Whisker’s push marketing breakthrough: improving revenue by 20%

Whisker is the leading pioneer in the pet technology market, and the innovator behind automated products like the Litter-Robot, Feeder-Robot, and various device accessories. Their mission is to make life with pets endlessly better.

Whisker started in 1999 with a vision to fundamentally improve the messy and unsightly work involved with traditional litter boxes. Over the past 25 years, Whisker has innovated through four generations of its flagship Litter-Robot and grown to over 1 million customers in the process. Their mobile app has been a key ingredient for both their cross-channel marketing strategy and for keeping customers connected to their products – including insights for everything from litter level monitoring to tracking the weight of their cats.

As Whisker excelled in product innovation, it encountered a common challenge as tech-focused companies grow: ensuring seamless alignment between software and marketing efforts. As a result, some areas of mobile marketing—such as a dedicated push strategy and in-app deep linking—hadn’t yet been prioritized.

Whisker needed a way to drive repeat purchases, cross-sell accessories, nurture subscribers, and most importantly, make its app an indispensable part of customers’ relationships with their pets.

Whisker chose OneSignal to help bridge the gap between their software and marketing teams, enabling a unified approach to mobile engagement and push notifications. With OneSignal’s tools, Whisker moved beyond basic transactional messaging, transforming their app into a revenue-driving channel that saw a 20% increase in mobile-driven sales.

Additionally, OneSignal provided Whisker with invaluable insights into user behavior, allowing them to segment audiences based on interests, purchase history, and platform preferences. This data-driven approach has empowered Whisker to create a highly targeted and relevant mobile marketing strategy that reaches users effectively, driving repeat purchases and nurturing customer loyalty.

OneSignal was a critical piece of the puzzle in proving what marketing push can bring to the table. Whisker was empowered to move beyond basic transactional messaging to pursue mobile marketing campaigns designed to generate repeat sales, create cross-selling opportunities, and promote bundled discounts.

The benefit was two-fold. Not only did this result in a 20% increase in mobile app-driven revenue, but it proved the value of these campaigns early, helping to lay the foundations for further investment into mobile marketing strategies.

Aligning leadership, engineering, and marketing paves the way for Whisker to engage with pet owners in entirely new and meaningful ways such as more advanced A/B testing, abandoned cart notifications, warranty expiry reminders, and much more personalized marketing down the road.

Since their foray into push marketing, Whisker has leveraged OneSignal with Branch.io to add deep linking capabilities, dramatically improving the in-app experience for their users. Rather than being taken to their generic device homepage, Whisker can send users directly to specific shopping pages within their app. By eliminating the need for users to sign in if they want to start shopping, Whisker has effectively removed a critical point of friction and opened the door for noticeably improved engagement – in fact, they’ve seen an 11% increase in mobile app sessions since implementing some of these mobile-minded changes.

Whisker has also found impactful opportunities in combining their email efforts with their newfound push marketing flexibility. By sending email campaigns offering app-exclusive bundles or deals, they move users from email to their app to promote app adoption and retention. Even if those users don’t end up making a purchase, Whisker can now target them with future push offers.

Beyond driving mobile revenue and smoothing the path to their app, Whisker gained some much-needed transparency into their user data. The ability to track critical engagement metrics like click-through rates and break down their mobile audience based on whether they are iOS or Android users allows them to better understand what their audience looks like, within their app, as well as how to best reach them.

Leveraging their CRM systems through OneSignal, Whisker has effectively “pulled back the curtain” to see exactly how many users are currently subscribed to receive push notifications.

Previously, there existed no way to separate app users with or without a connected Litter-Robot product. Now the Whisker team has a glimpse into user groups based on which model of Litter-Robot they own and even users who have not purchased a Litter-Robot at all, but have downloaded the app out of curiosity. With OneSignal, they have uncovered a brand new target group to nurture engagement with.

Whisker products are available on the company’s website as well as through several major brick-and-mortar stores. If customers purchased their product from one of these third-party sellers, there’s a good chance they have not opted into email and SMS, both actions typically done through the website. In these cases, Whisker’s app is the best way to reach people, promote their accessories, and drive repeat sales.

With mobile push, they now have the power to reach this captive audience and remarket to them, regardless of where they purchased their product. It’s already moving the needle – Whisker has experienced a +4% increase in new subscription signups directly attributed to their mobile push efforts.

As Whisker looks ahead, it hopes to leverage even more customer data to further refine its targeted engagement strategies. It sees opportunities to move beyond basic weekly mobile push campaigns, such as adding automation for different purchase events or notifying its users with proactive warranty expiration reminders.

Big picture? Whisker sits in a unique position, atop a treasure trove of pet data which they aim to utilize in hyper-personalized messaging. With more data transparency and a deeper reach into the habits of their mobile users, Whisker is primed for a win-win relationship with their users – a scenario where pet owners receive the relevant information they need to better care for their pets and one in which Whisker continues to see mobile engagement reach new heights.