Cumberland Farms’ exclusive brand of cigarettes, 1st Class, is the lowest-priced brand available at the retailer’s stores.
West Des Moines, Iowa-based convenience store chain Yesway is also ringing up success tying cigarette sales to loyalty. The retailer, which operates in multiple states, is leveraging its Yesway Rewards loyalty program to run joint promotions with vendors, including Altria. The Yesway Rewards program is powered by the Paytronix platform. A big part of setting up a loyalty program is identifying customers and getting them to enroll in the program, according to Jeff Hoover, strategist for convenience store brands at Newton, Mass.-based Paytronix. “Step one: getting a card in their hand, or getting them to go to your website or mobile app, to complete registration and get a loyalty number,” Hoover advised. Unique customer IDs, in fact, are one of the key requirements for retailers to participate in Altria’s loyalty program, which offers customers $1 off a purchase. When the retailer goes back to Altria to get those funds redeemed, the company has reporting requirements that must be met to receive the refund, according to Hoover. “A key part is being able to identify that unique customer ID so that they know it is 5,000 unique customers, for example, instead of 20 customers doing it multiple times
each. There are more detailed reporting requirements than just the unique identifier, but it all starts with being able to identify the customer’s individual behavior in that transaction,” he explained. Insights gleaned from transactional data tied to specific loyalty accounts can be used to develop future offers and promotions, too. Hoover pointed to one such example at Yesway. “In a couple of promotions — $1 off two packs — they were able to look back over a certain timeframe and identify guests in the loyalty program that had purchased tobacco and send them an email or push a notification and make them aware of the promotion,” he said. CSN
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