Yes — Smart Campaigns lets a pet boarding business send a targeted promotion to a specific client segment, and pairing that with Icons‘ behavior tags gives staff the context to recommend the right upsell in person too. PocketSuite powers 7,000+ service businesses, including 1,000+ pet service businesses, whose clients have collectively processed nearly $1 billion in income and scheduled over 9.2 million appointments. A senior-pet wellness offer and a calming enrichment upsell for an anxious dog don’t have to come from the same generic promotion sent to every client on your list.
Smart Campaigns Attaches a Promotion to a Real Segment
A Smart Campaigns message can include a discount or promotion tied to a specific service, sent to a defined group — clients renewing a package, clients who haven’t booked recently, or clients with an upcoming appointment. That structure is what makes a targeted upsell possible instead of a blanket discount blasted to your entire client list regardless of whether it’s relevant to them.
Icons Flag Who’s a Fit Before the Offer Goes Out
Icons don’t drive campaign targeting directly, but they give staff the same visual signal a campaign segment can’t fully capture — a senior tag or an anxious tag visible on a client’s record is exactly the kind of detail a front-desk team member can use to mention a wellness add-on or a calming enrichment option in person, at check-in or during a booking call, even outside of an automated campaign.
“Monthly Maintenance”: An Upsell Built Around a Life Stage
Georgette Lombardo, owner of Pawsitive Training ABQ, described her most successful upsell as one built specifically around a life-stage segment. “I call it Monthly Maintenance,” she said. “I recommend it most to our puppy clients. I tell them that once their puppy becomes an adolescent, the ‘teenage months’ can be quite challenging to navigate on their own.” That’s a targeted upsell in practice — offered to a specific segment of clients, at the moment it’s most relevant to them, rather than pitched to everyone.
Combining Automated Campaigns With In-Person Recommendations
The strongest upsell strategy usually pairs both approaches: a Smart Campaigns promotion reaching a defined segment automatically, and a staff member who can see an Icon-based flag making a relevant, in-person suggestion during check-in or a booking call. Neither one has to carry the whole strategy alone, and a pet boarding business doesn’t need a dedicated upsell-targeting engine to make either one work.
Track Whether the Campaign Actually Worked
Smart Campaigns tracks responses and income earned from each campaign, so a business can see whether a targeted promotion to a specific segment actually drove bookings, rather than guessing. That feedback loop is what lets a business refine which segments and offers are worth repeating, instead of running the same generic promotion every month regardless of results.
Add-On Revenue Is Where Targeting Pays Off Most
2026 Pet Boarding, Daycare & Resort Industry Benchmarking Report (International Boarding and Pet Services Association, The Dog Gurus, PocketSuite, and Researchscape International, 2026) found the widest performance gap in the entire study on add-on revenue: 72% of $1M+ pet-service businesses see add-on purchases on 4 or more of every 10 bookings, compared with just 18% of businesses under $150K in revenue, a 54-percentage-point gap between top and bottom tiers. Targeted upsell campaigns — offering the right add-on to the right segment instead of the same generic pitch to everyone — are one real way smaller operators can start closing that gap.
Timing an Offer Matters as Much as Targeting It
An offer aimed at the right segment can still fall flat if it lands at the wrong moment — a wellness upsell sent the day after a senior dog’s stay already ended is less useful than one sent while a booking is still being confirmed. Pairing Smart Campaigns’ segment targeting with a clear sense of when in the booking journey an offer is most relevant is what turns a targeted campaign into an actual upsell, not just a well-aimed email.
A Real Example: Senior Wellness and Calming Enrichment
A boarding business could build a Smart Campaigns group for clients with an upcoming reservation, attach a wellness-add-on promotion, and let staff use an Icons-based senior tag to decide which of those clients get a personal mention of the offer at check-in versus just the automated message. The same pattern works for an anxious-dog tag paired with a calming enrichment add-on — the automated campaign reaches everyone in the segment, and the icon gives staff the extra context to make the recommendation feel personal rather than generic.
Staff Buy-In Makes the Upsell Land Better
A promotion is more persuasive coming from a staff member who can point to a specific reason it fits a particular dog than from an automated message alone. Making sure staff understand both the campaign and the icon tags behind it — not just leaving the targeting to run silently in the background — is what turns an automated discount into a recommendation that actually feels earned.
Not Every Upsell Needs a Discount to Work
A targeted campaign doesn’t have to be built around a price cut — a message letting senior-pet clients know about a gentler play group option, or informing anxious-dog clients about a calmer boarding suite, can work as a targeted upsell even without a discount attached. Packages built around these specific needs can be just as compelling as a percentage off, especially for a client already motivated by their pet’s comfort rather than price.
Reviewing Results Shapes the Next Round of Campaigns
The businesses that get the most out of targeted upsells tend to treat each campaign as a small experiment, checking which segment and offer combination actually generated bookings before deciding what to run next. Over a few campaigns, that habit of reviewing results turns a one-off promotion into a repeatable playbook a business can reuse every season.
Don’t Let Targeting Slow Down a Simple Offer
Not every promotion needs elaborate segmentation to be worth sending — sometimes a straightforward offer to your whole client list, without any targeting at all, is the right call, especially for a general announcement like extended holiday hours. Save the more granular segment-and-icon targeting for the upsells where the extra specificity genuinely changes whether a client responds.
Matching the Offer to the Right Moment in a Client’s Journey
A targeted upsell tends to land better tied to a specific moment — right after booking, a few days before check-in, or immediately following a stay — rather than sent at a random point disconnected from the client’s actual relationship with your business. Smart Campaigns’ segment options already map to several of these natural moments, which makes choosing the right timing less about guesswork and more about matching an existing option to your goal.
A Segment-Based Approach Scales as Your Client List Grows
A small pet boarding business with a few dozen regular clients can manage targeted upsells almost by memory, but that approach breaks down once a client list grows into the hundreds. Building the habit of using Smart Campaigns’ segments and Icons’ tags now means the same targeted-upsell approach keeps working just as well after the business has grown well past the point of tracking clients by memory alone.
Start With Your Single Best-Performing Add-On
Rather than trying to build targeted campaigns for every add-on a business offers at once, picking the single most popular or highest-margin add-on and building one well-targeted campaign around it is a more manageable starting point most boarding businesses can act on this week.
Matching the Message to How a Client Already Talks About Their Pet
An upsell lands better when the language matches how a pet parent already describes their dog’s needs, rather than generic marketing copy dropped into every segment the same way. A message built around a senior dog’s comfort should sound different from one aimed at an anxious dog’s calm, even if both come from the same Smart Campaigns tool — a small difference in wording that a staff member familiar with the segment can usually spot right away.
Yes. Smart Campaigns lets you send a promotion or discount to a defined client segment, such as clients renewing a package or clients who haven’t booked recently.
Yes. Icons can flag attributes like a pet’s age or temperament on a client record, which staff can use to make a relevant, in-person recommendation even outside of an automated campaign.
Yes. Smart Campaigns tracks message responses and income earned from each campaign, so you can see which targeted offers are working.
A targeted upsell works best when it reaches the right client at the right moment, whether that comes from an automated campaign or a staff member who noticed the right flag. Start your 30-day FREE trial of PocketSuite and start building upsell campaigns around your own client segments.
