PetRescue scaled personalised outreach for over 525,000 subscribers

If you’re looking for your perfect furry or feathered friend, PetRescue can help.

PetRescue, Australia’s largest online pet adoption platform, connects prospective adopters with shelters, rescue groups, and animal welfare organisations nationwide. Through its platform, the Sydney-based nonprofit supports over 2,000 members and facilitates thousands of pet adoptions each year. 

“We’ve got everything—cats, dogs, hermit crabs, a few pigeons, cows, and two pigs,” says James Lolicato, COO at PetRescue.

With a lean marketing team of 1 part-time and 2 full-time employees, PetRescue reaches an audience of more than 525,000 email subscribers and 5.2 million annual website visitors. Email marketing plays a critical role in engaging this community, helping to match pets with adopters, supporting ongoing advocacy, and driving fundraising efforts to sustain the mission.

As the organisation scaled its impact, PetRescue set out to improve how it used Intuit Mailchimp’s email automation and personalisation to better engage supporters and drive more adoptions.

The challenge: Increasing engagement with limited resources

As PetRescue expanded its reach and impact, its marketing team faced a growing challenge: How to deliver timely, relevant communication to hundreds of thousands of supporters with a small team and time-consuming processes.

Communication across the adopter journey was fragmented, with no clear lifecycle strategy to guide prospects from initial enquiry through to post-adoption. This lack of visibility made it difficult to nurture engagement at key moments, leading to missed opportunities.

At the same time, the small marketing team was constrained by manual processes that made scaling personalised communication unrealistic. These limitations became more urgent as adoption rates began to decline, increasing the need for more effective storytelling and engagement to inspire action.

The tools: Marketing automation flows, segmentation, and dynamic content

With Mailchimp, PetRescue was able to build a structured, automated lifecycle strategy. This allowed them to deliver personalised messaging at the right times, without adding manual workload.

Pre-built templates made it easier for the small marketing team to quickly launch campaigns for education and advocacy. And with the majority of PetRescue’s fundraising coming from email, the templates helped them speed up execution without sacrificing quality. 

To kick off their communications with a prospective adopter, they collect contact information from a form on their website. They connected the Typeform integration to their website so prospects are added directly to their Mailchimp audience. The prospect is then sent an autoresponder through a transactional email, which confirms receipt of their form and outlines next steps in the adoption process.

For a 2.5-person team, marketing automation flows are what make consistent, timely outreach possible with each touchpoint triggered at exactly the right time. James says that they have a “Moments that Matter” campaign running, which reaches out to adoptive or prospective adoptive parents at different points in their journey. For example, when someone adopts, PetRescue follows up with educational content. “We can go back to them in 30 days to talk about some of the necessities that they need for bringing a pet into their life,” says James.

By dynamically inserting adopter names and pet details, emails feel more relevant, helping increase engagement at critical decision points. “We’re able to tailor messages to each prospective adopter based on what they’re looking for or where they are in their journey, which makes our communication far more meaningful,” says James.

Every adopter has different preferences and behaviors, and PetRescue uses extensive audience segmentation and tagging to ensure messaging aligns with what the individual wants. PetRescue’s contacts are organized by interest, like cats and dogs vs. farm animals. “We can make sure that the content is bespoke,” says James.

The results: Effective, scalable marketing with a small team

PetRescue improved efficiency by replacing their time-consuming tasks with an automated strategy. “The automation flows we’ve built means we can support adopters at every stage of their journey without adding manual work,” says James. “It’s been a game changer for our team.”

They’ve enhanced personalisation and relevance as well. Segmentation and dynamic content help ensure they send tailored messaging, nurturing engagement and improving the adoption experience.

And PetRescue has achieved better lifecycle management overall. The strategy now supports adopters from initial enquiry through to long-term ownership, strengthening successful adoption outcomes. “Automation has allowed us to build a full lifecycle journey, from enquiry to adoption and beyond, without needing a large team.”

“Mailchimp makes it as easy as possible for us. With such a small team, having tools that simplify everything and help us reach more people is critical,” says James. PetRescue is celebrating its 1 millionth adoption. The team is using Mailchimp to share real stories of what adoption has meant to Australian families. "We want more Australians to see adoption as the first choice," James says. "And when it is, the pet you bring into your home is the best pet for you."