Pets at Home hails loyalty success

Pets at Home is bigging up the success of its loyalty scheme – the Very Important Pets (VIP) Club – after revealing that members now account for about 40% of all transactions and almost half of revenues at the group.
The programme, which launched in November last year, has already signed up 1.5 million customers, although all marketing communications are addressed to the pet, not to its owner.
The company appointed Havas EHS – the agency behind Tesco Clubcard – to run the programme, which is hosted by GI Insight. As well as a 10% discount when customers sign up, club members collect points, called VIP Lifelines, which can then be redeemed by animal charities to provide essential supplies.
Customers pick which charity they would like to partner with online and can choose between the Dogs Trust, RSPCA, SSPCA, Cats Protection, Blue Cross and Retired Greyhound Trust, along with several charities based within a 12 mile radius of their local store.
Pets at Home decided to go it alone after first considering joining established schemes, including Nectar. Nick Wood, chief executive of the chain of 350 pet stores told the FT: “None of them fitted what we were about. A lot of the motivations were: ‘What’s in it for me?’”
The company’s private equity owner KKR hopes to float or sell the business next year in a potential £1.5bn deal.

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