Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Loyalty360 is the association for customer loyalty. We bring together the best loyalty-focused professionals from technology and service suppliers and brands under one roof. Through Loyalty360, these professionals find invaluable resources, networking opportunities and guidance provided by internal thought leaders and brands/suppliers on the cutting edge of customer loyalty.
Leaders in Customer Loyalty, Powered by Loyalty360
Leaders in Customer Loyalty: Brand Story | From Coffee to AI: Inside EG America's Bold Loyalty Overhaul
EG America is reshaping how convenience stores engage with their customers. As the fourth-largest chain in the U.S., with familiar brands like Cumberland Farms, Turkey Hill, and Fast Track, it’s leading the charge in integrating technology and personalization into its loyalty strategy. At the helm of this transformation is Whitney Johnson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, who is redefining the company’s approach to customer loyalty by blending AI-driven insights with hyper-local, tailored experiences that resonate with today’s on-the-go consumer.
Good afternoon, good morning Mark.
Speaker 1:Johnson from Loyalty360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. It's Thursday, so welcome back to the Brand Stories edition of our Leaders in Customer Loyalty podcast. Today we're going to drive into the crucial role of championing internal stakeholders to achieve true customer loyalty success. Customer loyalty should be the magic fulcrum that propels customer experience, marketing and brand engagement to new heights. Yet brands today are divided. Some see customer loyalty as a valuable investment, while others view it as a cost to be minimized. In 2025, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring everyone within the organization understands and supports the customer loyalty program. Misunderstandings must be addressed promptly, as internal champions are just as crucial to the efficacy of the program as external advocates. Programs with strong leadership and senior-level alignment, leveraging technology to deepen customer relationships, are thriving. Eg America, the fourth largest convenience store chain in North America, is excelling in this dynamic landscape. Today we're joined by Whitney Johnson. She's the Senior Vice President of Marketing for EG America. She's going to share how they are navigating internal and external stakeholders to maximize brand engagement and build long-term customer loyalty.
Speaker 1:Whitney, thank you very much for taking the time to join us. How are you today?
Speaker 2:Mark, thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here on this sunny spring day in Boston Massachusetts.
Speaker 1:It's always good to have sunny days, especially in the spring. We've got a lot of rain in Ohio, so I would trade you if we could.
Speaker 2:We've had some too.
Speaker 1:First off, for those who may not be familiar, can you give us a short introduction to EG America? How, why was the company started?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I'd love to so. Eg America is actually the fourth largest convenience store chain in the United States. Our parent company, eg Group, founded over in the United Kingdom and we are a organization of different mergers and acquisitions across 32 states here stateside. So we fly about 10 different retail banners that our customers can see on the convenience and gas front, with some of the most prominent banners being Cumberland Farms here in New England, turkey Hill convenience stores in Pennsylvania, as well as Fast Track convenience stores in New York.
Speaker 1:Okay, For those who may not know you, can you tell us a little bit more about your role within EG America? You know how did you get to where you are now. Were there some positions that maybe led to this role, or maybe an epiphany? You know how did you get into marketing and customer loyalty?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, mark. So I joined EG America less than 10 months ago because I found tremendous opportunity here and an incredible executive leadership team. So I work for Brian Ferguson, our chief marketing officer, who has had an incredible career in pilot travel centers, as well as Abercrombie and Fitch. Me personally, I have pretty much stayed in the convenience and gas arena since my first internship in college. So I started off at Sunoco in category management and space planning and I also went to Murphy, usa where I did more merchandising strategy and analytics and analytics. Recently I led the merchandising team at GoPuff and now I'm here at EGA. So within my vertical we have loyalty, digital commerce, delivery and digital partnerships. We have retail media networks, as well as some of the advertising, brand marketing and some of the category management.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and I'm sure you're very well versed in the difference between the front court and the back court. It took me a while to learn that, but we have a number of fuel entities that are members of loyalty 360. So we got to know that I didn't want to be playing basketball. What are you doing it?
