Here’s something every veterinary practice owner knows but doesn’t always want to admit: acquiring a new client costs five times more than keeping an existing one. Yet many clinics pour resources into marketing and new client promotions while their loyal pet parents quietly slip away, often without saying goodbye.
The math is simple. Sustainable growth doesn’t come from constantly filling a leaky bucket with new clients, it comes from keeping the ones you already have coming back, year after year.
Think about how you manage your own life in 2025. You can order groceries with a tap, book gym classes online, and track your health via an app.
Now consider what happens when a pet parent needs to schedule a vaccine appointment. They call during business hours (if they remember), wait on hold, play phone tag with reception, and hope they wrote down the appointment time correctly. Maybe they get a reminder card in the mail… if it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of bills and junk mail.
The disconnect is glaring. If your practice still operates like it’s 2015, you’re not just falling behind; you’re actively giving clients a reason to leave.
Pet parents in 2025 expect the same digital convenience from their veterinary clinic that they get from every other service in their lives. They want to book online when it’s convenient for them. They want text reminders they can’t lose. They want to message you a photo of a concerning symptom rather than describe it over the phone. They want their pet’s medical records accessible on their phone, not buried in a filing cabinet.
This isn’t about being demanding—it’s about living in a world where convenience and connectivity are the baseline, not the exception.
When clients don’t return, practices often assume it’s because they found somewhere cheaper or moved away. Sometimes that’s true. But more often, clients leave for quieter reasons:
Here’s what matters to clients in 2025: feeling valued, staying informed, and having easy access to care. When these needs aren’t met, they drift away, often to a practice that simply makes it easier to stay connected.
Is your clinic reactive or proactive? Take a quick assessment:
If you answered with the first option more often than the second, you’re operating reactively.
Most veterinary practices operate reactively, waiting for clients to call with problems, sending annual reminders, and hoping for the best. But this approach has a fatal flaw: it places the entire burden of remembering, scheduling, and following up on the pet parent. When they’re juggling work, family, and countless other responsibilities, your clinic becomes easy to forget.
Proactive engagement flips this model. Instead of waiting for clients to reach out, you anticipate their needs and stay connected throughout the year. Automated follow-ups after appointments. Timely reminders before vaccines are overdue. Educational content that positions your clinic as a trusted partner. Wellness plans that transform one-off annual visits into ongoing relationships with regular touchpoints and built-in preventive care. Proactive engagement means being present throughout the client journey, not just during the appointment.
The shift from transactional to relational care is exactly what builds lasting loyalty. And with the right tools for automating the routine tasks, your team is free to focus on doing just that.
Let’s be honest: nobody enjoys calling to book appointments anymore. Pet parents want to see your availability and book appointments at 10 PM on a Tuesday without calling reception. They want to reschedule online if something comes up. They want confirmation they can reference anytime. It frees up your front desk, eliminates scheduling errors, and gives clients the autonomy they expect.
A missed appointment is a loss for everyone: the patient misses crucial care, the clinic loses revenue, and your schedule gets thrown off. Smart reminders go beyond a single phone call. They use a multi-channel approach—text, email, and push notifications—to ensure your message gets through. By automating reminders for upcoming appointments, vaccinations, and wellness visits, you’re proactively managing the pet’s health and protecting your clinic’s bottom line.
Telemedicine isn’t here to replace in-person exams. It’s here to extend your care beyond the exam room. Offering video consultations provides incredible value and convenience for situations that don’t require a hands-on assessment. Think post-op follow-ups, behavioral consultations, triage to determine if a visit is necessary, or dietary advice. It shows you respect your client’s time and are willing to meet them where they are, strengthening the bond between them and your practice.
You can give the most brilliant discharge instructions, but the moment a client walks out the door, they’re likely to forget half of what you said. Digital visit summaries solve this problem instantly. By sending all recommendations, diagnoses, instructions, medications, and even medical attachments directly to the client’s phone, you ensure they have a clear, accurate record of what they need to do. This dramatically improves compliance, leading to better patient outcomes and fewer panicked follow-up calls.
If you’re not your clients’ primary source of information, you’re leaving the door wide open for the internet to take your place. Proactive clinics combat misinformation by providing their own library of curated, vet-approved educational content. Whether it’s articles, videos, or how-to guides, delivering this information through a client portal or app positions you as the trusted authority in their pet’s health, keeping them engaged and bonded to your clinic long after the visit ends.
Wellness plan management built into your PIMS makes it easy to enroll clients, track services, and ensure they’re getting full value from their membership. By bundling essential preventative services—like exams, vaccines, and diagnostics—into a predictable monthly payment, you make comprehensive care more affordable and accessible for clients. This encourages year-round engagement, improves patient health, and creates a stable, recurring revenue stream for your practice.
This is where it all comes together. A dedicated Pet Parent App, like the one offered by Digitail PIMS, consolidates all these proactive tools into a single, intuitive hub. It’s the ultimate loyalty driver, giving clients a “vet in your pocket” experience.
With an app, clients can:
By putting everything the client needs right at their fingertips, you make your clinic indispensable.
Wondering how to get clients on board? Dr. Chris Simmons of Simmons Vet Clinic shared his experience in driving app adoption, turning it into a cornerstone of his practice’s success. Read his story here.
Digitail is the all-in-one veterinary software that runs your entire practice—saving you time, keeping clients happy, and helping your business grow.
