Personalized & Targeted Offers Drive Customer Engagement

CHICAGO — As technology continues to evolve, the landscape of loyalty programs must also change. Convenience store operators need to adapt to new consumer engagement preferences and purchasing habits. 

Traditional loyalty programs in terms of how consumers communicate, interact and buy online have changed over the last 10 years, primarily due to the proliferation of social media and smartphones, according to a recent webinar, "Every Transaction Speaks Volumes: Learn How Everyday Payment Transactions Can Turbocharge Your Loyalty Program," hosted by Convenience Store News and sponsored by LedgerPay.

To succeed in the c-store environment, it is imperative to create and maintain a direct and meaningful relationship with the customer. One-size offers do not work for every customer. You must know who you're going after, according to LedgerPay. 

While nearly 75 percent of convenience stores have a loyalty program in place, only 42 percent of customers participate in these programs. The result: convenience stores are unable to track the behaviors and purchasing preferences of nearly 60 percent of their customers.

Types of Loyalty 

According to LedgerPay, there are two types of loyalty programs: behavioral and emotional. 

• Behavior Loyalty represents actions that can be seen and measured, and are the result of rational decision-making. Does the brand deliver high value? Does it help folks avoid pain or inconvenience? But with this approach, customers can also quickly change preferences if a competitor offers a sufficient difference in product, price or convenience.
• Emotional Loyalty is the result of perceptions, attitudes and values that work in tandem with behavioral loyalty and go beyond rational reasoning in terms of the level of attachment. To that extent, with emotional loyalty, customers want to feel confident they are uniquely appreciated and valued as an individual. 

In the webinar, Tom Byrnes, senior vice president of marketing at LedgerPay, pointed out that taking the emotional approach to a loyalty program is the key to success for c-store operators. This type of loyalty is where the market has shifted.

According to research, 91 percent of customers who feel valued stick with the brand, 89 percent increase spending, and 90 percent recommend the brand to family and friends.

First-Party Data Is King

Before operators can turbocharge their loyalty programs, they must understand the needs of the consumers they are targeting. Having actionable, accurate and valuable first-party data is key to engaging customers through personalized and targeted offers, while also deepening their relationship with the brand/company. 

As Byrnes pointed out, convenience store retailers are not only competing with other local stores and chains, but also for "mindshare" with any and everyone that’s selling things. Having inaccurate, limited or lag data is not an effective way to drive customer engagement or incremental spending. 

Closing the Gap 

LedgerPay's technology solution, Payments Intelligence, is designed to eliminate the blind spots that so many c-store loyalty programs have by turning everyday payment transactions into personalized engagements that level the playing field for competing in the industry.

Payments Intelligence securely and anonymously identifies and captures every detail of every transaction, each time a customer swipes a card. The technology extracts line-item data from every single transaction, making it actionable, according to James Becker, head of Payments Intelligence sales at LedgerPay.

Consumers do not provide personal information or download an app. Merchants have access to all consumers who pay with cards.

Additionally, the system can track data, including return on investment cost of the product, revenue in real-time, promotional offers, incremental visits, which offers were acted upon, and more.

A replay of "Every Transaction Speaks Volumes: Learn How Everyday Payment Transactions Can Turbocharge Your Loyalty Program" is available here.