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How Meowbox Personalizes With Tags and the Shopify Integration

Meowbox is personalizing beyond human levels, and getting the right message to cats. Well, cat owners anyway.

The Shopify logo is to the left of a mobile screen displaying an email with the subject line, “New year, new toy” while the body of the email shows a gray cat sniffing a small yellow rubber duck. The text of the email and the CTA button read, “Give the gift of play” and Look around,” respectively.
Published: December 13, 2024 – E-commerce – Vancouver, BC, Canada — Audience: 100k+

Meowbox sells subscription boxes tailored to cats and the humans who love them. The Canada-based e-commerce business, with offices in the US and UK, delivers themed boxes filled with cat toys, treats, and other items.

We sat down with meowbox’s Senior Marketing Manager, Tanya MacKay, and talked with her about how the company uses Mailchimp and the Shopify integration to help reach their marketing goals.

Tell us a little bit about how meowbox works.

I like to say we deliver cat happiness. Every month, or every other month, we send a new box with a brand new theme. We basically have a new product launch every single month, which can be overwhelming. But because we're small and we don't have to go through the same tedious product launch setups that a lot of other companies do, we’re a little bit more agile.

We do try to stick to some kind of formula to reign in the chaos a bit, though. When it comes to email, we find that there are 3 key selling phases and messaging that we rely on to promote action from our audience: launch, reminder, and last chance.

With the monthly product changes, we’re always sure to anchor our messaging to our overarching brand-selling features so that there’s cohesiveness month to month. The change in themes allows us to reimagine the messaging while remaining consistent with our brand. 

How does meowbox use Mailchimp automations?

We currently use a welcome automation that’s basically a short message to welcome customers to our list. We’re also building an automated win-back flow. The idea is that when they’re tagged in Mailchimp, we can create a custom segment where, say, they haven't had a shipment in 6 months, and we can send them through the win-back process. We can reconnect with them using an offer that handles their previous objections or reason for cancellation, so it’s more meaningful and not just a blanket offer we could send to anyone.

What kinds of emails provide the best conversion?

The exciting new product launch emails always perform really well, but our big surprise came when we started our newsletter that includes a monthly theme or seasonally relevant content, and a feature of one of our team members. There’s zero sales-focused language, but it converts just as well as any of our sales-focused emails. It’s a great reminder that providing value, and not just discounts, can convert a consumer.

"The benefits of using the Shopify integration have been having a much better view of the impact of our email marketing strategy. UTM tracking codes are helpful, but being able to quickly reference our performance in Mailchimp or Shopify without jumping to different programs makes it easier to make quick decisions or identify insights."

— Tanya MacKay, Senior Marketing Manager

How do you use the Shopify integration?

We set up the integration in June 2024, and did it ourselves. It was very intuitive to connect and I would have even trusted some of the less IT-friendly folks in the team to have done the integration — it was that simple. 

We tag customers based on their purchase history, preferences, etc. and can use it to ensure we’re sending the correct messaging to people. For example, if we have 2 themes available but the customer has already received one, we only want to talk to them about the one they don’t have. Or if they prefer no-food options, we don’t want to offer them food products. 

What are the main benefits of the Shopify integration?

The benefits of using the integration have been having a much better view of the impact of our email marketing strategy. UTM tracking codes are helpful, but being able to quickly reference our performance in Mailchimp or Shopify without jumping to different programs makes it easier to make quick decisions or identify insights. The other major benefit is seamlessly being able to segment audiences based on our needs. On our previous system we would have had to pull many reports to try to segment folks and then manually upload them. It was very inconvenient.

Do you use any other Mailchimp tools?

We use landing pages quite a bit for giveaways. We find that they’re pretty useful, especially for gaining new folks to our mailing lists. We like to partner with new brands, and always make sure they provide something that meets our audience’s desires and needs.

How else does meowbox engage with the cat enthusiast community?

My favorite part of my job is making big ideas come to life. We host an annual party to raise money, or a festival now, actually to raise money for cat shelters. Last year we had 20,000 attendees, with one in Vancouver, and one in Toronto.

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