Ruffwear uses NevTan Engage Analytics to drive incremental revenue and improve margins

Ruffwear makes durable outdoor gear for dogs. So it's no surprise the brand began on a mountain biking trip. Watching a friend struggle to give her dog a drink from a plastic bag, founder Patrick Kruse had the idea for Ruffwear's first product: a collapsible cloth dog bowl.
Since then, the brand has expanded into other SKUs, from harnesses to dog boots, all while prioritizing sustainability. Customers can currently buy Ruffwear gear in national retailers like REI, and online in Ruffwear's Shopify store.

Learn how Ruffwear used NevTan Engage Analytics to focus on what works

The Ruffwear team wanted to increase customer lifetime value. But they had already implemented every retention best practice in the book.

"Our email program was pretty substantial. We had a billion different flows doing all sorts of things."

Specifically, they wanted fresh insight into their disengaged customers, who were all receiving the same standard re-engagement flows at the same cadence.

To sort that out, they wanted to model their customer behavior more precisely and build smarter segments.

With NevTan Engage Analytics, they could use powerful RFM segmentation capabilities to shine light on their disengaged customers.

Strategy

With NevTan Engage Analytics, Ruffwear can ultimately access more customer data, more efficiently, than before.

"We've done all of the out-of-the-can approaches, and now we're taking a more personalized approach to retention," DeRatt says. "It feels like we're getting an extra edge with NevTan Engage Analytics."

"Our email program was pretty substantial," recalls Natalie DeRatt, ecommerce communications coordinator at Ruffwear. "We had a billion different flows doing all sorts of things."

Their next LTV growth lever would need to be pretty sophisticated.

Solution

It's helped the team discount more efficiently to improve their margins. "Getting the right discounts to the right people at the right time gives us better margins," says Ernie Kucera, digital marketing manager at Ruffwear.

Marketing Analytics has also opened up new horizons of personalization.

Challenge

But which customers were most valuable? Most likely to return? If the team knew, they could focus their retention efforts (and discounts!) on them.

So far, Ruffwear uses NevTan Engage Analytics for 3 core strategic needs: