Evaluating Pet Behavior and Temperament with Dog Daycare Clients: A guide for pet care employees.
10 Pet Care Business Marketing Ideas That Will Get You More Customers
This is a guest blog written by our friends at Broadly.com
Pet ownership continues to grow, and based on a Forbes report, millennials are leading the pack. With this growing demand also comes more competitors. Whether you own a dog daycare, boarding kennel, pet store or pet grooming salon, it can be a challenge to stand out from the crowd.
Most consumers use the internet to find, research, and hire a service. Your online presence and reputation matter, so where do you start? In this guide, we're going to provide you with several marketing ideas that can help you grow your business.
Build Your Online Presence
The power of the internet to grow your business cannot be ignored – you need a responsive, mobile-friendly website that can serve as an online office for your business. Your website helps your potential customers find your services amongst a sea of competitors (via SEO indexing). A good website also is a valuable resource for existing customers to interface with your pet care brand.
1) Create A Professional Website
Just like having a quality outdoor sign or storefront, having a well designed website for your business can help you look professional for your customers. A website is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to answer the most common questions potential customers will have that will save time for both of you.
2) Create A Blog & Social Media Profiles
Having a blog and social media profiles has several benefits for your business. Both of these mediums allows you to connect directly with your customers.
The blog posts allow you to go in depth on specific topics. For example: 5 Dog Behavior Tips for Kennel Technicians and Dog-Daycare Attendants is a blog we created to help increase traffic to www.gingrapp.com. Blog posts that relate to key searches for pet-care, pet health and related topics end up ranking and gaining new visitors to your site.
Leverage your social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram so that your customers can be reminded of your business in their feeds, which can help lead to repeat visits. With these social profiles you can also chat directly with your customers to answer questions, resolve concerns, or help an unhappy customer.
Local Search Results
3) Optimize For Local SEO
For most pet care companies it's not about how your company ranks for global terms (dog kennel or pet store), but rather how your rank for terms in your city (‘dog kennel Chicago’ or ‘Seattle dog grooming’. For this reason, it's absolutely essential that you optimize your business to rank for the city that your stores are located in.
A big problem that a lot of businesses run into is inaccuracies in their NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number). If you have a business name on Yelp and a different name on Yellow Pages it can confuse Google and end up decreasing your rankings.
Local search engine optimization (SEO) is a whole other topic-area. Learn more: here is a great guide to get you started.
Referrals & Partnerships
4) Set Up A Referral System
There's a reason why referrals are often become the best customers. Why because people trust their friends who refer them. You can build online and social referral program by asking customers for feedback on your company. Those that leave a positive review then you can request to share that feedback online, where their friends and others can see it. If someone has negative feedback you want to handle that offline first to hopefully turn them into a happy customer that gives you a positive review online..
Reviews
Getting feedback from your customers is a great way to get to know them better and make sure that you are meeting their needs. One of the best ways to get feedback is to simply ask, but how do you go about getting reviews? Here are three ways to do it.
5) Learn How to Ask
You can quickly start gaining feedback from current customers by asking them for their feedback. A request can easily be printed on a receipt or ask online after the checkout process. You may feel like asking is too forward, but seven out of 10 customers who are asked will write a review for your business.
6) Get Creative When Asking
There are a number of ways that you can ask a customer for feedback without being too aggressive. Use your software’s survey features to followup automatically. Additional programs like Broadly will help you reach out via text and email, and make it easy for your customers to write positive reviews and get them posted in the right places.
7) Learn What Doesn't Work
As we’ve discussed, getting online reviews can greatly improve your business, but getting them in the wrong way can actually lead to getting a penalty. Some things to avoid when asking for reviews include:
Buying fake reviews that are not actually from customers.
Bribing customers to leave a positive reviews.
Spamming your customers with review requests.
All of these may seem like good ideas, but they are not going to provide true reviews for your business. Google & Yelp are getting better and catching these fake or forced reviews and penalizing the company by removing them from their platform. Also potential customers are likely to see through these reviews and go to another business for their pet care needs.
Read more about getting online reviews from our friends at Pet Boarding and Daycare Magazine HERE
Paid Advertising
There are two ways to show up online, by organically showing up using SEO tactics, or by paying for advertisements. Investing time and energy into SEO (as we discussed above) will help you in the long run. Paid advertisements can help you get noticed right away, but efforts will disappear as soon as you stop paying for them. If you have extra budget to spend on marketing, paid advertising can be a great way to rank quickly on several platforms and grow your online presence.
