Convenience retailers are investing heavily in loyalty programs, but understanding whether those programs truly generate returns is an ongoing challenge. At CSP’s Outlook Leadership conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, several industry leaders shared how they are measuring loyalty performance and where they see the most value.
CSP’s vice president of content strategy Abbey Lewis moderated a panel with Jon Bunch, director of marketing and business development at Carmi, Illinois-based Martin & Bayley Inc., which operates the Huck’s Market convenience-store chain, Whitney Johnson, senior vice president of marketing at Westborough, Massachusetts-based convenience retailer EG America, and Max Clark, vice president of growth at technology firm PAR Retail, Philadelphia.
For Bunch, three core metrics guide the way: recency, frequency and monetary (RFM).
The short-term return on investment (ROI) is increased revenue, Bunch said, but long term, loyalty success is defined by customer lifetime value.
“It's about delivering what they want today, and they're still coming five years later,” he said. “We often hear loyalty is an emotional relationship, and that's 100% true. So just building something that they can connect with and [measuring] the numbers … that's all easy to do, but it’s more than just loyalty. It's delivering a consistent experience every time.”
Whitney Johnson of EG America said she measures loyalty with conversations with the company’s CFO.
- EG America is No. 6 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of top U.S. c-store chains by store count. Martin & Bayley Inc./Huck’s Market is No. 55.
“Let's debate it, because you'll make me better, right?” she said.
Like Bunch, Johnson focuses not only on program-level financials but also on customer lifetime value and RFM. In addition, she evaluates what value the loyalty program delivers back to vendor partners.
“Unfortunately, it's not a one size fits all answer,” Johnson said. “We approach business solutions with hypothesis-based testing. What's our hypothesis? What's our forecast, and did our performance results deliver?”
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