Fuel Rewards Program Shares Key Stats

DALLAS — New information released by the Fuel Rewards program indicates consumers are saving an average of 25 cents a gallon on fuel — or nearly $15.5 million a month — as a direct result of the savings they earn from 11,000 restaurants, 4,500 retail locations and more than 700 online merchants who participate in the national coalition loyalty program.

Fuel Rewards' 5.5 million members redeem their rewards as cents-off-per-gallon savings on fuel at more than 12,000 Shell stations nationwide.

"Over the last three years, we've seen our membership grow in size, frequency, recency and depth of engagement, despite fluctuating gas prices at the pump," said Scott Schaper, executive vice president, marketing and program operations. "With this upward trend indicating how valuable fuel is as an everyday reward and how satisfied our members are, the question we get asked by merchants is no longer why fuel, but instead how best can we use fuel as a part of our marketing strategy."

According to The State of Coalition Loyalty in the U.S., a new Fuel Rewards infographic:

• Women make up the majority of the membership base at 59 percent.
• 56 percent of Fuel Rewards households have three-plus members.
• Cities with the highest concentrations of program members are Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles and Dallas.
• 56 percent of visits to the program's website happen on mobile devices, while 60 percent of program emails are opened on mobile devices.
• Members have shopped at these online merchants the most to earn Fuel Rewards savings: Lowes, Homedepot.com, Staples.com, Groupon and QVC.com

To see the full infographic, click here. 

THE NEXT STAGE

The Fuel Rewards program recently updated its mobile app and launched a card-linked offers program (CLO), which provides marketing data about customers' preferences and activities to merchant participants.

"The next stage of the Fuel Rewards program will focus on increasing sales and deepening brand loyalty with our retail merchants through stronger analytics and business intelligence," said Greg Phillips, senior vice president of business intelligence and customer relationship management (CRM). 

"We continue to accelerate investment in our CRM infrastructure to better understand the unique behaviors of our members. From there, we can better tailor individual communications and offers to increase member engagement, ultimately driving incremental spending power to our coalition merchants. Investments in data are also helping us get smarter about acquisition of new members so we don't have to work as hard on retention through the customer lifecycle," he added.

Fuel Rewards' new CLO program, which launched in May, enables participating merchants to offer savings to their customers with no investment in infrastructure or technology. Merchants who join the CLO program also gain access to millions of Fuel Rewards members across the United States, marketing data about customers' preferences and activities, and the backing of a national coalition of merchants focused on increased sales and deeper brand loyalty. 

Consumers can use any debit or credit card to earn merchant-funded Fuel Rewards savings from their favorite retailers and brands without losing existing benefits or rewards provided by the card issuers.

"A card-linked platform that's powered by coalition loyalty gives today's merchants and consumers exactly what they've been asking for," noted Brandon Logsdon, president and CEO of the Fuel Rewards program. "Merchants instantly get the ability to issue coveted cents-per-gallon rewards to their customers without costly IT investment."

The Fuel Rewards program is owned and operated by Dallas-based Excentus.