8) Utilize Facebook Ads
Facebook is a popular place for animal lovers, so you can target your audience specifically with various types of Facebook ads including video, image or carousel ads (using multiple images). Use these ads for branding or even for lead generation, by adding a form directly into the ad! Different from Google Search Ads, Facebook Ads can target people based on age, income, and interests which can be extremely powerful.
9) Try Google Ads
This is a great way to take advantage of the popularity of Google, which handles over 70% of all internet searches. Google Ads will pop up when someone searches for pet care services. These ads are generated based on keywords and can be filtered to only show when people search who live around your location.
10) Improve Traffic with Retargeting Ads
This is a method that can be useful when someone comes to your website but did not actually sign up for your services. Through the power of cookies, you can target that site visitor with advertisements whenever they visit other websites too! These are called Retargeting Ads because you are targeting people who have already visited your site, which makes them more likely to purchase from you.
Conclusion
We hope this guide has given you some ideas on ways to better market your company. If you have some more tips please let us know them in the comments and if you need help managing your pet business and easy marketing, check out GingrApp’s software.
5 Dog Behavior Tips for Kennel Technicians and Dog-Daycare Attendants
Guest-article written by John Woods, a member of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and editor
5 Dog Behavior Tips for Kennel Technicians and Dog-Daycare Attendants
Being in a new, or different, environment can often be a source of worry for us humans, never mind dogs. Being in day care or a kennel setting can be exciting for some dogs, for others it can be their worst nightmare.
But how do we know? Dogs don’t speak! We watch them closely! It’s a dog’s behavior and body language which lets us know.
Here I have put together my top 5 top tips for kennel technicians when working with dogs.
The Approach
Most of you will have heard of the age-old way to approach dogs. You should approach at a slow walking page without making any overly loud sounds and put your hand out for Fido to smell (it’s often modified to an open palm). Depending upon how the dog is feeling will depend on their response:
If Fido is feeling stressed enough to not engage with you, he will already be on high alert. He could see your hand as a threat. If he doesn’t attempt to nip at you, he will at least retreat even further away from you.
Dogs who are happy and excited will have likely already jumped all over you or at least engaged with you in some way.
If you have a nervous dog who doesn’t want to engage, that’s fine too. Ignore him. Be calm in the same area. You may want to throw some treats on the floor around you to entice him. Allow him to come to you. It really is that simple. Once he’s figured out, you’re actually OK, he’ll probably never leave your side.
Watch Their Body Language
Another great tip for kennel workers is to understand some basic dog body language. Dog’s can’t speak, but they do tell us how they’re feeling. We just need to watch their body language:
A stiff body with a rigid tail – he’s highly aroused at something. This may not end well. He needs to be removed from the situation until he’s calmer.
Soft, relaxed and fluid movements – he’s pretty chilled out and happy with the situation.
Panting excessively - unless he’s just been running around outside, he’s stressed. He needs to be removed from the situation so he can calm down.
Excessive yawing is a sign of stress too.
Snarling or “smiling” is a fear response; whatever is happening needs to stop
Ideally, you want dogs to be soft in body, soft eyes, wagging tails and have fluid movement. Any tentative movements like skulking tell you something isn’t right.
Learning about dog body language is your best skill in avoiding any potential disasters.
Dog Behaviors
Not only is their body language a true give away, so is their behavior.
Is a dog spending a large amount of time retreating or hiding away by isolating themselves? They are likely stressed or fearful!
Whilst working with dogs, consider strategies for reducing their stress like thunder jackets, creating a safe space for them or the use of pheromone diffusers in the environment.
On the other side of this scale, you should also be mindful of that super-aroused dog. He may be running around. Now many dog breeds are high energy, the poodle for example, but, in this situation, the dog would seem even more aroused than usual. Their stress levels are high, and they just don’t know what to do with themselves. In this situation, you could introduce some brain games and work on impulse control in a calm environment in an attempt to bring their arousal levels back down.
Interestingly, this is a common response to jealousy, and as a kennel technician, you will be sharing your attention between many dogs.
Watch for Signs of Illness
Working across many kennels and dogs, along with avoiding potential disastrous interactions between dogs, you need to ensure that all dogs on your premises are healthy – for their own benefit and for infection control.
You will soon know the energy levels of the dogs in your care, watch for signs of lethargy or fatigue.
Monitor how much they are drinking. Also, watch them when they are toileting. Are they urinating more than usual? Is it normal in color? How are their stools?
