Kim Otocki

Of all of the possible factors that can impact the success of your convenience store’s loyalty program, enrollment is far and away the most important.

After all, you can increase program participants’ engagement and you can increase their spends, but if your enrollment numbers are low, neither of those other activities will have nearly as much impact.

So, it’s clear that not only do you need to attract as much attention as possible when you launch a convenience store loyalty program, but you also need to be continually enrolling new customers to keep your program growing and maintain its positive impact on your bottom line.

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

It’s a discouraging but true fact: 75% of customers go to your fuel pumps but never make it into your store! That’s a big number, but there’s also a huge opportunity in that. 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! […]

If 2018 continued the trend of disruption for convenience stores—with things like Amazon Go stores opening at a steady pace and frictionless shopping gaining traction—convenience store marketing trends for 2019 all have to do with capitalizing on those disruptions.

Our team has identified seven can’t-ignore trends that represent a tremendous opportunity to increase brand loyalty and increased revenue. Planning for (and taking advantage of) these marketing strategies now will help ensure that your store’s biggest “trend” for 2020 is consistent growth.

(To get a detailed description of each trend, along with ideas for how to make the most of them, click here to access our free, on-demand training called, “Convenience Store Trends: Expert Predictions for 2019.) […]

It’s no secret that consumers want buying things to be easy, fast, and, most of all, convenient. After all, there’s a reason “convenience stores” became popular to begin with.

Unfortunately, today’s average c-store’s convenience factor has been overtaken by other kinds of stores, not to mention websites and apps. But that also means there’s a huge opportunity for convenience stores to reclaim their “convenient” crown.

The numbers don’t lie: 72% of consumers polled would buy more items if a brand hand a convenient delivery option. At the same time, 63% of consumers would pay higher prices for items that they could receive on demand—and 54% browse stores with the expectation that delivery will be an option. […]

Loyalty programs can have an astounding impact on your business, increasing visits, spend, and overall revenue immediately and for years to come.

But to reap the rewards of a loyalty program, the program must be set up and run with both strategy and foresight.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of five “dos” and “don’ts” on setting up a loyalty program for success. […]