Building Stronger Relationships with Independent Veterinary Practices

About the Client

Our client is a leading provider of respectful pet cremation and veterinary waste management services. With five sites across the UK, they have been supporting veterinary practices with dependable and professional solutions for more than 45 years.

Following an analysis of leading firms in the industry, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) initiated steps to promote a more competitive market environment and support the growth of smaller, independent practices. This increase in independent practices whilst creating new opportunities, also intensified competition, prompting our client to boost its B2B presence in this changing market.

Blueberry played a key role in these efforts, targeting the expanding sector in this crucial window of opportunity, generating leads to enhance their market presence, and building partnerships with veterinary professionals.

What They Needed

Our client wanted to boost brand awareness, engage hard-to-reach decision makers like Practice Managers, and build a robust database to support future marketing. High-value meeting opportunities for their Business Development Managers were also a key goal. With limited internal resources for outreach, Blueberry was brought in to clean and organise their data, gather key market insights and generate qualified leads.

We mapped the provider landscape in detail – tracking veterinary practices, identifying contract renewal patterns, waste collectors, pet cremation providers, and decision-making processes. This groundwork generated hundreds of warm opportunities for our client, powering a more effective appointment-setting process for the sales team.

What We Did

Blueberry designed and delivered a targeted lead generation campaign that combined data strategy, market intelligence, and direct outreach.

Our client shared a database of 974 independent veterinary practices within a 30-mile radius of their UK sites. Blueberry cleansed and prioritised this data, identifying 905 decision-makers and capturing 862 verified email addresses.

Our multichannel approach included:

  • Building initial awareness through targeted introductory emails sent via a dedicated campaign account.
  • Proactive calling to engage Practice Managers, develop relationships, and gather intelligence on existing providers, contract terms and provider loyalty
  • Focused appointment setting once the database was fully built

Given Practice Managers and Lead Vets are often away from their desks during work hours and hard to reach by phone, Blueberry also launched a supporting email campaign to complement our calling efforts.

What We Achieved

Campaign Highlights

  • 604 conversations held
  • 78% of contacts progressed positively down the buying cycle
  • 38 qualified appointments booked for the sales team
  • 862 new or verified email contacts added to database
  • 57 long-term opportunities earmarked for recontact

“Blueberry Marketing were a pleasure to work with. They kept us fully updated throughout, showed great enthusiasm, and asked the right questions to ensure they fully understood our brief and action points. Their feedback was clear, timely, and their communication was always prompt. We’d be very happy to work with them again.”

Director of Sales & Client Services

Initially, both parties hesitated to use HTML emails due to spam concerns, especially for public sector domains. But since most independent practices use standard business or personal domains (like Gmail and Yahoo), Blueberry tested a HTML email campaign. The success was significant, achieving a 98.2 per cent delivery rate and a 34 per cent open rate, prompting recipients to complete Expression of Interest (EOI) forms and supporting our calling efforts to generate leads and gather strategic insights.

By combining intelligence gathering with email warm-up, we created more engaging conversations when shifting to appointment setting. This helped us secure 38 qualified appointments – demonstrating the effectiveness of our groundwork in building a rich database.

Agile Response

When the campaign faced and unexpected pause, we pivoted quickly – targeting existing customers for a short period. Blueberry made support calls to 47 customers, identifying 21 follow-up actions, all swiftly handed to the client services team for follow-up.

In Summary

Our campaign showed that a consultative, intelligence-led approach can unlock valuable opportunities in the independent veterinary sector. Blueberry successfully developed a strong pipeline of warm leads, secured qualified appointments and enhanced customer relationships. By combining smart data, proactive communication, and genuine collaboration, Blueberry helped our client strengthen their presence in a competitive, fast-changing market – and paved the way for long-term growth.

Let Blueberry Marketing Solutions help your business thrive. Call us on +44 (0)113 487 7013 or email us at info@blueberryms.co.uk

[Copyright © 2025 Angela Kunawicz & Blueberry Marketing Solutions. All rights reserved.]

 

Contact

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Telephone:

+44 (0)113 487 7013

Email:

info@blueberryms.co.uk

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