You should have an infection control procedure in place which would advise appropriate steps to take in this instance. But your first action should always be to isolate the sick dog until you establish what to do next.
Classifying Dog Behavior
In general, when we are observing abnormal behavior in dogs, it can be helpful to classify the behavior, so we know what we’re dealing with and how much risk is posed to themselves and others. There are three main categories I use when assessing a dog’s behavior:
Category
Associated Behavior
Aggression
Fear, play, inter-dog and predatory
Barking, snarling, lunging, biting, nipping, growling and body rigidity.
Stimulus reactivity
Lunging and barking
Separation related
Pining, whining, barking, crying, urinating, defecating, chewing, digging
Remember, the aim of any kennel technician or daycare attendant is to keep the dogs in their care, safe and healthy. I hope my 5 tips will help you do that.
Article written by John Woods a member of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers and editor at All Things Dogs.
Dog daycare attendant observing dog behavior
Top Pet-Care Industry Trends for 2019
The pet-care industry - whether dog boarding kennels, dog daycare, dog grooming or dog training - continues to grow by, well, leaps and bounds. With that growth comes some important trends to consider when planning for pet-care business in 2019.
Pet Care Professional Development and Certification
Perhaps the most significant trend in pet-care services continues to be the growth of professional development opportunities for pet-care staff and professionals. The Professional Animal Care Certification Council (PACCC) continues to grow in relevance and impact within the pet-care industry, providing pet-care businesses and professionals with opportunities for certification and the ability to provide the best pet-care services possible. This enables professionals to develop their careers, and businesses to elevate their reputation and manage risk.
Led by some of the pet-care industry’s top business leaders and consultants, PACCC has developed a rigorous certification program, with 100s of professionals already certified.
Learn more about PACCC: https://www.facebook.com/pacccert/ and at https://paccert.org/
Pet-care oriented trade-shows, conferences and expos will continue to grow as well, providing meaningful in-person professional development and opportunities to meet with the industry’s most engaged vendors like Gingr!
Top pet-care business conferences and trade-shows in 2019:
Pet Boarding and Daycare Expo West (Burbank, PA): https://www.petboardingexpowest.com/
IBPSA Conference (Palm Springs, CA) https://www.ibpsa.com/pet-care-conference/
Pet Boarding and Daycare Expo (Hershey, PA): https://www.petboardingexpo.com/
Technology, Technology, Technology
Streamlining operations with online customer self-registration and bookings with continue to grow in importance. Mobile-friendly websites and online customer-booking portals are a must, as smart-phones continue to be the dominant device for logging into the internet. Customizing and branding these online experiences will help set pet-care businesses apart from their competition.
As mega-pet-care ‘gig’ service websites like Rover and Wags continue to invest in marketing to pet owners, dog daycares, boarding kennels and grooming businesses need to stay relevant and competitive by making it easy for customers to communicate and reserve online.
Operational software will also continue to help pet-care businesses make it easier for employees to do their job well, while business owners can get out or ‘running the business’ and focus more on building the business.
The industry’s top software company, Gingr, will continue to develop and release new features and functions that help pet-care businesses scale, compete efficiently and provide the best pet-care possible. Look to Gingr for some amazing new technology in 2019!
Dog Training Business Continues to Grow
While dog daycare and boarding facilities have seen a steady growth over the years, dog-training businesses are growing and starting up in most markets. Trainers and owners of training-centric businesses will need to streamline their services and operations more to make it easier for pet-owners to make the decision and get their pets into training services.
Dog-training businesses will also need to look to ways to efficiently scale operations to achieve financial stability. These professionals may look to the dog daycare model to help scale their business with ‘day-camps’ to help dogs while their owners are at work. and build out more ‘Board-and-Train’ oriented facilities.
Professional dog training associations include https://apdt.com/ and https://www.canineprofessionals.com/.
To your wild success in 2019!
Holiday Support Hours
To allow our team to spend time with their families over the coming Christmas and New Years holidays, support hours will be abbreviated as follows:
Sunday, December 23rd — Weekend Email Support (guaranteed 24-hour response time)
Monday, December 24th — No Live Chat support, Email support available (follows weekend support protocol)
Tuesday, December 25th — No Live Chat support, Email support available (follows weekend support protocol)
Wednesday, December 26th — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
Thursday, December 27th — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
Friday, December 28th — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
Saturday, December 29th — Weekend Email Support (guaranteed 24-hour response time)
Sunday, December 30th — Weekend Email Support (guaranteed 24-hour response time)
Monday, December 31st — No Live Chat support, Email support available (follows weekend support protocol)
Tuesday, January 1st — No Live Chat support, Email support available (follows weekend support protocol)
Wednesday, January 2nd — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
We appreciate your understanding and wish you the best during this holiday season!
