Win-Back Email for Pet Brands

Pet buyers lapse for one of three reasons: they forgot to reorder, they tried a competitor's subscription, or their pet switched foods. Two of those three are recoverable. This email targets the replenishment gap, the window between when a bag of food should have run out and when the buyer has fully defected.

Trigger. Filter for customers who placed at least one order in a consumable category (food, treats, litter, supplements, dental chews). Exclude one-time buys like beds, crates, and leashes. In Klaviyo that is "Placed Order at least once" plus "Placed Order zero times since" over a category slice. The flow fires once the reorder cycle for that SKU has elapsed.

Timing. For a 30-day bag of kibble, send at day 45. The 15-day buffer assumes the bag lasted its full cycle plus a grace week. Send earlier and you interrupt a still-full bowl. Send later and the buyer has already auto-subscribed at Chewy or Petco. For toys and gear, push the window to day 75 because replacement cycles run longer.

Offer. Discount the exact SKU they bought before, not the whole catalog. Twenty percent off plus free shipping on "Wild Salmon Recipe 12 lb" outperforms a generic 15% storewide code with replenishment buyers. If you sell subscription, lead with autoship: "Save 30% and never run out" beats a one-time coupon for this list.

Copy angle. Lead with the pet. "Bella's bowl is running low" beats "We miss you." Reference the product by name and size. Call out the reorder cycle explicitly: "It's been 47 days since your last bag of Wild Salmon Recipe." If you have reformulated, that is your reason to return. Try a subject like "New recipe, same Bella price, 20% off her refill" and a headline like "We rebuilt Bella's food with 30% more omega-3s." Give the buyer a "new" alongside the discount.

CTA. One action. "Restock Bella's Bowl" or "Claim 20% Off." Link deep to the product page with the discount auto-applied (https://store.com/products/wild-salmon-12lb?discount=WINBACK20). Never send a lapsed replenishment buyer to the homepage and make them search.

Numbers to expect. Pet win-backs with pet-name personalization typically open 22 to 28%. Click-through runs 3 to 6% when the discount is SKU-specific. Generic "we miss you" sends to the same list open closer to 14%.

Email is not a web page. The inbox still runs on 2007-era rendering rules, and this template follows them.

Nested tables, not divs. The layout is built from tables inside tables inside tables: an outer wrapper, a section table per block, a column table where needed. Outlook's Word engine ignores flexbox and grid. Gmail clips div-heavy layouts. Tables are the one structure every client parses the same way.

Inline CSS. Every style lives on the element it styles. color, font-size, padding, background-color, all inline. Gmail strips <style> blocks in some contexts, and inline styles survive where a stylesheet would not.

Bulletproof VML button. Outlook 2007 through 2019 cannot render border-radius or padding on an <a> tag. The CTA is wrapped in VML (Vector Markup Language), which draws a filled rounded rectangle with a working click target. Your green "Restock Bella's Bowl" button stays green and stays clickable in Outlook instead of collapsing to a flat text link.

Live text. Headlines, body copy, and the button label are real text, not text baked into images. Image blocking is still the default in Outlook and many enterprise clients. Live text renders whether images load or not, and screen readers can read it.

Dark mode. Two meta tags in the head (color-scheme and supported-color-schemes set to "light dark") tell Apple Mail and Outlook to respect a dark palette instead of inverting yours. The logo uses a transparent PNG with a light variant so it survives on dark backgrounds.

One mobile media query. A single @media block at max-width 600px stacks the columns, bumps the body font toward 16px, and forces the button full width. One query, one job. Multiple queries bloat the head and most clients honor only the first.

Web fonts with fallbacks. A display font can be declared, but the stack always falls back to Georgia, serif or Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo strip web fonts entirely. The fallback is what most recipients actually read.

Klaviyo. In the email builder, drag an HTML block into the canvas and paste the full HTML. Swap the Northpaw logo URL, product image, and the green and cream hex values in the inline CSS. Wire merge tags: {{ first_name|default:'friend' }} for the owner, and {{ person|lookup:'Pet Name'|default:'your pet' }} for the pet's name (a custom profile property you populate at signup or post-purchase). For the reorder link, append the discount code to the product URL: https://yourstore.com/products/wild-salmon-12lb?discount=WINBACK20. Use the catalog item URL or {{ event.URL }} if the flow triggers off the Placed Order metric.

Mailchimp. Start a campaign, choose Code your own, then Paste in code, and drop in the HTML. Replace the brand and image assets. Merge tags: *|FNAME|* for the owner, *|PETNAME|* for the pet (create it as a custom merge field), and *|REORDER_URL|* for the product link. Build the discount as a promo code redemption link so it applies at checkout.

Test before you send. In Klaviyo, open Preview and cycle through five real profiles to confirm the merge tags resolve. In Mailchimp, use Inbox Preview. Then send live tests to Gmail web, the Gmail mobile app, Apple Mail on iPhone in both light and dark mode, and Outlook on Windows. Confirm the VML button renders as a solid green rectangle in Outlook. Confirm alt text shows where images are blocked. Confirm nothing breaks in dark mode.