Smithland Creates Powerful Customer Experiences by Moving from Siloed to Unified
Smithland’s Challenges
When Smithland unified three independent franchises under one brand, they inherited a series of challenges. Each store came with its own isolated tech stack creating a mess of unconnected data. Thankfully every location had the same point of sale system, unfortunately, that POS didn’t integrate to the rest of their tech stack. None of these systems could talk to each other, leaving the marketing team with no reliable way to track customer behavior or measure performance. An attempt to bring these siloed data points together was thwarted due to the massive strain on bandwidth that it caused.
Additionally, the loyalty programs that were currently running were very outdated. Until 2024, Smithland relied on paper coupons that were mailed to customers for 65 cents a coupon. Many of these had the same universal code, which opened the door to widespread fraud. Customers could reuse offers repeatedly, and Smithland had no tools in place to identify or prevent abuse. The loyalty program wasn’t changing customer behavior or driving loyalty, it was just leaking revenue.
Customer data, although plentiful after acquiring multiple franchises, was practically useless. The team couldn’t distinguish between their primary segments, whether they were regular pet supply shoppers or seasonal garden buyers. Everyone received the same messages, regardless of what they actually bought. Loyal customers were frustrated by irrelevant promotions, and Smithland missed the chance to build deeper, more tailored relationships with its diverse audience. The Smithland team often receives frustrated messages from their customers. One regular responded to their marketing outreach with “Quit sending me offers for dog food, I don’t even have a pet”.
The strategy needed an overhaul and that's what it got thanks to Rachel Iazzetta and Clutch.
Introducing Clutch
Rachel Iazzetta, Smithland’s VP of Marketing, led the charge to find a smarter solution. Rachel knows the power of unified data and she knew they needed a unified platform that could connect data, power personalized messaging, and support long-term retention.
Clutch’s Customer Data Platform became the foundation for that transformation. It ingested data across all Smithland’s systems, bringing together in-store transactions, e-commerce activity, and existing customer data into one centralized source. With this unified view, Rachel’s team gained the insights they’d been missing—real-time customer behavior, buying trends, segmentation data.
The platform allowed for deeper audience segmentation, automatically identifying high-value shoppers, seasonal buyers, and churn risks. Smithland could now send promotions based on actual behavior, not guesswork. Pet product shoppers stopped receiving mulch discounts. Garden center loyalists were no longer pitched dog treats.
Rachel learned that this delineation between Pet owner segments and garden shoppers doesn’t necessarily represent a hard line between those 2 segments. Using Clutch’s AI (Affinity Segment tool) Smithland was able to target customers with the potential affinity to make purchases that they may not have shown prior intent for in the past. For example, a customer that purchases mulch is most likely a homeowner. Statistics show that 70% of homeowners have a pet, so by identifying these propensity metrics Smithland was able to create intelligent targeting criteria for cross sell.
The new loyalty and messaging tools built into Clutch allowed offers to be redeemed in-store, or online—whatever was most convenient for the customer. Redemption rates rose from 12 to 75 percent, a clear sign that offers were hitting the mark. Meanwhile, the offers were clearly driving revenue. The average cart value of a redemption sale increased from $48 to $68. These improvements in redemption and average spending together created a synergy that dramatically impacted customer lifetime value.
"The AI built into Clutch helped us understand our customers’ natural rhythms so we could act when it mattered, not when it was too late. That insight has been a game-changer for retention."
Smarter Lifecycle Engagement
Clutch didn’t just help Smithland understand who their customers were. It helped them know when to reach out and why. By using AI to analyze individual customer lifecycles, the system could detect patterns that wouldn’t have been obvious otherwise.
Rachel and her team could now distinguish between a customer who had truly churned and one who was simply out of season. For example, two shoppers who both hadn’t visited in a month may not be churning at the same time. A garden shopper who on average visits twice a month between March and July may not be at risk of churn if they haven’t returned for 4 weeks. But a regular kibble user who hadn’t been back in weeks? That was a red flag.
When someone went off-pattern, the system automatically triggered personalized messaging. A well-timed offer could bring them back in the door before they drifted away. This proactive approach to customer retention helped reduce churn and kept Smithland’s best customers engaged longer.
On the flip side of a customer lifecycle, Smithland was also able to identify top performing customers. Their top performing segment would consist of their top 10%, this customer segment resulted in 70% of all of their sales. When customers reached this threshold they were dynamically segmented into this audience group. This triggered a set of new rules for these individuals which included higher frequency of communications, higher value coupons, and a personal phone call if there was no initial interaction.
With these tools in place, Rachel didn’t just modernize Smithland’s marketing. She built a smarter, more responsive system—one that meets customers where they are and speaks to them like it actually knows them.
Smithland Cares
Another way Smithland is using Clutch technology to provide more powerful customer experiences is through their charitable program, Smithland Cares. This give back program provides a 3% return directly to an assigned shelter that the customer adopted their pet from. To learn more about Smithland Cares and how Clutch supported their charitable efforts, click here.
Conclusion
Under Rachel Iazzetta’s leadership, Smithland went from operating with disconnected systems and outdated tactics to running a fully integrated, data-driven marketing engine. With Clutch’s CDP, loyalty, and messaging tools, the team gained real-time insight into customer behavior, delivered targeted offers that worked, and built lasting loyalty through smarter engagement. By combining centralized data, intelligent automation, and a customer-first mindset, they’ve unlocked more value from every interaction, increased customer lifetime value, and set the stage for continued growth.
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