Duchess Shoppes Create a Loyalty Program That Treats Customers Like Royalty
The c-store market is highly competitive, and few know that better than the family-owned-and-operated Duchess Shoppes. Recognizing the importance of loyalty programs, the chain had been running one for eight years at its stores across Ohio and West Virginia. But since registration in the program wasn’t required, it didn’t have any data on customer behavior.
The first priority for Duchess was to transition its existing loyalty program to the Paytronix platform without customers or employees experiencing any service disruptions. Once that was successfully completed, the focus switched to gathering and effectively using customer data through a Crown Card relaunch involving a simple registration process.
Empowered with an abundance of customer behavior data, Duchess and the Data Insights team at Paytronix set out to use it in ways that few c-stores have. Customer preferences are now being identified so Duchess can deploy targeted promotions that hold unique appeal. It also is partnering with vendors to help offset the cost of these promotions.
Duchess has rolled out an industry-leading nurturing program that encourages members to engage, producing increased visits and spend. Similarly, its lapsed-customer promotions have seen excellent engagement due in no small part to effective segmentation and targeting. Duchess also plans to introduce text-to-join, which will provide an additional boost in program membership.
“It’s much more collaborative than any loyalty partnership we’ve ever had before. With Paytronix’s support and the ability to utilize data for targeted campaigns, we have seen excellent and positive impact on our business.”
- Across the chain, the Duchess stores have largely surpassed their penetration and registration goals of 20%, with some locations reaching nearly 40%.
- The year-over-year lift in penetration following the program relaunch was 59.25%.
- The brand has seen a 125.7% rise in registered members.
- With its lapsed-customer promotions, Duchess has achieved a visit increase of 21% and a spend increase of 25%.
