WAYCROSS, Ga. -- Friendly Express, with 40 locations in Georgia, has partnered with OpenStore by GasBuddy to offer its own branded mobile app to customers. The app showcases in-store promotions, updated gasoline prices, locations, loyalty points balance and more. Customers can send feedback from their mobile phone and receive electronic mobile coupons.
Friendly Express' launch with OpenStore by GasBuddy also includes a refresh of the retailer's website, a text-messaging program and email marketing.
"We are excited about partnering with GasBuddy and their OpenStore platform to better communicate with our customers. In today's society so many people rely on their smart phones for surfing the web and communicating through social media. This gives us the opportunity to take advantage of these avenues so that our customers are better informed on what we have to offer," said Danny Smith, CEO of Friendly Express. "Not only can we make customers and prospective customers aware of ongoing promotions via text or social media, which our vendors love, but we can also provide our customers with historical data on their loyalty card purchases. Simply put, it's a better way to communicate than through typical store POS [point of sale] that tends to get stale."
Jason Toews, co-founder and CEO of OpenStore by GasBuddy, said, "We help our clients optimize their customer experiences to attain and sustain market leadership. OpenStore by GasBuddy is a complete turnkey digital marketing solution that will support Friendly Express' strategies to reach their customers with targeted promotions and messaging."
OpenStore by GasBuddy is a multi-channel digital marketing solution that increases customer loyalty by providing much needed two-way communication between c-store owners and customers using leading-edge web technologies and custom branded mobile applications. The OpenStore dashboard makes it easy to collect customer feedback, manage social media, deliver mobile coupons and text message campaigns all from one single location. OpenStore makes a brand and a convenience store stronger and more aligned with current marketing trends. OpenStore by GasBuddy is a division of OPIS (Oil Price Information Systems).
Friendly Express Inc. can trace its origins back to Lewis Oil Co. (now Lewis & Raulerson Inc.). The first venture into the convenience store business was a small store on the outskirts of Waycross, Ga., known as Shell Express. From those beginnings, Waycross-based Friendly Express now operates 40 locations in southeast Georgia.
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