What Matters in Pet-Care Industry Trends
Starting a new dog daycare business? A new dog grooming salon? Expanding into a larger dog boarding kennel facility?
Keeping up on important pet-care industry trends helps keep you up-to-date on best practices and competitive in a busy pet-care market.
Carmen Rustenbeck of IBPSA delivered a deep look at what matters in pet-care in her recent article on The State of the Pet Care Services Industry.
To themes and trends noted:
Reputation Matters
As Rustenback comments, “…technology-based marketing companies have been able to sell the consumer the idea that boarding has very negative connotations and any caring pet parent would not put their pet in a “cage” (ibid).
Facility-based pet-care businesses need to attend to the reputation not only of their facility, but other facilities as well, so that the tide of all pet-care facilities rises above the ‘ubers’ of pet-care like Rover and DogVacay.
““We started realizing that if we – who have no real experience – can do this, then pretty much anyone can”. - Aaron Hirschhorn, founder of DogVacay.”
Hirschhorn’s comments above provide a simple benchmark that pet-care facilities can ensure to stay competitive: a reputation for experience and professional training in pet-care facilities.
Association Matters
Advocacy, training, 3rd-party certification. Participation in pet-care associations helps ensure your business rises, and the industry as a whole rises as well. Join the International Boarding and Pet Services Association HERE and get engaged!
Education & Certification Matters
Educating yourself and your staff in ‘best practices’ of dog daycare and boarding operations helps you manage risk, increase employee satisfaction and reduces turnover - and helps you win customers-for-life.
Certifications help your employees develop themselves as industry professionals, elevating their job-satisfaction, pay, and elevating the businesses they work for. Pet care staff and facility certification will play a growing role in the pet-care industry in 2019.
Learn more about these important pet-care services trends at https://www.ibpsa.com/state-pet-care-services-industry/
New Pet-care Software Features Release!
We continue to make Gingr the most modern and feature-rich pet-care software, serving boarding, doggie daycare and grooming pet-care businesses of all sizes. We’ve hired more developers this year (all U.S.A.-based), and the results are showing! Gingr continues to lead in online pet bookings, operations management and point-of-sale for pet-care businesses.
On the heals of major features released in September 29, 2018, our feature release on Dec 1, 2018 is perhaps one of our biggest releases, hitting many important aspects and feedback from our customers. This includes meaningful user-interface upgrades, mobile card-processing features, online retail-functions, and an Employee Scheduling add-on module.
Here are some highlights:
Re-designed the Owners and Pet Details Page - we’ve re-built the owner, animal, & reservation details pages from scratch! This new interface provides powerful customization. For example, you can create a “groomer”, “receptionist” and “owner” view which will allow you to bring relevant information to the forefront for that type of employee’s work.
Re-designed View All Owners, Animals & Reservation Pages - We’ve re-built these pages as well as created a new View All Reservations page. These pages are more powerful than ever before — allowing you to filter down all of your data to find exactly what you’re looking, including custom-fields.
Re-designed Specialist (groomer, bather, trainer, driver…) Scheduling - Based on feedback that we’ve received over the years, we’ve re-designed the Specialist scheduler to make it super easy to manage complex specialist schedules.
The specialist scheduler is now in a calendar format (similar to the lodging calendar),
which makes it much easier to see your specialists’ availability at a glance.
You can manage multiple service specialties at once (goodbye having to edit each service schedule individually!)
You can drag-n-drop schedules around the page.
You can more easily configure complex recurring schedules.
Ready to learn more? Contact our customer-consultants HERE
WOW! and there’s MORE!
Pet-Care Staff SCHEDULER - Say goodbye to paper-calendars, google-docs and 3rd-party apps like ‘When To Work’. Gingr now has a fully integrated staff scheduling module. This can be added to any Gingr subscription-tier.
You can create recurring schedules for employees.
You can assign an employee’s shift to a “team”—this allows you to create teams like “Reception”, “Yard” and “Cleaning” and view your weekly schedule based on how you want to categorize your schedule.
Once a weekly schedule has been “published”, an email/sms will be sent to all employees with shifts for that week containing their schedule info.
Employees have their own page in Gingr where they can see their weekly schedule.
