While many convenience stores aim to upsell familiar products, 7-Eleven aims to introduce customers to new or innovative items with its retail media network via personalized ads across various channels.
“We're an immediate consumption retailer, and we're a promotional retailer," said Neha Nayyar, senior director of retail media and shopper marketing at 7-Eleven. “So success primarily is driving more units, but also, if you think about it, the convenience channel is a primary channel for new product introduction.”
Nayyar spoke on stage with Mario Mijares, vice president of marketing, loyalty and monetization at 7-Eleven, at CSP’s Retail Media Network Forum on Monday in Dallas.
Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven’s retail media network, Gulp Media, was tested in 2022 and has grown across its 13,000 stores. It leverages media at the pump, digital signage, in-store radio and more to reach customers throughout their shopping journey with personalized messaging at the right time in the right format.
A lot of vendors launch new products in convenience stores because customers are more interested in buying one unit of a drink or snack to try instead of a whole pack at a grocery store, Nayyar said.
“If it's a new innovation and you're trying to get trial, that's very different than someone who's trying to get a customer to buy two units of a product,” said Nayyar.
7-Eleven and its vendors measure incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) to track metrics, said Nayyar.
“Let's try to focus on that one KPI and really align on that so we can learn and grow from that campaign,” she said.
Traditional ROAS (return on ad spend) measures total revenue generated, but it doesn’t differentiate between customers who would have purchased anyway and those whose behavior was changed by the ad.
“It requires a lot of work, a lot of partnership, a lot of understanding what [consumers] interests are and what makes them tick,” said Mijares. “And then it's a lot of visibility [with partners]. It's a lot of making sure you're in front of them all the time, talking about it, helping them, educating them on how you can calculate things like iROAS and ROAS, and what does it mean to their business? But it's just mutually beneficial for everyone when all parties are on the table together.”
- 7-Elevenis No. 1 on CSP’s 2025 Top 40 Update to the2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. Watch for the full 2025 Top 202 ranking in the June issue of CSP magazine and in CSP Daily News.
Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven operates, franchises or licenses more than 83,000 convenience stores in 19 countries and regions, including more than 13,000 7-Eleven convenience stores in the United States. In addition to 7-Eleven c-stores, the Irving, Texas-based company operates and franchises Speedway and Stripes c-stores and the Laredo Taco Company, and Raise the Roost Chicken and Biscuits restaurant brands.
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