The Best Is Yet to Come: How An Animal Poison Control Center Built a Strategic Marketing Foundation and Framework

Graphic titled “Client Story” featuring Katie Michels, VP of Sales, Marketing, Client Services at Pet Poison Helpline. Includes Pet Poison Helpline logo with paw print, Katie’s headshot, and Authentic Brand logo on a teal patterned background.

“Working with Authentic has been extremely beneficial. The flexibility, the network, the tools, the structure—it’s exactly what we needed. 100% worth it.”

Katie Michels, VP of Sales, Marketing, Client Services, Pet Poison Helpline

Pet Poison Helpline at a Glance

  • Company size: ~300 employees
  • Industry: Health / Medical / Pharmaceutical
  • Business model: B2B, B2C, Privately Held, Runs on EOS
  • Headquarters: Bloomington, Minnesota
  • Authentic Growth Drivers:
    • Sharpen Market Focus and Value Proposition
    • Make Tactical Marketing Execution More Strategic
    • Improve and Optimize the Marketing Technology Stack

The Problem

Pet Poison Helpline® (PPH) is a 24/7 animal poison control center, serving both pet owners and veterinary professionals in moments of crisis. After 20 years of organic growth, the organization is a trusted name in animal safety — but lacked a clear marketing strategy to support and scale its impact.

As VP of Sales, Marketing & Client Services, Katie Michels recognized the gap: “We all wore so many hats and had competing priorities. Marketing wasn’t anyone’s primary focus—and it showed.”

What started as a tactical need for marketing leadership quickly became a transformational partnership, with Authentic® bringing clarity, alignment, and structure to a vital but underutilized function.

The Solution

Authentic paired PPH with a Fractional CMO who quickly immersed herself in the business — listening to customer calls, meeting with leadership, and evaluating the marketing landscape for opportunities and operational readiness.

Key strategic priorities included:

  • Defined core customer personas and journeys to sharpen targeting and identify experience gaps.
  • Established a brand and messaging foundation aligned with PPH’s strengths and differentiators.
  • Built a measurable marketing scorecard with KPIs for email engagement, digital acquisition, loyalty, and partner growth.
  • Evaluated and realigned marketing partners — especially for paid media and SEO — to match strategic needs.
  • Piloted new services based on research, ensuring evidence of customer demand before investing.

“We’d never actually documented our messaging, voice, or brand promise. Once we followed the methodology and got it on paper, we could finally see where we needed to refine—and where we needed to focus.”

Katie Michels, VP of Sales, Marketing, Client Services, Pet Poison Helpline

The Results

Authentic’s methodology and flexible leadership structure helped PPH quickly shift from intuition to intention — building organizational trust and gaining early traction.

Highlights included:

  • A new ability to filter ideas strategically, using brand, customer, and growth alignment as criteria.
  • Increased cross-functional collaboration, especially with IT and operations, to support data and system integration.
  • Activation of quarterly customer listening sessions, ensuring real-time insight stays at the heart of planning.
  • A successful pilot planning framework to de-risk investment and validate service demand before launch.

“Working with Authentic has been extremely beneficial. The flexibility that you have to the value that you bring has been exceptional.”

Katie Michels, VP of Sales, Marketing, Client Services, Pet Poison Helpline

Impact & What’s Ahead

While the transformation continues, PPH is already operating with greater clarity, focus, and confidence. Teams are aligned, partners are strategic, and decisions are grounded in data. And they’re just getting started.

Next steps include:

  • CRM transformation: A company-wide Salesforce implementation to integrate data, track customer journeys, and enable personalized engagement
  • Digital channel expansion: With performance data now in hand, PPH plans to scale investment in paid media and SEO
  • Experience innovation: Launching new customer-facing functionality, including chat, to open new channels for interaction and growth
  • Replicating success: Applying lessons learned from the PPH side to parent company SafetyCall®