Online Customer-Portal Purchasing - we’ve added two new online purchase functions:
Customers can purchase retail items online for in-store pickup.
Customers can purchase recurring package-subscriptions and memberships.
Mobile-payments - available with our integrated card-processing, we now have a wireless hand-held mobile device to collect card swipes/dips! Our customers who are doing ‘curbside’ service are loving it! Learn more HERE
Loving it yet? Contact our customer-consultants HERE
But wait, there’s mooooooore:
Waitlist Function Upgrades - We have improved the functionality of the waitlist to allow you to better understand where your waitlisted reservations stand and if you have capacity to accept them.
New Location-Owner Rates - We’ve improved the way that Gingr handles location and owner rates to make it easier to change your prices.
Re-designed Hours of Operation Administration Page - you can now manage your hours of operation easily and without worrying about messing anything up.
Lodging Manager updates - We have improved the interface of the lodging manager page to allow you to more easily add, remove, and edit lodgings and areas from the Admin page. Now, you can bulk create lodgings and assign them to specific reservation types with ease!
Custom Icons Upgrade - We’ve upgraded Gingr to use FontAwesome Version 5. This brings almost 1,000 brand new icons that can be used in Gingr! To enable these pro/paid icons, you can purchase a license directly from Font Awesome (https://fontawesome.com/pro) for $60/year.
Full Search on Mobile - To enhance your experience in Gingr when using a mobile device, search on mobile has been changed to auto-populate results when searching for owners and pets (rather than having to click search to view your results). This will give you a more streamlined Desktop-to-Mobile experience.
Time Clock - We have improved the time clock functionality to allow for image captures when clocking in and out on mobile devices. We have also increased performance so that you can clock in and out more quickly than before and know exactly where you’re at in the process.
New Pricing Rule - We’ve added an Animal Species pricing rule type to help you make even more complex pricing strategies for your business. Another example of Gingr’s capacities in customizing complex pricing!
Ready to learn more? Contact our customer-consultants HERE
Mobile Friendly Credit Card Terminals Have Arrived!
A New WiFi Equipped, Mobile Ready Credit Card Terminal Has Arrived!
Gingr now supports the Ingenico iSMP4 (http://m.gingr.io/ismp4). This terminal is perfect for curbside check out, mobile groomers, and anyone who wants more mobility when collecting payments.
Check out the video!:
The price is $435 to purchase outright or $25/month to lease from CardConnect.
Features:
☑ EMV (chip card) ready
☑ Connects over WiFi
☑ Long lasting rechargeable battery
☑ Integrated 8" tablet + CC terminal case accessory (sold separately)
☑ Belt holster accessory (sold separately)
☑ Shoulder strap accessory (sold separately)
Want to order now? Awesome! Use the form embedded below to place your order.
Have any questions? We're here to help! Reach out to credit@gingrapp.com with any questions you may have.
Thanksgiving Holiday Support Hours
To allow our team to spend time with their families over the coming Thanksgiving holiday, support hours will be abbreviated as follows:
• Tuesday, November 20th — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
• Wednesday, November 21st — Regular support hours 7am-5pm MST for Live Chat and Email
• Thursday, November 22nd — No Live Chat support, Normal Email Support
• Friday, November 23rd — No Live Chat support, Normal Email Support
We appreciate your understanding and wish you the best during this holiday season!
The Pet Boarding and Daycare Expo East 2018 is almost here!
The Pet Boarding and Daycare Expo in Hershey, PA is coming up! Hosted by Barkleigh Productions, this is one of the top pet care conferences and expos for dog daycare, boarding kennels and grooming businesses.
Starting with a Keynote presentation on the “Guiding Principles for Success in Today’s Pet Care Industry”, this pet care conference hosts educational sessions, networking events and a robust trade-show / expo.
The Pet Boarding and Daycare Expo East 2018 schedule is HERE
Not registered yet? Register for the 2018 East Pet Boarding Expo HERE. You can sign up for one of the inclusive Packages, or select ‘a la carte’ for any tradeshow day or educational session.
See the Exhibitor List HERE and be sure to find Gingr' at Booth #6!
Complete information about the event can be found at https://www.petboardingexpo.com/ and at
We look forward to seeing you there!
Join us at the 2018 IBPSA conference next week!
Next week we’ll be at the 2018 IBPSA pet care conference and trade show in St. Louis, MO.
The event hosts speakers and exhibitors with services to help pet care professionals manage and grow their businesses.
Conference information can be found here: https://petcareconference.com/.
