GoMart and United Dairy Farmers’ loyalty programs landed the gas station and convenience-store chains in the overall Top 20 in Newsweek’s 2023 list of America’s Best Loyalty Programs.
“For United Dairy Farmers, the U-Drive Plus rewards program has been an amazing way to engage with our audience, and in doing so, we’ve grown our business along with those important relationships,” said Denise Jenkins, vice president of marketing, loyalty and insights at United Dairy Farmers. App platform Rovertown, based in St. Louis, powers UDF's digital experience. The company uses Paytronix for its loyalty program.
Based on an independent survey of over 4,000 customers enrolled in U.S. retailer or service provider programs, Newsweek examined essential aspects of loyalty programs such as a program’s enjoyability, its perceived value and customer trust. Only 17 of over 200 retailers across all categories scored above 9.0, including United Dairy Farmers (9.14) and GoMart (9.13), putting them ahead of iconic national brands such as McDonald’s (8.12), Starbucks (7.98), Nike (7.82), and 7-Eleven (7.79).
Other top gas station loyalty programs included Walmart (8.93), Sam’s Club (8.87), MAPCO (8.64), Wawa (8.64), Rutter’s (8.20), Maverik (8.16), Casey’s (8.01), Marathon (7.96), Kwik Trip (7.96), Chevron (7.95), Speedway (7.86) and Shell (7.81).
This year, Newsweek also grouped the convenience stores and third-party delivery providers subcategories into the broader grocery category. C-store retailers making the America’s Best Loyalty Programs list include Pilot Flying J for its MyRewards Plus program (8.81), Casey’s for Casey’s Rewards (8.53), Hy-Vee for Hy-Vee Fuel Saver+Perks (8.10), Sheetz for My Sheetz Rewardz (7.86) and 7-Eleven for 7Rewards (7.79).
Click here to see the supermarket-industry loyalty rankings.
Grubhub led in grocery delivery for its Grubhub Rewards program (8.74), followed by Instacart for Instacart+ (7.87) and Amazon for the Amazon Prime Store Card (8.14).
Newsweek’s list ranks companies’ programs according to six criteria (in order of importance): recommendation to others, overall satisfaction, benefits/rewards, trust, customer support and ease and enjoyment. The top finishers received above-average overall scores for their awarded loyalty programs, said Newsweek, which partnered with global data research firm Statista to assemble the list.
Overall, it collected about 16,000 evaluations on loyalty programs from retailers and service providers in nearly three-dozen categories. Loyalty programs were defined as all reward programs that provided customers with a benefit when buying or using the products or services of the associated brands.
“Altogether, we rated 239 programs in 32 product and service categories in 11 broad sectors: apparel, baby and children, banking, general reward programs, grocery stores, health and beauty, home, leisure and entertainment, restaurants, sports and transportation and travel,” Newsweek Global Editor in Chief Nancy Cooper said. “We found the highest number of top-rated rewards programs among supermarkets with 25, followed by 20 each in clothing and fast food.”
Over the past year or so in the grocery retail arena, loyalty plans have risen in importance as elevated pricing from high inflation has led supermarket chains to leverage customer insights from their rewards programs to extend more savings to shoppers. Grocers, too, have sharpened their focus on personalization tools to deliver more relevant deals and promotions to their customers, including via their loyalty offerings.
Click here to view the full Newsweek America's Best Loyalty Programs 2023.
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