Post-purchase email for pet brands

Pet food is a perishable consumable bought on a monthly cycle, and the first week decides whether the buyer refills or returns. Switch a dog's food cold turkey and you get diarrhea, a one-star review, and a chargeback. This email does three jobs in that window: hand over the feeding chart, teach the 7-day transition, and set the autoship before the bag runs out.

**Trigger.** Fire on Fulfilled Order (Klaviyo) or Delivered, filtered to consumable categories like food, treats, toppers, supplements, and dental chews. Exclude one-time gear such as beds, crates, leashes, and toys, which do not get a feeding guide. If you collect a pet profile at signup (species, weight, breed), branch on it so the portion table matches the actual animal.

**Timing.** Two to three days after fulfillment. The bag lands on the doorstep and the email lands the same morning with the chart and the transition schedule. Sooner and the box has not arrived. Later and the owner already guessed at a portion or switched the food overnight and paid for it the next morning.

**Offer.** Lead with the feeding guide, not a coupon. The chart is the offer. Convert on the refill: an autoship timed to the bag size. A 24 lb bag of Grain-Free Salmon lasts a 50 lb dog about four weeks, so the refill ships at day 28, right as the bowl starts to empty. Pet brands that move first-time buyers onto autoship typically see 2 to 4x higher 12-month LTV, because the reorder lands before the owner opens Chewy in a panic. Post-purchase emails in pet routinely open at 45 to 60 percent, the highest-open message you will send a customer.

**Copy angle.** Name the pet. Give exact portions by body weight, not "feed as needed." Then teach the transition, the one piece of pet-specific copy that generic ecommerce templates miss and the one that prevents the return.

Subject: "Bella's food is here. Here's how to switch her over safely." Preheader: "Feeding chart plus a 7-day transition. No upset stomach."

Transition block (this is the vertical's secret weapon): Days 1 to 2: 75% old food, 25% Bramble & Bark. Days 3 to 4: 50 / 50. Days 5 to 6: 25% old food, 75% Bramble & Bark. Day 7: 100% new food. A sudden switch causes the digestive upset that drives most new-food returns. Spell out the ramp and you keep the customer.

Feeding block (real numbers, standard 8 oz cup): 10 to 25 lb dog: 1 to 1.5 cups a day. 25 to 50 lb dog: 1.5 to 2.5 cups a day. 50 to 80 lb dog: 2.5 to 3.5 cups a day. 80 lb and up: 3.5 cups plus 0.5 cup per 10 lb. Split the daily amount into two meals.

**One complementary product.** Cross-sell the topper the moment it matters most, because it goes on the food the customer just bought. A freeze-dried salmon topper or a pumpkin digestive topper, full price, one line. Do not stack three SKUs. The cross-sell converts because it sits inside the routine you just taught.

**CTA.** One button, one job: "Start Bella's autoship, save 15%." Subtext carries the offer: "Ships every 28 days. Skip, swap, or cancel anytime." If the buyer already subscribes, suppress the autoship block with a subscription-status filter and show a reorder cross-sell instead.

Tune these levers: 2-day post-fulfillment send, 28-day autoship cadence, 15% subscribe-and-save, 7-day transition window, one topper cross-sell.

Pet emails lean image-heavy, big happy-dog hero shots and bag photography, which is exactly where inbox rendering breaks. The HTML behind this template is built to survive the worst clients.

**Nested HTML tables, not divs or flex.** A 600px wrapper table holds section tables, which hold column tables. The feeding chart is itself a table, so the weight-to-cup rows line up in Outlook the same way they line up in Gmail. Outlook 2007 through 2019 uses Word's rendering engine, which ignores flexbox and CSS grid entirely.

**Inline CSS on every element.** Gmail clips or strips head style blocks in certain contexts. Inline styles on each td, p, and a survive. The MJML below compiles to fully inlined HTML.

**Bulletproof VML button for Outlook.** Word's engine ignores border-radius and padding on an anchor, so buttons collapse or lose their click target. The CTA wraps the link in a VML rectangle inside conditional comments, so Outlook draws a real, clickable, full-width rectangle. Gmail and Apple Mail see the normal anchor and render the rounded button.

**Live text, not images.** The feeding chart, transition steps, and CTA are selectable text. Live text scales on mobile, translates for screen readers, and stays legible when Apple Mail inverts colors in dark mode. An image-based feeding chart would turn into a dark, unreadable rectangle at night.

**Dark-mode color-scheme meta.** A color-scheme meta plus a prefers-color-scheme media query swap the cream cards and forest headings for dark greens and light text, so the email does not blind a customer scrolling at 6am with a dog asleep on their lap.

**One mobile media query.** A single max-width:600px block stacks the topper columns side by side and bumps the feeding-chart type size. One well-tested query beats a stack of nested queries that older Android clients mangle.

**Web-font fallbacks.** The stack falls back to Helvetica Neue, then Arial, then sans-serif. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo strip web fonts entirely, so the fallback is what most recipients actually read. The layout never depends on a custom font loading.

1. **Get the HTML.** Copy the MJML below into mjml.io and export, or copy the compiled HTML straight from the editor.

2. **Klaviyo.** In your post-purchase flow, add an email, switch the content to a Source or HTML block, and paste. Set the trigger to Fulfilled Order with a Product Category condition for Dog Food, Treats, and Toppers, so beds, crates, and leashes never trigger a feeding guide.

3. **Mailchimp.** Create an email, choose Code Your Own, then Paste in Code, and paste the HTML.

4. **Swap the brand layer.** Replace "Bramble & Bark" with your brand, the recipe name with yours, the hex values with your forest and cream, the logo URL, and the autoship URL with your Recharge, Stay AI, Ordergroove, or native checkout link.

5. **Wire the merge tags.** - Klaviyo: {{ person|lookup:'pet_name'|default:'your pup' }} for the pet name (a custom profile property you populate at signup), {{ first_name|default:'friend' }} for the owner, and {{ event.extra.line_items.0.product.name }} for the recipe. Point the autoship button at your subscription page pre-filled with the variant: /pages/autoship?variant={{ variant_id }}. - Mailchimp: *|FNAME|* for the owner, *|MERGE:PETNAME|* for the pet (create it as a custom merge field), and *|PRODUCT_TITLE|* for the recipe.

6. **Use a subscription-status filter.** In Klaviyo, exclude Subscription First Order and Active Subscription so you do not offer autoship to a customer who already subscribes. Show those subscribers a reorder cross-sell instead.

7. **Test before you ship.** Send a preview to Gmail web, Gmail iOS, Apple Mail in dark mode, and Outlook desktop. Confirm the feeding-chart rows line up, the transition steps render, and the autoship button is clickable. Check the preheader shows under the subject line.