The 2018 conference schedule is here: https://petcareconference.com/2018-schedule/
Our very own Andy Gale will be presenting on Using Online Technologies To Increase Revenue, Efficiency and Customer Loyalty on both Tuesday and Wednesday of the show.
Be sure to visit Gingr at booth #35 at the show!
We encourage you also to meet up with our partners also exhibiting:
Professional Animal Care Certification Council: https://paccert.org/
Broadly: https://broadly.com/partner/gingr
Forget to arrange lodging at the pet care conference venue hotel? Contact the SHERATON WESTPORT CHALET HOTEL ST. LOUIS or that’s full, the nearby Double Tree has a first-come, first-serve block for conference participants.
We look forward to seeing you there!
New Support Site
We’ve upgraded our support site to a new platform in order to better serve you, our beloved customers. Benefits include:
Ability to upload images via chat.
Chat queue status, so that you can see your position in the chat queue.
Clean, consistent, knowledge base articles.
Improved search-ability so that you can find what you're looking for!
Knowledge base article suggestion inside your app.
We're very excited to share this with you, and can't wait to be able to provide improved support to those who matter most — you!
We've got you covered.
The look and feel of the support site is changing, but the stellar support that you count on is here to stay!
In the app, you’ll get a hold of us by clicking the widget in the bottom right corner:
Direct link to the new knowledge base: https://support.gingrapp.com
The new direct email is: support@gingrapp.com
Chat times will remain the same: 7:00 am - 5:00 pm MST
Over the coming weeks, we’ll continue to improve the support site by revamping training videos and updating existing articles. Our team is dedicated to your success and we hope that you will love this new support platform as much as we do!
Growing Your Pet Care Business - What's the right amount?
Dog daycares, boarding kennels and grooming businesses need a steady stream of new customers. Customer loss is inevitable - through no fault of yours - due to clients moving, pets aging or passing on, and new competition.
Additionally, your costs are constantly going up due to increases in payroll costs, increases in utilities and ongoing maintenance of your facility.
Customers are sensitive to any significant price increases, so the best way to ensure the long-term health of your dog daycare, boarding kennel or grooming business is to ensure that you have a steady stream of new customers coming in to buy your services.
Competition is increasing
As Laura Laaman of Outstanding PetCare notes, "you are (likely) not appreciating how much your market is being attacked" (Source)
Laaman continues in her article in Pet Boarding and Daycare Magazine:
..." pet parents have an abundance of choices. With the advent of such services as Rover.com and Wagwalking.com, pet care is only a few clicks away. Additionally, large chains, as well as the pet parent’s family and friends, are silently stealing your prospective and existing clients."
Leverage your inherent competitive advantages as a facility-based pet-care provider. Provide what no 'for hire' pet-walking apps like 'Wag' can provide (great, professional onsite care), while embracing the use of modern technology and industry innovations that will further enhance the value of your services.
use contemporary tools to support your growth and stability
Ensure you are gaining and retaining new customers steadily by providing them with a 21st-century service experience that today's customers expect. Use modern operational and marketing tools to ensure today's pet-owners (many of whom are very tech-oriented) find it easy to do business with you.
This includes:
- great online experiences like online self-registration,
- easy online booking,
- photo and video sharing,
- regular marketing outreach,
- additional value-added services (web-cams, educational materials) and experiences to retain your new customers.
Gingr software, for example, provides all of the above features and integrations to help you gain and retain customers, so that you stay ahead of any inevitable losses.
Learn How Modern Software Can Help in this 3-Minute Video
online Reputation is King
Ensure your online reputation is positive and current:
- ensure your business information is accurately represented on key business listing sites, maps, etc.
- ensure your online reputation is always at its best, with current positive reviews on Yelp, Facebook and Google.
Here are some resources on how to get reviews:
Get Positive Pet Care Reviews on Google
Automate Positive Review Generation and Online Listings with Broadly
Learn How to Get Reviews on Facebook
Want to learn more about how Gingr can help you grow and sustain your business? Contact a Customer Consultant here.
Flooring for Pet Care, Dog Daycare and Boarding Businesses
Like the software you choose for your dog daycare, grooming or boarding facility, flooring is where you really want to put your best foot (or paw) forward. Great pet care software streamlines your operations - great flooring is the foundation to streamlining likely the biggest maintenance aspect of your business.
We caught IBPSA's recent article on flooring for pet care facilities this month, and want to share some of the great information shared there by Jeff Adney of PermaTek coatings.