Speaker 2:Oh you know, with the NBA playoffs right around the corner, I think that's a perfect analogy. Here at EGA we're really proud of what we call our backcourt and the banners we fly right. We have really strong convenience offerings here at EGA. So not only is Fuel a traffic driver to get customers onto our lots, but things like our coffee brand and our commissary products our customers really love and they tend to be trip missions for us here at EGA.
Speaker 1:And that's awesome because the Turkey Hill, at least in Ohio, kind of the ice cream brand, it was kind of affiliated with Kroger at one point. So you do have some strong CPG brands, private label brands, which are good. So, but that can be a challenge sometimes. Right, when you look at customer loyalty and loyalty programs that function well, the front court and back court do they work together? Are they branded the same? So I know that you know within the fuel brands that we are members that that can be a big discussion point, right, making sure you have a consistent offering. They can identify themselves and you can know that person in both of those environments, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's such a good question. So when I joined EGA, we spent a lot of time in 2024 ensuring that our foundational merchandising offering was really strong for all customers. But, as you know, when you have as many stores as we do, we fly about 1,500 domestic convenience store flags here in the United States you can't average averages right, and the customers in Pennsylvania are looking for something different than the customers in Maine and Massachusetts are looking for. So what we've done on our merchandising evolution and transformation is we've set the fundamentals of our merchandising assortment for our customers and now we're starting to regionalize our offerings for what customers are really looking for and giving us credibility for offerings for what customers are really looking for and giving us credibility for.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you talk about that personalization, being able to understand the regional differences, how they may impact behavior, interests, attitudes, perceptions, is very important. So, when you look at personalization and you talk about some of the regional differences, talk about the difference between the front court and back court.
Speaker 2:What does personalization mean to EG America and how do you execute on that? We could license. We weren't the first retailer to get into the loyalty game. Many competitors have gotten into loyalty before EGA has, and we had an opportunity as a second mover advantage right where we didn't have to build everything from scratch ourselves. So what we chose to do was we chose to rebuild our loyalty offering, both through a build and a license solution. With that license solution, we're using AI at a rate in which is really modern for the 21st century retailer to deliver personalized offers to our customers. We're letting the machines do a lot of the work for us.
Speaker 2:We issue intended business outcomes to our loyalty engine and we focus on trip missions. Right, we focus on the big, high-priority, high-revenue, high-driving products at EGA, whether that's fuel, whether that's coffee products at EGA, whether that's fuel, whether that's coffee, whether that's nicotine or energy drinks, and we're really allowing AI to deliver personalized campaigns to our customers. What that means is that our operators have to think differently. Right, our operators are accustomed to what I call these big billboard banner promotions. Every year, we sell two for $4 sodas 20 ounce sodas, right. Well, with loyalty, the customer to my right who's a Celsius drinker and the customer to my left who's a Gatorade drinker may not get that same billboard promotion. So it's a cultural shift we're forging here at EGA to move from not only big billboard and banner promotions but also personalized offers based on how our customers are shopping and what they're giving us credit for.
Speaker 1:Okay, you mentioned.
Speaker 2:AI.
Speaker 1:That's a very germane topic to the members of Local 360, how you can leverage AI. Some brands are being very proactive. Some are concerned, right, because you know who has access to the data and you mentioned, kind of how you're leveraging technology license and also you know very unique in how you're kind of structuring your technology stack. But some are really concerned, right. So they've actually built up teams to manage the output of AI, which reduces the efficacy of the customer loyalty efforts, right? So when you look at AI and you talked about that cultural shift from an operator perspective how do you get them on board? Because many brands don't feel they have the organizational heft, the teams, to really leverage AI in the most effective manner.
Speaker 2:You know it's such a good question. I think I'm going to answer it two different ways. I heard a phenomenal quote last week from the CEO of Par Retail, savneet Singh, and he said that he questions companies' efficacy on the AI transformation journey. If companies are building centers of AI excellence and I tend to agree with him right, mark, we want to include AI in how we manage our business, whether it's marketing technology, whether it's category management, whether it's revenue growth management, whether it's loyalty and personalized ads. We don't want just one center of AI excellence here at EGA, so that's how we're proposing it from a organizational standpoint.
