Getting Into The Swing

With a strong brand established, Maverik shifts its focus to getting more customers into its stores

After several years spent investing heavily in branding, Maverik Inc. has finally shed its former Western country store feel and fully transformed into its outdoorsy "Adventure's First Stop" image. This theme runs through everything from its Adventure Club Card loyalty program and its "KickStart" reality television show, to its revamped store design, where customers stepping into the company's convenience stores feel as if they're stepping into the great outdoors.

With the "Adventure's First Stop" brand now firmly established, Maverik is shifting its focus this year to a new philosophy called "Swing the Doors." This new way of thinking is aimed at getting more customers through the doors of its 200-plus stores.

"We've spent a lot of time on our brand and have had good success. And while the brand is still very important to us, now it's about swinging the doors," explained Brad Call, vice president of adventure culture for the North Salt Lake City, Utah-based convenience retailer. Maverik operates c-stores across eight states in the Western United States. "When we look at a marketing opportunity now, the first thing we ask is: 'Does it swing the doors?'"

It's not that Maverik neglected customer counts before, but the time has come in the chain's evolution to make it the No. 1 priority, noted Marketing Director Scott Shakespeare. "We feel our branding is well established in our markets, and now we're going to be customer driven. And that's the way it should be," he said.

A key strategy in Maverik's new Swing the Doors philosophy is leveraging and enhancing its existing Adventure Club Card loyalty program. Launched in August 2002, the program was recently upgraded so that cardholders no longer earn rewards called "Trail Points" just when they buy fuel, but on most in-store purchases as well. Those who accumulate a certain number of points per quarter receive a Maverik gift card.

To date, 500,000 customers are "active users of the Adventure Club Card. Maverik would like to double the number of active users, but even more importantly, the retailer wants to find out who these active users are.

"When we first started, we didn't want to be invasive about personal information, so we didn't ask for telephone numbers, didn't push hard for e-mail addresses, nor did we get demographic information. Now, we are repenting that short-sightedness and aggressively going after this information," Call said.

To gather this information, Maverik is enticing consumers with its most extreme giveaway yet. The company has joined forces with Teamgive — a local organization of professionals with a shared passion for cycling that raises money for rare neurological diseases — to give away a $440,000 Lamborghini Murcielago, one of the world's most exotic sports cars.

The "Joe Schmo to Lambo" campaign launched Memorial Day and will run 18 months until Oct. 20, 2011, allowing Maverik to leverage the contest over two summers.

The strategic partnership blends the extremeness of the car with Maverik's promotional power, including in-store radio and TV, point-of-purchase, outdoor buys, an extensive Web presence and advertising on Maverik's weekly KickStart TV show. The chain also purchased an RV, and a trailer for the car with glass on both sides, which it takes to store openings and other events.

"The biggest challenge with any marketing campaign is the education piece. It takes consistent messaging and advertising to educate the consumer on the program details," Shakespeare said. "This car is a $440,000 value, so we want to get some mileage out of it. And we've structured the contest in a way that keeps the momentum going over the entire 18 months."

Likening the selection process to the much-prized golden ticket in the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" story, Shakespeare said 10 finalists will be chosen in the "Joe Schmo to Lambo" contest. The first finalist will be picked this month, while the last one will be chosen in October 2011. "One by one as we chose these finalists, the excitement will build and build," Shakespeare said.

Lamborghini hopefuls can enter to win through Maverik, as well as Teamgive. Every dollar donated to Teamgive gives the donor a chance to win, and at least one finalist will be selected from those who donate. The charitable organization also is holding an essay contest, and another finalist will be selected from this portion of the contest.

To be entered to win at Maverik, an individual has to:

1. Be part of the Adventure Club Card program;

2. Go online to Maverik's Web site and set up a user account where the required fields include phone number, mailing address, e-mail address, gender, birth year, etc.

3. Press the opt-in button on the user account page.

It's not until they check the opt-in box that they are entered into the official contest.

"By requiring a user account to enter the contest, people have to give us information about themselves," Shakespeare said, noting of the half-million active Adventure Club Card users, only about 80,000 had set up a user account as of July.

From then on, each Trail Point a person earns as part of the loyalty program also counts as an entry for the Lamborghini. The more points earned, the more chances to win. Cardholders can go to their user accounts to see a running tally of their entries.

Once all 10 finalists are selected, Maverik plans to have one main event — perhaps during half-time of a big sporting event — where the retailer will bring all the finalists together, have them draw randomly for keys, and then one by one, try their key to see if it works.

Maverik also is trying to secure corporate sponsors, so whoever wins the car can keep it and drive it for a year without worrying about the hefty sales tax, insurance and maintenance costs. There will be a cash-out option as well if the winner doesn't want the car.

"Our message is always that Maverik is more extreme than anyone else. When we do things, we do them big and there's nothing more exciting or extreme than a half-million dollar exotic sports car," Shakespeare told Convenience Store News.

By the end of this campaign, Maverik said more people will be Adventure Club Card members; those with existing cards will be using them more often; and most of all, Maverik will be armed with a lot more knowledge about its loyal customers.

Data Entry

What does Maverik plan to do with all the information it collects?