(Andy's little known fact: he sold commercial flooring in a previous job).
Primary considerations for the right flooring solution include:
1. Cleanliness and disease-control,
2. Aesthetics
3. Minimizing maintenance periods,
4. Safety, including slip-resistance,
5. Life-time costs (installation plus maintenance).
Types of Flooring for Pet Care
There are several floor-finishes suitable for dog daycare, boarding and grooming businesses:
1. Sealed Concrete - low upfront cost, opportunity for DIY
2. Polished Concrete - perceived low-maintenance often a misnomer
3. Resinous coatings - can provide a seamless, non-porous finish, up the wall cove as well
4. Seamless rubber coatings - provide benefits to staff and pets, including noise reduction, impact reduction, slip resistance and ease of maintenance
5. Artificial grass - popular for daycare and play-areas, these products will require proper sub-floor preparation and adequate ventilation
Disease-control, aesthetics, ongoing maintenance, safety and comfort are all important considerations when selecting flooring solutions for your pet care facility. Of course, cost is important as well, especially on-going maintenance costs. Be sure to consult with several commercial flooring professionals when selecting your pet business' flooring products.
Some resources:
Commercial Flooring Contractors Association
We hope this helps, and let us know what kind of flooring you select! - Andy
This Edition of Pet-Travel: Trains
Many dog daycare, boarding kennels and dog trainers and other pet care services provide transportation for their customers' pets. Most of this is over relatively short distances via van. Yet it turns out some are transporting pets over long distances. Many use airlines to 'transport' or 'ship' the pets to and from the facility, particularly for 'elite' dog training services.
Yet, there are many risks and discomforts for pets with air travel, and many airlines are 'tightening up their policies for flying with pets' (see author and blog below).
Fortunately, there are alternatives, including the network of train-travel services.
As MillionMileSecrets writes: "Traveling by train can be much safer than flying. That’s because air travel can put your pet at risk due to changes in air quality, air circulation, temperature, cabin pressure, and other environmental issues that could be harmful to your pet’s health!" (see blog link below).
Train travel - even for short distances - may also be preferable. Many public-transit trains allow pets to travel aboard, including the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains and many light-rail services across the country. Generally, expect that small dogs are allowed, if they are carried in containers. Larger dogs may only be allowed on light-rails if they are service animals, for example: https://www.soundtransit.org/Rider-Guide/getting-started/rules-riding
You can learn more about what train services allow dogs to travel, and what their requirements are in this very informative blog: https://millionmilesecrets.com/guides/traveling-with-pets-on-trains/
Whether you are transporting pets across long-distances, or just across town, take a look at how trains can help.
Additionally, much of this information may be helpful to your customers for use in private travel. Consider sharing Million Miles' blog link with your customers!
Happy travels! - Andy
Pet care businesses may benefit from artists' collaboration
We've posted information about pet-art here previously. Among the many pet-care services growing today, pet-art and specifically custom dog-art and portraits are in growing demand. Many pet lovers and owners tend to be art lovers as well. Who doesn't want a custom portrait of their 'fur-baby' on the wall or on a coffee mug?
Check out this recent article in the Denver Post about Denver-area artist's booming businesses doing dog-related art:
https://www.denverpost.com/2018/07/11/denver-area-artists-pet-paintings/
Pet art can be on on print, canvas and other mediums, and provides an opportunity for you to build your business' branding and income.
Dog daycares, boarding kennels and grooming services can find cooperative business opportunities with local (or global) artists. Perhaps there's an opportunity for you to help build your pet-care business:
1. Consider 'hosting' pet-art in your business and collect a commission on the sale of any art. Consider working with an artist (local or otherwise) to promote custom and other art.
2. Team up with a local artist to do onsite portraits of your customer's pets. Collect either rent or a per-piece commission.
3. Hire an artist to develop custom art for your facility and for resale.
Additionally, you might consider some of these artists' work to adorn your business' walls. Find an artist online that produces work that is similar to the branding and styles that you and your customers will resonate with.
For art's sake....
Independence Day Support Hours
In observance of Independence Day, Gingr's support team will have the following availability:
- Tuesday July 3 2018 - Chat Support 8AM-1PM Mountain, Normal Email Support Hours
- Wednesday July 4 2018 - No chat support, Normal Email Support Hours
- Thursday July 5 2018 - Normal Chat & Email Support Hours
Introducing 2-Way Texting
We're excited to announce the introduction of a highly requested feature in Gingr–2 way texting!