Speaker 2:The other question is about the cultural shifts and the dynamics changing right, and I believe our success here at EGA has been through partnerships and collaborations with our operators and demonstrating a lot of self-awareness. So, when we're not the first to the loyalty game here at EGA, we had a chance to speak to each of our store managers and we have 1,500 of them and when we relaunched the loyalty program, we gave every single store manager an opportunity to tell myself personally, our senior manager of loyalty and our CIO personally what are their favorite and least favorite things about our historic app and when our operators felt like their voice was heard. That went a long way in building collaboration and credibility across our MarTech functions and our operations functions here at EGA.
Speaker 1:Now, that's a very interesting point as well because one of the we keep talking about the challenges we see. You know we sit at a neat fulcrum between the technology providers and the brands and so we see kind of a broad swath of technology, innovation, challenges, opportunities. But one of the challenges you've kind of touched on is listening to kind of the operators, right, the franchisee owners, who could have one to 10 to hundreds of locations, and you know there's going to be some change there. So kind of understanding that's very important. Being able to listen to them and truly understand is also very important as well. But being able to take that insight you have from them and action on it is very important because oftentimes brands will go ask a series of questions ad hoc questions, structured questions and they may not do anything with it. So to be able to take that feedback and loop it into your process is very important, correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:You're exactly right. So, ega, we have both corporate owned stores the majority of our locations are corporate owned stores, but, you're exactly right, we have franchise owned stores as well. And what we did when we started building product requirement documentation for our loyalty program is we started with our guest services team, right, we answered phone calls, we listened to our customers, we answered emails, we read and heard what our customers were feeling on our pre-existing loyalty app and then, to your point, we went out to our store managers. We listened to our store managers, because not every customer who has a consternation with a loyalty app is going to call into the guest services line, right? Some folks just tell their local store manager and that's where they end. So we wanted to build our product requirement documentation for our new loyalty program founded in what we were hearing from our customers and our frontline employees, and that was critically important for EGA.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because one of the things that we also see as well.
Speaker 1:It seems to be kind of a repeating record or a skipping record over here, but understanding kind of where programs are, especially you being 10 months new to the program, is very important. We see the brands that have a truly successful customer loyalty fabric, that they put the customers first, right, it's not just lip service, it's integrated, right. So coming in and understanding where everyone is on the program is very important, right. So brands that do well, they're always getting the feedback from the operations staff, the organization staff, marketing, whomever to understand where the program is, what they understand about the program, because oftentimes customer loyalty can be in some organizations kind of black sheep of the family where they don't really have, you know, true understanding of the program.
Speaker 1:So coming in and asking the individuals who the frontline, also the, you know the senior level, you know operations managers, finance remember what they know about the program is very important because that can help you address and assuage any challenges that exist in the program. You know understanding. Oh well, the finance team really doesn't understand the program, right, they may not have the metrics, or the operations team isn't, we're not trained enough on them. We train them on an onboarding process. So it sounds like you have a very you know proactive approach to that, because many brands don't have that, and that's good to hear.
Speaker 2:It's such an interesting point you bring up and I have a couple things to add on to your observations. So one is that at a previous employer there was a protocol in which you had to work in operations to get promoted to manager back at headquarters. I think that's such a strong business practice for retailers to institute. I know not everyone can institute that, but it gave me personally a sense of understanding of operators right that year in the field. I have so much respect for our operators and I really include so much respect for our operators and I really include so much of that respect in how I manage my teams today. Secondly, bringing people along is so important. I'm really proud of my team and how quickly we've rebuilt our loyalty app. We got it signed, sealed and delivered in just about four months, which is pretty miraculous, thinking about where we started and the RFP process and the product requirement documentation and then building the new app. So while we moved really quickly, we did spend some time with cross-functional business partners.
Speaker 2:It is so easy, mark and loyalty to see what the expense of a loyalty program is costing, right, whether it's the SaaS costs or the IT development costs, or even just the discounting and the investments you're giving back to your customers.
