your own email client, not sent from Petboost
• Drip email sequences or multi-step automation workflows
• A drag-and-drop email campaign builder with design tools
• A/B testing for email campaigns
• Campaign analytics, such as open rates, click rates and conversions for marketing emails
• Subscriber list management for email, with unsubscribe links. Petboost records each customer's marketing preference, but it does not run an email subscriber list
• Scheduled email broadcasts at scale

Petboost builds the list and the message so you can do targeted outreach from your own inbox. For full-scale email marketing with hosted sending, design tools, automation workflows and campaign analytics, purpose-built platforms such as Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and HubSpot are the better choice.

Recommended alternatives

Use a purpose-built tool alongside Petboost. Each option below starts from a Smart Export of your customers.

Option 1: Mailchimp

Recommended for small and medium businesses. Mailchimp has a drag-and-drop email builder, templates for newsletters, promotions and announcements, audience segmentation, automation workflows such as a welcome series or birthday emails, campaign analytics, and unsubscribe and GDPR compliance management.

Its pricing:

• Free plan: up to 500 contacts, with limited features
• Essentials: $13 AUD a month for 500 contacts
• Standard: $20 AUD a month for 500 contacts, with automation and A/B testing
• Premium: $350 AUD a month, with advanced features

To use it with Petboost:

1. Export your customer list from Petboost each month or quarter.
2. Import it into your Mailchimp audience.
3. Create campaigns from Mailchimp's templates.
4. Send them to all customers or to specific segments.

Petboost keeps sending the booking emails on its own. See mailchimp.com.

Option 2: Campaign Monitor

An email marketing platform with a drag-and-drop builder, segmentation, automation journeys, campaign analytics and reporting, and customer support. It suits businesses that want more design choice in templates and support based in Australia.

Its pricing:

• Basic: $12 AUD a month for 500 contacts
• Unlimited: $35 AUD a month for 500 contacts, with unlimited sends
• Premier: $59 AUD a month for 500 contacts, with advanced analytics and priority support

To use it with Petboost:

1. Export your customer emails from Petboost.
2. Import them into Campaign Monitor.
3. Design campaigns in its visual builder.
4. Schedule them or send them straight away.
5. Track the results in its analytics dashboard.

See campaignmonitor.com.

Option 3: HubSpot

For growing businesses. HubSpot is a marketing automation platform with email campaigns, forms, landing pages and a CRM, lead nurturing, automation workflows, and analytics and attribution. It suits businesses that want to invest in marketing and have dedicated marketing staff.

Its pricing:

• Free plan: basic email marketing, with limits
• Starter: $30 AUD a month
• Professional: $1,220 AUD a month, with advanced features
• Enterprise: custom pricing

To use it with Petboost:

1. Set HubSpot up as your marketing hub.
2. Export your Petboost customer data to HubSpot each month.
3. Create campaigns and automations in HubSpot.
4. Track your marketing in HubSpot.

Petboost stays your operational system for bookings, payments and pet records. See hubspot.com.

Option 4: Your own email, with Send bulk email

If you do not want another tool, Send bulk email is the manual BCC method built in: see Email your clients from your own email app. For mail merge instead, export your customers with Smart Export and use a mail merge tool, such as a Google Sheets add-on for Gmail.

Each campaign takes about 1 to 2 hours. It suits very small businesses, under 50 customers, sending occasional campaigns. The limits: there are no design tools, no analytics or tracking and no automation, emails can be marked as spam, and you manage unsubscribes by hand.

Real-world examples

Example 1: Small grooming salon, Mailchimp Free plan

They wanted a monthly grooming tips newsletter for 300 regular customers. They use Petboost for every booking, confirmation and reminder, and the Mailchimp Free plan for the newsletter.

1. They export customer emails from Petboost each quarter.
2. They import them into Mailchimp.
3. They use a Mailchimp template for a "Grooming Tips" newsletter.
4. They send it on the first Monday of each month.
5. They track open rates, around 40%, to gauge interest.

The newsletter costs nothing on the Free plan and takes 2 hours a month to write, and Petboost sends the booking messages.

Example 2: Multi-service pet business, Campaign Monitor

They wanted separate campaigns for grooming, daycare and training clients. They use Petboost for bookings and operations, and Campaign Monitor for segmented campaigns.

1. They export customers with their service tags from Petboost.
2. They create three audience segments in Campaign Monitor: grooming customers get grooming tips, daycare customers get daycare updates and socialisation tips, and training customers get training advice and course announcements.
3. They send targeted campaigns each month.

Relevant content lifts engagement: open rates are 50 to 60%, against 30 to 40% for generic campaigns. It costs $35 AUD a month.

Example 3: Growing pet services brand, HubSpot

They wanted marketing automation, including email campaigns, lead nurture and customer journey mapping. They use Petboost for bookings, payments and pet records, and HubSpot for marketing automation.

1. HubSpot is their marketing hub.
2. They export Petboost data to HubSpot each month.
3. New customers get an automated welcome series.
4. Seasonal campaigns run as workflows.
5. Inactive customers get re-engagement campaigns.
6. They read the analytics for all their marketing in HubSpot.

Repeat bookings rose 25% from the re-engagement campaigns, on the $30 AUD a month Starter plan.

Frequently asked questions

Will Petboost add email marketing features?

Not in the near term. Petboost focuses on the operational side of a pet business, such as bookings, pet profiles, packages, courses and resources, and email marketing is a mature field with dedicated platforms. Petboost builds the list and the message, and those platforms send, design and measure.

Is there a way to do this without external tools?

Yes, with limits. Send bulk email puts your clients in BCC on an email from your own address, and the Ready-to-Use Email Templates give you the words. You do without design tools, analytics, automation and compliance features, so for regular campaigns a dedicated tool saves time.

Which alternative do most Petboost customers use?

Mailchimp is the most common choice for small and medium pet businesses, on its Free or Essentials plan. Campaign Monitor is popular with businesses that want support based in Australia. HubSpot is used by growing businesses with dedicated marketing staff.

How often should I send campaigns?

For pet businesses:

• Newsletter: monthly, such as the first Monday of the month
• Seasonal promotions: 4 to 6 times a year, such as Christmas, summer and Easter
• New service announcements: as needed

Will Petboost integrate directly with Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor?

There is no direct integration. Export your customers with Smart Export and import them into your marketing platform each quarter, or when you need to. It takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Next steps

To go ahead with Mailchimp (Option 1):

1. Sign up for free at mailchimp.com.
2. Export your customers from Petboost with Smart Export, from the gear menu on Customers & Pets, and select Download CSV.
3. Import them into your Mailchimp audience.
4. Create your first campaign from a template.
5. For help, use Mailchimp's tutorials and support.

To go ahead with Campaign Monitor (Option 2):

1. Sign up for a free trial at campaignmonitor.com.
2. Export your customer emails from Petboost with Smart Export.
3. Import them into Campaign Monitor.
4. Design a campaign in its visual builder.
5. Send a test campaign to yourself first.

To go ahead with HubSpot (Option 3):

1. Sign up for the free plan at hubspot.com.
2. Set up customer properties that match your Petboost data.
3. Export your customer data from Petboost and import it.
4. Use HubSpot Academy for training.
5. Consider the Starter plan when you are ready for automation.

Related guides

• Pet Owner Communications (What We DO)
• Business Communications

Tell us whether this guide helped at feedback@petboost.com.au.