Casey's Builds Up Its Marketing Toolbox

ANKENY, Iowa — Casey's General Stores Inc.  increased customer engagement and automation, activating more marketing with less spend by consolidating fragmented technologies and moving to Salesforce.

Since partnering with Salesforce, Casey's has built a new e-commerce website, launched a loyalty program and mobile apps, and partnered with third-party delivery companies as the capability to market directly to all customers engaging through these experiences. Casey's is now sending 200 million personalized messages a month to the convenience store chain's subscriber base, specifically tailored to each customer's purchasing history. 

Salesforce has assisted Casey's in sending more 1 billion marketing messages to more than 5.5 million Casey's Rewards loyalty members in 2022.

"With Salesforce, we feel confident in the future of our business — even in challenging economic times — because of the increase in customer connection and internal efficiencies we've achieved by consolidating to one, real-time platform," said Art Sebastian, vice president of digital experience for Casey's General Stores. "Before Salesforce, we had multiple fragmented marketing systems that did not talk to one another, and had no commonality. When we selected Salesforce, we had the ability to easily organize and unify all of our customer data to communicate in a consistent way, leading to an increase in customer loyalty and less work for our marketers.

"As we celebrated Casey's 50th anniversary in 2018, there was a reflection period where we looked in the mirror and asked ourselves how we could remain relevant with our customers for the next 50 years. The answer was to modernize our brand and become a more contemporary version of ourselves," said Sebastian. "Digital was the first expression of the contemporary Casey's and we were smart about choosing Salesforce at the start of our digital transformation journey, which allowed us to future proof our business and consolidate costs. Any time people ask me for advice on how to set up an efficient and cost effective business, I advise them to find the right partners. Working with Salesforce, we are accelerating our marketing impact in a measured and cost efficient way."

Evolving digital experiences with Salesforce has also enabled Casey's to re-engage lapsed buyers, influence new loyalty program members to make purchases and incentivize frequent buyers to make additional purchases. The c-store retailer leverages multiple Salesforce products, including Genie Customer Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft and Service Cloud.

According to 2022 Salesforce Success Metrics Global Highlights study, 44 percent of commerce organizations are prioritizing lowering costs over the next two years and 79 percent of organizations say using automation tools increases their productivity.

Casey's has set a strong foundation to enable its shift toward automated personalization. With more than 13 million customer profiles in the Genie Customer Data Cloud, 150 profile attributes and 6 billion engagements captured, 30 percent of Casey's digital revenue is driven by marketing channels activated through Salesforce.

"Casey's is an innovative brand who has been able to use real-time data to become a customer company. Using Salesforce, Casey's has been able to consolidate marketing tech tools onto a single platform, while unifying data from within Salesforce and elsewhere to create tailored customer experiences," said Bobby Jania, senior vice president, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.

Salesforce is a customer relationship management based in San Francisco.

Ankeny-based Casey's operates more than 2,400 convenience stores. It is the third-largest c-store retailer and the fifth-largest pizza chain in the United States.