Speaker 2:It is very easy for a CFO to see what a program costs. We need to bring our cross-functional partners along and we continue to get better at this at EGA to demonstrate what are the benefits of the program, what is the incrementality of the program, what are our business goals as a MarTech team and how are we performing towards those business goals. It requires a lot of conversation, a lot of collaboration, and I'm constantly telling folks at EGA, mark, that I welcome the conversation. If you question the way we're measuring this or you think that this could be measured a different or better way, let's have that conversation. Find 15 minutes on my calendar, let's discuss it.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll say to your point is I think some retailers make the mistake of thinking about MarTech solutions as projects versus programs. When I joined EGA, I instituted this idea of a digital commerce ecosystem and I am constantly telling those I work with all ships rise with a rising tide and I think it's really important here at EGA, that we are relaunching loyalty. At the same time, we're launching our first ever retail media network. At the same time, we're instituting a consumer insights function.
Speaker 2:At the same time, we're tripling our delivery and digital partnerships programming. I think that is so important to think about MarTech as more of a digital ecosystem than just a finite project in which you have to launch a loyalty app and you never look at it again. I think that's a mistake in retail and we take a much more comprehensive and holistic approach more comprehensive and holistic approach.
Speaker 1:No again, this is probably the best interview I had in a long time. I love getting away from the scripted questions and having this in open dialogue, and this has been one of those. So, again, another thing we keep hearing a lot about and as a great discussion point right now, is this whole idea of cost versus value. We talked earlier a little bit about kind of the dichotomy between brands who are so obsessed on the customer multi-cost and versus those who view it as an investment. Right, and they're diametrically different. The organizations that view it as an investment can, you know, invest in technology. They have staffs that want to understand technology. You talked about your approach to the digital ecosystem, right, and kind of the MarTech approach.
Speaker 1:Many people look at the MarTech choice as a solution. Right, it's not the solution. It's an enabling opportunity for the brand and the organization, but it gets to. Many brands don't feel they have the technology teams to truly act on or put forth a true customer centricity offering. So, getting back to that cost versus expense, that's a big area of discussion right now too. Those who are looking to minimize expense right, they don't see the expense. They don't see customer loyalty as a true platform to coalesce all the marketing efforts around.
Speaker 1:But the brands who do it well are the ones who are leaning in. More and more authors are going to customer loyalty members. Less and less is going into mass or kind of acquisition right. So the customers they have, they're spending more time in the personalization but making sure that the team knows how to handle that right, because keep the customer loyal, keep engaged, you don't lose them. So we've seen again the brands who do very well are shifting more in that budget to the customer loyalty platform because it can be proven the incrementality, the performance and you can also hone the model. So you don't have to give everyone an 80% discount or a 40% discount, right, you know that Whitney may only want a 5% discount, or she may like coffee, or today may be her birthday. It's being able to truly action on the data and insight, gets away from that cost perspective and it switches more to an investment, correct.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right, mark. There's a patience that's required with turning your loyalty program into an investment vehicle, and I'm very fortunate that we've had the executive support to pursue that here at EGA. So our chief information officer, soren Hilden, is also our chief digital officer. So I'm really advantaged here at EGA to not only have the IT leadership and partnership but also the digital visionary as a partner, and that's really allowed us to move quickly here at EGA but also be on the cutting edge of thinking about this as an investment versus just a cost. The other thing I would say is the patience to run these hypothesis-based test and learn opportunities right.
Speaker 2:Whether you have an AI platform that's doing it like we do here at EGA or you have 20 data scientists doing it the old fashioned way for you, just the patience to measure incrementality is so important. It takes executive courage to put together a P&L for a loyalty program. To ask your CFO I need this level investment. I'm going to get half of it from my vendor partners in the CPG community, but I may ask for a portion of that for us to self-infest back into the loyalty program. It takes that executive courage to put a comprehensive P&L together so that there's no surprises for your CFO when you're over-investing or investing just like your budget said you were going to in-year.
Speaker 1:No, and I think that's a very interesting perspective as well too, because we have some peer groups that meet very senior level organizations and we meet every depending on the group, like once a month. So in that discussion around kind of leveraging CPG partners you talked earlier about the kind of the media network that you bring out. There's different ways to monetize customer loyalty programs and that's a big discussion right now with some of this economic uncertainty we have. Right, how do you monetize it right? How do you lean into the CPG partners, but even the whole trans that's, do you lean into the CPG partners? But even the whole trans?
