Kwik Trip and RaceTrac are using key performance indicators (KPIs) such as transaction data, activity rates, redemption behavior and margin per member to measure loyalty program effectiveness and sustain growth, company leaders said during a breakout session at C-StoreTEC.
- Kwik Trip is No. 11 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. RaceTrac is No. 17.
Kwik Trip’s main KPIs on understanding customer engagement come through transaction data, activity rates and redemption behavior, said David Jackson, director of loyalty and marketing at Kwik Trip, during a breakout session at C-StoreTEC.
Jackson said Kwik Trip monitors its loyalty metrics daily, monthly and quarterly, beginning with transaction penetration rate—the percentage of total transactions where a customer identifies themselves through a loyalty card or phone number. This metric, he said, reflects program growth and overall member participation.
The company also tracks activity rate, which measures how many of its approximately 4.7 million members are actively shopping in stores. A decline in activity prompts analysis of potential causes, including seasonality or geographic expansion.
La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip opens about 50 stores annually, he said, and transaction growth can sometimes outpace loyalty member participation in new markets. That discrepancy highlights the need to promote loyalty enrollment in newer locations to match engagement levels of established stores, Jackson said.
Enrollment is another KPI for Kwik Trip. While it was a major focus when the program launched in 2018, Jackson said it now serves as a supporting indicator. The company expects enrollment to rise when loyalty-driven promotions or games are introduced, using that growth as a gauge of campaign effectiveness.
Jackson said Kwik Trip increasingly examines redemption rates for offers and personalized promotions. Tracking how often members redeem these offers helps identify opportunities to strengthen engagement among existing loyalty participants.
“There is always opportunity to engage the already engaged in your program,” Jackson said. “If we have a lot of offers, we have a lot to communicate. How do we make sure that [loyalty members] know what's out there?”
RaceTrac has evolved its loyalty program measurement from basic reporting to a data-driven model focused on profitability and incremental growth, said Lanna O’Connor, director of loyalty and marketing at Atlanta-based RaceTrac, during the session.
“When I joined RaceTrac, we started with basically nothing,” O’Connor said.
Early loyalty reports were limited to simple monthly or quarterly metrics, she said. Over time, the team moved to more advanced forecasting, using factor analysis to estimate how the program would perform in the following year.
While that approach provided insight into trends, O’Connor said it didn’t reveal the true impact of the program.
“It was just showing what we were doing, not what it was doing for us,” she said.
The goal, she said, was not only to grow the program but to ensure it grew profitably.
O’Connor emphasized the importance of tailoring loyalty value to different customer segments. Frequent visitors, for example, should not receive the same incentives as new or less frequent guests.
“You don’t want to give a user who comes in five days a week the same thing but now getting it cheaper because they’re getting a discount and points on top of that,” she said.
RaceTrac now relies on an incrementality measurement approach, comparing customer behavior before and after loyalty enrollment. By linking credit card data to loyalty accounts, the company can determine whether a customer’s visit frequency or spending has increased.
“We’re able to see that a guest who visited once a week is now coming three times a week,” she said. That data allows RaceTrac to monitor performance on a rolling basis and average margin per member.
O’Connor said that margin figure now serves as RaceTrac’s “guiding light,” helping ensure the loyalty program remains both effective and financially sustainable.
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