According to Call, having a more robust loyalty database will allow the retailer to do a better job of marketing to its loyal customers. "Because we'll know who they are and what their buying patterns are, we will be able to do target marketing," he explained.

Starting this year and with this campaign, Shakespeare said Maverik is moving into a more statistical realm. Target marketing is the first step. However, he said every marketing initiative the company does going forward will be more data driven.

"We shoot from the hip a lot, and that's been successful. Every year, we've had a better year than the one before. But we've reached that stage in our evolution where we need to do things a little more scientifically," Shakespeare said.

By the end of this year, Maverik plans to hire a marketing analyst who will be responsible for analyzing the collected data, as well as doing focus groups and psych marketing.

As part of it new "customer fanatic" focus, Maverik wants to determine answers to the following questions:

• Who are our customers?
• Who are our best customers?
• What do those best customers want?
• How do we market directly to those best customers?
• How do we make sure we can get what they want?

"Right now, we know Latinos are a really strong market segment for us. We also know soccer moms are a good market segment for us. But we don't do any marketing directly to them. Right now, they get the same message everyone does; we come up with one big campaign and blast it out," said Shakespeare. "In the future, we will create entire marketing campaigns targeted just to these segments."

The remainder of this year will be spent gathering the data and identifying target groups. Next year, the chain will start marketing specifically to these segments, he noted.

Maverik's new customer-centered approach will also mean making product decisions for its stores based on customers' needs and wants, as opposed to what vendors dictate.

"Vendors will say if you want to sell this product, you have to sell these other products too. Or the product adjacencies aren't necessarily customer focused, they're vendor driven. We want to get away from that," Call told CSNews.

Instead, armed with its robust customer research, Maverik wants to know and understand what its customers' needs and wants are, and fulfill those needs in its stores. This is sure to scare the majority of vendors, but Call believes the new approach will lead to better partnerships "because the shared goal is to sell more product."

One more piece of Maverik's new "customer fanatic" approach will be a "Version 3" revamp of its loyalty program. A year from now, Maverik expects to have the new version of its Adventure Club Card in place, Call said. The company will be purchasing Radiant Systems Inc.'s Loyalty Manager, so it can turn its Club Card into a "live card."

Currently, when a customer uses his card, the system stores what he's purchased and within 24 hours, dumps it into the main database. Rewards are issued per quarter. By going to a live, real-time program, Maverik will be able to offer immediate rewards.

Through its new "customer fanatic" focus, Maverik wants to determine who its best customers are and how the chain can market directly to them.

"When someone scans their card, our new system can alert our adventure guides to say, 'I see this is your ninth coffee purchase, the next is free.' Or the system can know this person buys coffee but doesn't buy doughnuts, so the next time he scans his card, we can ping the system to give him a free doughnut and then track him to see whether the next time, he purchases a doughnut with his coffee," Shakespeare explained.

The hope is to have the live system up and running by spring 2011.

"Once it's a live card, the whole world opens up," he said.

For comments, please contact Linda Lisanti, Senior Editor, at [email protected]

"The biggest challenge with any marketing campaign is the education piece. It takes consistent messaging and advertising to educate the consumer on the program details." Scott Shakespeare, Maverik

"We shoot from the hip a lot, and that's been successful. Every year, we've had a better year than the one before. But we've reached that stage in our evolution where we need to do things a little more scientifically." Scott Shakespeare, Maverik

A New Arena for Sales

Maverik foresees limitless opportunities to "swing the doors" through its recent purchase of the naming rights to the former E-Center in Salt Lake City. The home of the Utah Grizzlies hockey team and the Utah Blaze Arena Football Team is now known as the Maverik Center, and the retailer will soon be opening a store within the arena where it plans to sample new items and make people aware of the breadth of products it sells.

Maverik's Marketing Director Scott Shakespeare said the potential for advertising and cross-promotions between the venue and the c-store chain is "like drinking from the fire hose. There's just so much you can do with this," he told Convenience Store News. "Plus, the community likes that we're a local company that has the naming rights."

Maverik kicked off its new sponsorship with an unveiling event July 10, prior to a concert by Canadian teen heartthrob Justin Bieber. The retailer also ran its first promotion dubbed the "Ultimate Justin Bieber My World VIP Experience." Hopefuls picked up raffle tickets at Maverik stores and then brought their tickets to the Maverik booth at the arena to enter. A winner was drawn, and won two tickets and a VIP package.

Promotions such as this are just the beginning, according to Brad Call, Maverik's vice president of adventure culture, who said the retailer's stores will now sell tickets to Maverik Center events, and do a lot of exclusive pre-sales events. For some of the big concerts, Adventure Club Card holders will be able to purchase advance tickets at Maverik stores, while for other shows, the only way to get in will be to buy a ticket from Maverik.

"We'll be promoting these events and the venue will be promoting us," Call said.

Maverik also plans to offer special Maverik Center packages, such as a family pack that includes tickets, goodies and a $20 Maverik gift card. "This is just another way to swing the doors," he noted. "With the gift card, we know they'll be coming back."

Armed with robust customer research, Maverik wants to know and understand what its customers’ needs and wants are, and fulfill those needs in its stores.