Speaker 1:That's transformed as well the CPG relationship, because it used to be slotting fees mass. You wanted to get as much product space as you want. So there's been kind of a learning curve with the CPG partners. You may not have as much space. If you can optimize me and work with me in a proactive manner, give me some additional fundings, right, get away from kind of that traditional CPG funding model. It can be advantageous to both partners. But that takes some time too. I think most brands are beyond that, but that was a struggle as well for a good period of time, wouldn't you say?
Speaker 2:I think you have to ask yourself do you want a quarter million dollars one time or do you want $50,000 every quarter for the next three years? Right, Because CPG vendors?
Speaker 1:who are?
Speaker 2:seeing ROAS or ROI on retailers negotiations will continue to invest and possibly even invest more. There's $40 billion going into retail media networks this year. How much is each retailer going to get out of that piece of the pie and how much return are we going to give back to our clients? Right, Because our CPG vendors in a retail media network are now our clients. So we're always balancing that here at EGA and when we need a tiebreaker, I go back to Consumer Insights.
Speaker 1:I try to take the subjectivity out of it and I try to figure out the best way to deploy our CPG vendor funds via Consumer Insights discussion we've been having as well, too, is kind of the early adopters of the retail media networks or some of the partnership approaches or even different reward opportunities.
Speaker 1:From a customer loyalty perspective, we're going to have some advantages, right, because at some point the retail media networks, you're competing against the Amazons and the Kroger's and whomever. But if you have display terminals at the point of sale, there's some unique things that you can do. But as everyone starts to get into that, it becomes a little crowded potentially, right. But you have the opportunity of being ahead and you have that kind of modality or mentality within the organization that is for pro-investment, right, they are open to trying different things where others are maybe not as forward thinking. So it gives you an advantage. But that's a big discussion. Again, if everyone else offers free Verizon for my loyalty program to the top tiers, at what point does that not matter? Right, if someone offers free streaming where the top tiers it's kind of the rewards, the incentives, the customer value propositions are changing, but it sounds like you have a pretty unique focus on that. But you also have an advantage of being an early adopter, I think.
Speaker 2:I believe in strategic targeted positioning Right. So when I think about the things customers buy at convenience and gas stations, it's heavily commoditized at convenience and gas stations. It's heavily commoditized. You can get them in our industry, you can get them in other industries and you can get them at our competitors or our locations. So what is our STP that drives customers onto our lot? What makes us famous? And we really believe in trip missions and creating a divide and a moat around our trip missions so we continue to become more famous for those things our customers are already giving us credit for. I think that's really important in both personalized advertising and retail media networks.
Speaker 1:Excellent. A couple last questions on digital partnerships or all types of partnerships, that more one-to-one versus in making sure the value proposition is right for both brands, getting away from more the affiliate-based relationships which don't provide value to both brands and then they can be kind of deleterious to both. Right? So if Avis and Budget had the same thing as Hertz with Wyndham, you know there's no value there. So making sure you get that right is very opportune but it's very challenging. So how do you do that? Because, getting back to your ROAS and the ROI on these programs, you know you can either do kind of a currency exchange, potentially to do a partnership, but the more strategic ones require some thinking. And now we talked about that whole performance-based approach making sure that you have the right ROI to do a bigger program. That's going to have more impact and be more challenging, correct, but it also can be more advantageous.
Speaker 2:It's such a good question. So in the month of March, ega relaunched our loyalty program, we launched a retail media network and we relaunched our delivery partnership platforms. So it was a really big month for us and we are focused right now, mark, on driving those businesses forward. A lot of green pasture in front of us to move from operating those digital commerce businesses to joint partnerships in similar industries that our customers would find value to. I would say we are in the infantile stages of those partnerships and your point is extremely well heard and your point is extremely well heard. We have to find out what of those partnerships create great currency for our customers but also differentiate ourselves. And then, if you think about our brand tone, how can we have fun? Right, let's not do what's expected of us. Let's give our customers surprise and delights that fall well within our brand tone and our strategy. So that's what we're working on now as we go into 2026 business planning.