Now your customers can reply to text messages sent from Gingr and you can respond with a custom SMS. Select any customer at any time to send them a custom text message. Incoming texts are visible from anywhere in the app, and you can type up a custom response to send immediately. Customer communications have never been more efficient!
We plan on making this feature available to all customers (in the US and Canada) on July 18, 2018.
A handful of beta testers will start using the feature on June 25, 2018. (Thanks to all who volunteered! We've never gotten so many volunteers for beta testing so quickly!)
Aussies & Kiwis: If you're interested, it is possible to use this feature however pricing is much more expensive for texts within your home countries. Just as a guide, AU would be ~$0.07 per SMS and NZ would be ~$0.15 per SMS.
FEATURES
- Receive SMS from your customers
- Custom replies to SMS
- Send SMS to any phone number you'd like
- User notification when incoming SMS is delivered
- User permission for who is allowed to send custom SMS
- Get your own phone number for Gingr in your area code
- Dedicated SMS log
PRICING
- $50/location/year (if you already have a custom phone number for texts in Gingr, then you won't be charged again)
- $0.02/SMS received
- $0.00/SMS sent
How Online Reservations Can Save Your Summer
For most dog boarding and kennel businesses, summer is peak season. This is the time to maximize your revenue - without maximizing your time on the phone or email or duplicating data entry.
Don't let summer own you and your staff! Integrated online reservation management will save you time, help ensure you remain at full capacity, increase your income and cash-flow, and help you get back to some barbecuing or time on the beach.
Gingr customers see up to 90% (some even do 100%) of their reservation inquiries and requests for boarding reservations happen online, saving them HOURS PER DAY of staff time.
Many pet-care software programs tout online booking functions, though all are clearly not equal. Here are things to look for:
1. High level of branding-customization. Several cloud-based pet-care software programs will support online reservations, but the branding is centered around the software provider, not the business. We think that's wrong. We want to support your relationship with your customers!
Does the customer experience enhance your brand-relationship? Your online portal should at the minimum support your logo and branding, and enable you to further brand with your own css and java-scripts. See a couple examples here:
Bed Bath and Bonz and with some custom scripts: Disco Paws
2. High level of customization of forms and settings to make it seamless and easy for your customers to enter data you need. The trick here is to encourage your customers to enter as much information about themselves and their pets as you need, without creating 'barriers' to successful self-registration and reservation requests.
A couple of our competitors have some visually-appealing customer portals (aside from the branding aspect above), but it turns out their online forms and reservations leave a lot to be desired in terms of flow and ease of successful completion of reservation-requests.
For example, Gingr allows specific fields on the owner and animal forms to be required for specific reservation types (say, boarding as opposed to daycare). If a customer requests a particular reservation type (i.e, "Boarding") and has not filled out some required information, the system will bring up the form that needs to be completed, without navigating away from the booking page.
In contrast, one software program, in allowing customer to view or interact with the reservation form, they are first prompted to go fill out additional information. Once they fill in that information, they are not redirected back to the booking page, but have to navigate back to it themselves. (Software company) has no way of specifying that particular fields are required for particular reservation types. There are only blanket requirements. This leads to confusion and is a barrier to successful completion of the reservation-request, often leading to a phone call. It seems small, but can really add up in impact on your staff.
3. Up-selling Add-on Services. One of the great benefits of online reservation systems can be the 'pre-sale' of add-on services. In fact, Gingr's online reservations with add-on services amount to an average $24 increase in the reservation value (and that includes single-day daycare reservations!). This is a great way to boost your income.
4. Is it mobile-friendly? We noticed one software customers' online reservation page has to warn people that their portal is not mobile friendly. Ouch! 70% of online activity is from a mobile phone. Gingr is designed from the start to be mobile friendly. Make it easy for your customers to engage with you online!
The trick though is to make those add-on service options very clear to your customers, especially with respect to frequency. Do they really want you to play fetch with their dog every day, including the day of drop-off and pick-up? Get it wrong, and you either over-deliver and have an upset customer paying too much, or you undersell and miss out on income.
Gingr allows the customer to select from many frequencies, such as "every day," "every other day," etc., while other software online reservation systems provide no ability to select frequency of additional services.
Online reservation and pet-care software can streamline your operations, saving you time, money and boosting cash-flow. As you can see, 'it's all in the details', so ensure you find the right solution to help ensure your success in getting your summers back!
Want to learn more? Reach out to schedule a quick chat and get setup with a free demo HERE
