Dos and Don’ts of Successful Reward Programs
Most convenience stores share similar reasons for having a reward program – such as improving profitability and enticing customers to make...
4 min read
Below are six tactics convenience stores can use to enroll more customers in their loyalty programs, both at the beginning of the program and ongoing.
1. Increase Your Signage, Both In-Store and Outside
When it comes to convenience stores (c-stores), there’s a discouraging but true fact: around 75% of customers go to your fuel pumps but never make it into your store! That’s a big number, but there’s also plenty of opportunity with these customers.
You have people standing still outside of your store for two to five minutes, just looking for something to hold their attention while they pump gas. The answer? Signage!
Promoting your convenience store’s loyalty program—and its fuel benefits—is a great way to encourage people at the pump to come in and sign up. Coca Cola did a study that concluded 31% of people who noticed signage at the pump were influenced to go in and make a purchase.
Imagine if that signage encouraged them to go in and get something (your loyalty program benefits) for free! Putting up signage to promote your loyalty program, especially around your pump, can have a great deal of impact for minimal effort.
No matter how many customers you have, you’ll get a low percentage signing up if your loyalty program isn’t clear to them—including how you communicate it on your website. What are the benefits? How do customers earn those benefits? What kinds of outcomes can they expect?
You need to provide the answers to those questions in one simple sentence—and it needs to be a sentence that your employees know and understand so that they can share it often.
Here are seven more questions to answer when thinking about how to convey your loyalty program’s value:
Your entire loyalty program—app download and signup to engagement and ascension—needs to be simple for all customers to understand. Your value proposition (what they get out of loyalty program participation) needs to be clear and valuable and they need to easily understand how to enroll and participate.
The best c-store loyalty programs have something beneficial for each segment of your target audience but should also be especially attractive to those fuel-only customers to lure them into your store and increase their average spending. Be sure to have a compelling welcome reward like bonus points for signing up or even a discount on fuel for the first 30 days so customers are excited to join.
Your employees have the most interactions with your customers and it’s important that they not only be ambassadors for your brand, but also for your loyalty program. Your loyalty membership rates will skyrocket if you incentivize employees to talk about your program with customers.
Some stores have found success letting their employees “try out” their rewards program for a limited time to see the benefits and experience it for themselves. This gives them an insider’s look at why customers should sign up and makes their endorsement much more genuine.
When you launch your convenience store loyalty program, it needs to be a major event. And not just for a few days—you should make your initial launch of the program an exciting, well-publicized promotion that lasts at least a few weeks, if not a full month.
During this time, signage should be especially prominent, employees should be talking about the program with every single customer, and you should also consider offering special rewards bonuses for people who sign up within your launch promotion period. Getting a large volume of people to sign up quickly creates momentum for the program and helps you reap rewards later.
One of the lowest-cost, highest-engagement enrollment incentives for employees is contests. You can hold a contest for who gets the most signups during the initial program launch, but you should also consider running a monthly contest so enrollment growth continues well past the initial launch.
A contest increases your employees’ excitement about the program, which makes it more exciting for customers, too. When you’re planning a contest, first, be sure your employees fully understand your loyalty program since they’re certain to get questions.
You also need to make sure the contest prizes are valuable to your employees. Some Paytronix clients have seen success giving away gift cards, concert tickets, and even paid days off for top program enrollees. Remember that high-value prizes mean more enthusiastic employees, which in turn leads to more members enrolled and higher revenue.
When you’re trying to get as many customers to enroll in your convenience store’s loyalty program as possible, you’re best served by giving them as many ways to enroll as possible. After all, people do what’s most convenient for them—so you want to have made things convenient. Here are seven enrollment methods:
Paytronix helps our convenience store customers identify their greatest revenue opportunities and build custom loyalty programs that help them meet their unique goals. Book a demo now to learn more.