Adoption Program FAQs
Weekly Webinar
You are more than welcome to join us for our Weekly Marketing Webinar, every Thursday at 3pm EST. Our team will go over how to both use and market Adoption Programs to your customers and community. During the presentation you can ask questions in our chat. At the end of each webinar we open up the floor for a live Q&A.
Checkout our
Facebook Events for the registration links for future webinars. You are also welcome to comment on and share these event posts.
To watch recordings and view the group chats of past webinars checkout the
Pet Adoption Webinars article in our Knowledge Base.
1. How do I find the Adoption Programs to Enroll?
Under the
Astro Offers menu, you will see
Available Pet Adoption Programs. Click a program and view the terms, and Enroll.
More info here.
Click here to go straight to the Available Pet Adoption Programs on your Astro Account so you can start enrolling.
2. Where do my Adoption Programs go after I Enroll?
Under the
Astro Offers menu, you will see
Enrolled Pet Adoption Programs. From here you can Unenroll from a program or you can edit the distributor with whom you are enrolled with.
More info here.
3. What can I include in an Astro Adoption Bundle?
The Adoption Programs are grouped according to specific Categories - Kibble, Cans/Wet Diets, Freeze-Dried/Raw Diets, Hay, Treats, Supplements, Supplies and Toys. We may add more Categories as new programs are added.
A New Pet Owner can redeem ONE product from each Category.
Depending on the Adoption Programs you are enrolled in you may have all Categories represented, or you may only have some; you also may have multiple Brand options together in a Category, or you may have one.
When you Redeem an Adoption Bundle for a Customer under Checkout, Astro will allow you to select one item per Category based on the programs you are enrolled in, or you can select No Free Item From this Category if the customer is not interested in the options available to them.
4. Can I enroll in more than one brand per Category?
Yes. You can enroll in as many Brands that are available, but you are only able to give away one product per Category per Adopted Pet. Essentially what you are doing is providing your New Pet Parent with a choice. They are choosing one Brand/Product for each Category. To make this choice simpler to make you could put together some examples of Bundles. For instance, here is a Bundle with a raw food option, whereas here is a Bundle with a Kibble option.
5. What qualifies as an Adopted Pet, and in what time frame does the adoption need to take place within?
Current Adopted Pets - Dog, Cat, Rabbit, Chinchilla, Hamster, Guinea Pig, Rat, Mouse, Gerbil. There will be more I'm sure once new programs become available.
Time Frame - We feel that any pet that was adopted in 2020 should be eligible for an Adoption Bundle.
Animals adopted from a Shelter or a 501c3 Rescue qualify. As well as animals who were saved from a life as a stray or adopted from another home also qualify. We ask that you use your best judgement in the spirit of this great promotion and with thanks to the brands who are funding the Adoption Bundles.
6. Where do I record the pet's adoption qualifications for this program so the brands giving away these free goods know this is a legit adopted pet?
While redeeming the Bundle under
Checkout you will be prompted to type the
Adoption Agency's Name, or how the pet was adopted in the
New Pet Redemption Form. There is also an
Additional Notes field where you can explain the circumstance which brought this pet to their new family.
More info here.
Adoption Date - If the pet was adopted today then Astro will automatically record the Date of Adoption as the date you redeemed the Bundle for the customer. If the Adoption Date occurred prior to Today then it can be added to the Additional Notes field.
More info here.
Pet Name - There is a line to record this info on. If you want to save the Pet's Name and Species on the customer's Pet Owner account, check the box below this field.
More info here.
Pet Owner Email Address - Some Brands will have a "Bounce Back Coupon" associated with their Adoption Program that will automatically be sent to the Pet Owner via email after the Bundle has been redeemed. If an Adoption Program has a Bounce Back Coupon it will say so on the Description of the Program and on the Program Card under Checkout. The Pet Owner can ONLY redeem their Bounce Back Coupon at your store. This will hopefully entice this new pet parent to return to your store, which will in turn give you the opportunity to build that relationship and hopefully earn you a loyal customer for life. This is what this program is all about! See
Bounce Back FAQ below for more info.
Or click here for even more info.
8. How do I Checkout a new Adoption Bundle for a customer?
Astro has added several SKUs or items to our database. Some examples include:
astrodog,
astrocat,
astrorabbit, etc
. For example, all you need to do is start
typing astrodog while under a customer's Pet Owner account and you will see it appear on the grey search bar. Hit
Enter on your keypad to trigger the New Pet Adoption Form.
More info here.
