6 Loyalty Program Enrollment Tactics for Convenience Stores

Of all the possible factors that can impact the success of your convenience store’s loyalty program, enrollment is the most important. After all, you can increase program participants’ engagement and increase their spend, but if your enrollment numbers are low, neither of those other activities will have nearly as much impact. 

This is because while less than two in three loyalty program members only engage with programs annually, higher enrollment volume creates more bottom of funnel activity, which is key to achieving greater profit margin. Not only do you need to attract as much attention as possible when you launch a convenience store loyalty program, but you also need to be continually enrolling new customers to keep your program growing and maintain its positive impact on your bottom line. 

Below are six tactics convenience stores can use to enroll more customers in their loyalty programs, both at the beginning of the program and ongoing.

1. Increase Your Signage, Both In-Store and Outside

When it comes to convenience stores (c-stores), there’s a discouraging but true fact: around 75% of customers go to your fuel pumps but never make it into your store! That’s a big number, but there’s also plenty of opportunity with these customers. 

You have people standing still outside of your store for two to five minutes, just looking for something to hold their attention while they pump gas. The answer? Signage! 

Promoting your convenience store’s loyalty program—and its fuel benefits—is a great way to encourage people at the pump to come in and sign up. Coca Cola did a study that concluded 31% of people who noticed signage at the pump were influenced to go in and make a purchase. 

Imagine if that signage encouraged them to go in and get something (your loyalty program benefits) for free! Putting up signage to promote your loyalty program, especially around your pump, can have a great deal of impact for minimal effort.

2. Make Value Clear

No matter how many customers you have, you’ll get a low percentage signing up if your loyalty program isn’t clear to them—including how you communicate it on your website. What are the benefits? How do customers earn those benefits? What kinds of outcomes can they expect? 

You need to provide the answers to those questions in one simple sentence—and it needs to be a sentence that your employees know and understand so that they can share it often. 

Here are seven more questions to answer when thinking about how to convey your loyalty program’s value: 

1. Why should customers sign up right now? 
2. Is the signup process so simple a grade schooler could do it? 
3. Are we using simple language (e.g. buy, get, send) rather than complex language? 
4. Does our loyalty program branding match that of our company? 
5. Will our target audience see this as relevant? 
6. Do our signup materials include social proof? 
7. Do customers get real value out of this and not just things that look or sound cool? 

Your entire loyalty program—app download and signup to engagement and ascension—needs to be simple for all customers to understand. Your value proposition (what they get out of loyalty program participation) needs to be clear and valuable and they need to easily understand how to enroll and participate. 

The best c-store loyalty programs have something beneficial for each segment of your target audience but should also be especially attractive to those fuel-only customers to lure them into your store and increase their average spending. Be sure to have a compelling welcome reward like bonus points for signing up or even a discount on fuel for the first 30 days so customers are excited to join.

3. Develop Ambassadors

Your employees have the most interactions with your customers and it’s important that they not only be ambassadors for your brand, but also for your loyalty program. Your loyalty membership rates will skyrocket if you incentivize employees to talk about your program with customers. 

Some stores have found success letting their employees “try out” their rewards program for a limited time to see the benefits and experience it for themselves. This gives them an insider’s look at why customers should sign up and makes their endorsement much more genuine.

4. Make a Splash

When you launch your convenience store loyalty program, it needs to be a major event. And not just for a few days—you should make your initial launch of the program an exciting, well-publicized promotion that lasts at least a few weeks, if not a full month. 

During this time, signage should be especially prominent, employees should be talking about the program with every single customer, and you should also consider offering special rewards bonuses for people who sign up within your launch promotion period. Getting a large volume of people to sign up quickly creates momentum for the program and helps you reap rewards later.

5. Run Employee Contests

One of the lowest-cost, highest-engagement enrollment incentives for employees is contests. You can hold a contest for who gets the most signups during the initial program launch, but you should also consider running a monthly contest so enrollment growth continues well past the initial launch. 

A contest increases your employees’ excitement about the program, which makes it more exciting for customers, too. When you’re planning a contest, first, be sure your employees fully understand your loyalty program since they’re certain to get questions. 

You also need to make sure the contest prizes are valuable to your employees. Some Paytronix clients have seen success giving away gift cards, concert tickets, and even paid days off for top program enrollees. Remember that high-value prizes mean more enthusiastic employees, which in turn leads to more members enrolled and higher revenue. 

6. Increase Enrollment Methods

When you’re trying to get as many customers to enroll in your convenience store’s loyalty program as possible, you’re best served by giving them as many ways to enroll as possible. After all, people do what’s most convenient for them—so you want to have made things convenient. Here are seven enrollment methods: 

1. Text-to-Join: Customers just text their email address to a phone number and click to confirm on a push notification 
2. Text-to-Join via POS: Employees can enter customers’ cell phone numbers at the point of sale to prompt the confirmation push notification 
3. Physical Card: People still love actual loyalty cards! They can sign up in-store and take their card when they go. 
4. Mobile App: Letting people sign up at their own leisure on your mobile app is a great way to boost enrollment, as well as boost app usage. 
5. NFC Tap: When people pay with their phone (via Apply Pay or Google Pay) they can be prompted to sign up for your loyalty program right at checkout. 
6. Reverse Enroll: Instead of requiring people to sign up for a loyalty card in store, you can let people take a card, sign up at home, and then identify themselves the next time they’re in the store to complete the process 
7. Kiosk: A dedicated kiosk in your store can make sign up easy for both your customers and your employees but cutting down on questions and time in line at the counter. 

Paytronix helps our convenience store customers identify their greatest revenue opportunities and build custom loyalty programs that help them meet their unique goals. Book a demo now to learn more.