Loyalty program acquisition is a huge priority for most brands — and the reason is pretty obvious: Loyal customers make for a thriving business.
Casey’s General Stores, the nation’s fifth-largest pizza chain, understands this. That’s why they began looking for a consistent method of driving acquisition into their loyalty program five years ago. And that’s when they found urgency marketing.
Urgency marketing is about crafting marketing promotions in a way that drives immediate consumer response. It allows marketers to achieve their goals faster and can fundamentally change how consumers feel about a brand for the better.
Casey’s first test with urgency marketing went so well that they’ve leveraged it consistently ever since. Let’s look at a recent example:
Urgency marketing: Recent results
Casey’s recently used urgency marketing to acquire more loyalty program members and first-party data across multiple channels, including email and SMS. Here’s how it worked:
1. They launched a digital activation, where consumers were told that a limited set of gift cards and offers would be released soon.
2. Participants (those who opted in) simply needed to click a special claim link when the prizes were released. The fastest to click claimed the biggest reward.
3. Participants could receive a “heads up” before the rewards were released to increase their chance of winning. They only needed to refer friends to the activation and/or sign up for loyalty or SMS.
Casey’s saw the following results in less than one week:
- 20,000 new loyalty program sign-ups
- 8,536 new SMS subscribers
- 12,500 new email subscribers
By leveraging urgency marketing, Casey’s was able to acquire an incremental amount of loyalty program members within a short period of time. In the future, the brand will continue to leverage urgency marketing to fuel member acquisition into loyalty, while also focusing on cross-enrollment across owned channels.