Speaker 1:Excellent, Kind of wrapping this up. When you look at your program, the customer loyalty program, customer experience, everything that you're doing, what are two or three things that you're most proud of?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, I'm so proud of our team, right? I think it always has to start with the team. Whether it's the team at headquarters who built these solutions so quickly, including our loyalty program. Whether it is our business partners that, through rigorous RFP processes, they came out on top. Whether it's our operational partners who gave us really honest and constructive feedback so that our loyalty program, as we rebuilt it and relaunched it, would be the best possible loyalty program we could build.
Speaker 2:It always has to start with the people. I'm so proud of the people we get to work with every day, and that is a choice. Who you get to work with is a choice. I would also say I'm really excited and really proud of the data sets that we're creating here at EGA. If you think about the convenience industry, one KPI that makes the convenience industry very valuable from a consumer insights perspective is the frequency in which customers are coming onto our lots. So, while we may not have very large baskets compared to other industries, we have really interesting frequency data points. And, as I think about additional partnerships in 2026, here at EGA, we're going to figure out how we harness frequency and consumer insights to build more value for all of our future partners.
Speaker 1:Okay, and the last question we have what can Loyalty360 do to help you and your team in your customer loyalty journey?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, it's such a great question. I think today was an incredible start, right? We just want to be included in the conversations. We are really proud of what we've built over the past 10 months and we're really excited to be here today with you. And we're really excited to be here today with you, mark, and we just want to continue to have conversations with you and continue to share the content that you're sharing. One of my very favorite sayings in business is that business is an open book test, and here at EGA, we learn from everyone, whether it's in our industry, out of our industry or nothing to do with our industry. We have dozens of loyalty apps downloaded to our iPhones. We have tons of CRM emails and push notifications and messages we're receiving, and we learn from everyone. So the knowledge Loyalty360 is sharing across all sorts of different industries is very valuable to us here at EGA.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Well, thank you for that. Now we have the wonderful quickfire question round, so we like to keep these to a short word. One word answers a short phrase, or I get in trouble with Hannah, which I don't want to be in trouble. So the first question what is your least favorite word that others use?
Speaker 2:Strategy.
Speaker 1:That made my day. I abhor people to use that word because everyone who uses it they have no idea what it means, and when they put it in their LinkedIn bio or they use it obsessively, they yeah 100%. That's a yeah. This is 100, sorry is 100. Sorry. 100. Strategy. Hate that word. Um, uh, critical thinking would be my next one, but that's a whole different discussion. Um, what is your favorite word? Growth, excellent. What excites you at work? Opportunity okay, what do you find tiresome at home or at work?
Speaker 2:Reading too much.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there a book, speaking of reading, that you'd like to recommend to your colleagues that you found impactful?
Speaker 2:What Got you here, won't Get you there.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there a profession other than one that you're currently in? Maybe that you'd like to try?
Speaker 2:Designing homes.
Speaker 1:Okay, what do you enjoy doing that you often don't get the chance to do?
Speaker 2:Working out on my Peloton.
Speaker 1:Okay, who inspired you to become the person you are today?
Speaker 2:My dad.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I like that one. And what do you typically think about the end of the day?
Speaker 2:What I could have done better.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how do you want to be remembered by friends and family?
Speaker 2:As someone who cares, but made the world a better place.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's awesome. Well, whitney, this, uh, I can say it's the best interview I've had all year. Uh, this might be one of the top two or three interviews of all time. Uh, I love it when we get away from kind of descriptive questions and have a dialogue. Uh, many people aren't comfortable doing that, but, uh, this, uh, it was a pleasure speaking with you and, uh, I'm not trying to be trite it was an awesome interview. Just from your vision, from your focus, from your holistic approach to customer loyalty, customer experience, how you're getting the team involved, the organization involved. You're checking all the boxes. It was great to hear.
Speaker 2:Mark, thank you so much for having me here today and I look forward to future conversations together.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and everyone. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us for our Brand Stories edition of our Leaders in Customer Multiseries. Join us back every Thursday for a new edition. Until then, have a wonderful day.