9. How long with the programs be available? Do they expire?
Each brand has agreed to participate for an undetermined period of time. The general idea is the program will be available while supplies last, and that will be up to each brand to determine. You will be notified if a brand decides to unpublish their program due to maxing their budget. Since there are so many options for each Category and more coming, we hope you will be able to rotate brands to replace a program that was expired.
Astro Adoptions is a unique platform, and many of the specific guidelines that you might be accustomed to are currently pretty loose so we can launch these program during a time in which they will be of the most help to you and your customers. We expect to expand further and clarify the platform going forward.
10. What if a new pet owner adopts more than one pet within a short time frame?
A New pet owners can only redeem one Adoption Bundle per species (dog, cat, rabbit, guinea pig) every 365 days. If a new Pet Owner adopts, let's say, a bonded pair of Rabbits, then those rabbits will need to share one Rabbit Adoption Bundle- which is fine because they love each other after all.
A New Pet Owner cannot redeem more than one New Pet Adoption Bundle for the Same Species within 365-days of redemption.
Example: If a customer redeems a Dog Adoption Bundle on Oct 1st, 2022 they will not be able to redeem another Dog Adoption bundle until 365 days have passed from that redemption date.
Bounce Back Coupon FAQs
1. What are Bounce Back Coupons?
These coupons are sent to your newly adopted pet owners after they redeem a New Pet Adoption Bundle at your store. They are designed to encourage these customers to return to your store to purchase the same brand items that they chose to redeem in their Adoption Bundle. When they return they will redeem a coupon for $off a specific qualifying item, and in some cases they will get a punch on a Frequent Buyer Card. This platform is designed to create new loyal customers for you and the brands you choose to carry.
2. If there a Bounce Back Coupon for every Brand?
Nope. If there is a Bounce Back Coupon you will see mention of in in the Program Information that you see when you enroll in it, and it will say so on the Adoption Program Card under Checkout while you are redeeming it for a customer. The Terms & Conditions on all Adoption Programs will mention the possibility of a Bounce Back Coupon being added, but doesn't necessarily mean there is one associated with the program at that time.
3. How do I know the details of each Bounce Back Coupon?
Under the Astro Offers menu there is a section called MFG Sponsored Coupons. Here you will see the Coupons listed and exactly the items that are included in each one. You will also be able to see whether a coupon is Active, Pending, or Redeemed by the specific customers they were sent to.
4. When are these Coupons sent to the customer?
Each Coupon will be a little different, but generally speaking, they will be sent to the qualifying customer 10-days after the customer redeemed their Adoption Bundle for that brand. Check the details under MFG Sponsored Coupons (located under the Astro Offers menu) for more details.
5. How are the Coupons sent to the customer?
Astro automatically sends the Coupon via email. The email is just to alert the customer to the existence of the coupon and to encourage them to return to your store in a timely fashion (within 30-days). As soon as the email alert is sent to the customer their customer-specific Coupon will become Active and will appear on their Pet Owner checkout screen as Pending.
6. How do I redeem the Coupon for the customer?
It's as simple as looking up their Pet Owner account in Astro. There you will see their Pending Coupon(s). To redeem them all you need to do is scan an item that qualifies for the Coupon onto their account and the Pending Coupon that matches that item will become redeemable.
More details here.
7. Are these Coupons available anywhere the brand is available?
No way! These Coupons are ONLY available at your location. They are specific to both the Customer and your Store. The email that will be sent to the customer will clearly state that the Coupon can only be redeemed at your store. This platform is first and foremost all about building loyalty at your store.
8. Can I Opt-Out of Bounce Back Coupons, or a specific Bounce Back Coupon?
Nope. If a Bounce Back Coupon is part of a Brand's Adoption Program then you cannot opt-out. When you enroll in an Adoption Program you are choosing to enroll in both the Adoption Program and the Bounce Back Coupon associated with it. The most important piece of this platform is that is encourages the customer to return to your store- rather than purchase the same item they just redeemed for Free from you, from a large online retailer (rhymes with Pooey). That wouldn't be cool.
These Coupons will include items that you carry at your store, so your customer will have options to choose from when they return.
10. How do I receive credit for Bounce Back Coupons?
Coupon redemptions are automatically sent to the distributor that you selected when you enrolled in that Brand's Adoption Program. Like any program on Astro, you can change your chosen distributor by locating the specific program under Astro Offers - Enrolled Adoption Programs - and clicking the name of the current distributor with whom the program is enrolled.
Most, if not all of, Bounce Back Coupons are
Rebate Programs, meaning they reward $off. So those Redemption Reports will populate under
Distributor Rebate Batches located under your
Reports menu. From here they are accessible to your distributor for crediting.