BRAND!T Marketing Targeting the right message at the right time.

Case Study: Bringing Customers Back To 7-Eleven

7-Eleven had been experiencing in-store traffic-count declines for an extended period of time.

Work Plan
To address this situation, an in depth data analysis was conducted on several years of store traffic counts. Included in this analysis was a segregation of traffic counts by day-part which revealed that not all day-parts were alike. While morning and lunch time traffic had been either holding or growing month-to-month over several years, later day-parts were on a steep decline. And of course, the sales of the traditional p.m. merchandise categories, milk, bread, soft drinks, etc., were in decline. Adding to the issue, the competitive stores on the other corners were heavily featuring take home products and enjoying heavy traffic after 2 p.m. 7-Eleven stores were clearly not competitive and thus less traveled.

Having isolated the core of the issue, the question then was "what to do?"

Solution
The answer was in take-home products, once a high volume staple of 7-Eleven product offerings that had not been featured in years.

To execute an aggressive p.m. promotional push, the following was initiated:

  • Vendors of select take-home products were recruited to co-op promotion of their lines, soft drinks, beer, salty snacks, bread, milk, etc. These products were promoted on a rotational schedule that kept the customers' choice of products and brands selection ever-changing, new and fresh.

  • The promotion was supported by point-of-sale materials both in-store and at the gasoline pump islands.

  • Additionally, to take the message to the street, a very cost-effective p.m. drive-time radio campaign was initiated. To provide sufficient impact and hold costs down, messages were concentrated in 10-second format message bursts, using message copy read live by radio station announcers.

Result
7-Eleven's p.m. year-to-year traffic count went from a negative 8% to a positive 12% in 4 weeks! The strategy was expanded nationwide with similar and sustained success.

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