Newsletters built to be loved, not tolerated
Most clinic newsletters get skimmed and deleted. Drovers Vet Hospital in Wanneroo, Western Australia, wanted the opposite: newsletter marketing their customers would actually look forward to. The real goal was never just to send email, it was to build and strengthen the relationship between Drovers and the pet parents they care for. So ThinkStory started where good content always starts, with the customer, digging into who they are, what they want, what they worry about, and what makes them smile.
- A relationship with customers that a routine newsletter would never build
- One clear avatar to understand: the Drovers pet parent, inside out
- Content that had to be genuinely fun, not just another email to ignore
Writing for one very specific pet parent
We built the work around a specific avatar: the Drovers pet parent, who they are, what they find funny, and what they enjoy reading. Everything was tailored to that person, so nothing felt generic. We took the brand messaging strategy we had already built for Drovers, the one that treats owners as pet parents, and adapted it for the inbox, keeping the voice consistent while making it lighter and more playful. When you know exactly who you are writing to, you can make them laugh, and a reader who laughs is a reader who stays.
Puns, playful blurbs, and talking animals
The content itself was tongue-in-cheek and made to be enjoyed. We wrote fun, playful puns and little blurbs laid over images of the animals, captioned as if the pets themselves were chatting and talking. It is the kind of thing a pet parent actually wants to open, because it is warm and funny rather than clinical. Every issue was designed to be different from the newsletters people delete without reading, so opening a Drovers email felt like a small treat instead of a chore.
Clicks, replies, and real loyalty
The approach worked. The newsletters produced very high click-through rates back to the Drovers website, and generated a steady stream of great feedback and engagement from customers who genuinely enjoyed them. More than the numbers, it built something harder to measure: loyalty. People who look forward to hearing from a business come to trust that business, and Drovers' customers started to feel like part of the practice rather than a name on a mailing list.
Loyalty that mattered at the sale
That loyalty turned out to matter enormously. Drovers was recently acquired by a large veterinary company in Australia, and the visible strength of their customer relationships was important in the negotiations. A practice whose customers are engaged and loyal is worth more than one with a quiet list, and the engagement we built helped show exactly that. What began as a way to send better newsletters ended up strengthening the whole business, right through to the moment it was bought.
