Casey’s automates personalization with AI

Casey’s General Stores Inc. is targeting customers at scale with a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based marketing platform.

The regional Midwest convenience store retailer is sending more than 1 billion personalized marketing messages to its more than 5.5 million loyalty rewards program members this year, leveraging Salesforce AI technology.

Casey’s has stored more than 13 million customer profiles in the Salesforce Genie Customer Data Cloud, along with 150 profile attributes and 6 billion captured individual engagements.

The retailer, which customized its Genie Customer Data Cloud implementation with Salesforce consulting partner Deloitte Digital, drives 30% of its digital revenue via marketing channels activated and automated through Salesforce.

Since beginning its partnership with Salesforce, Casey’s has built a new e-commerce website, launched mobile apps and a loyalty program, and collaborated with third-party delivery companies. Casey’s is now sending 200 million personalized messages a month to its subscriber base, specifically tailored to each customer’s purchasing history. 

Casey’s is also utilizing Salesforce technology to re-engage lapsed buyers, influence new loyalty program members to make purchases, and incentivize frequent buyers to make additional purchases. In addition to Genie Customer Cloud, the company is also utilizing the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, MuleSoft, and Service Cloud solutions.

“With Salesforce, we feel confident in the future of our business — even in challenging economic times — because of the increase in customer connection and internal efficiencies we’ve achieved by consolidating to one, real-time platform,” said Art Sebastian, VP of digital experience, Casey’s. “Before Salesforce, we had multiple fragmented marketing systems that did not talk to one another, and had no commonality. When we selected Salesforce, we had the ability to easily organize and unify all of our customer data to communicate in a consistent way, leading to an increase in customer loyalty and less work for our marketers.

“As we celebrated Casey’s 50th anniversary in 2018, there was a reflection period where we looked in the mirror and asked ourselves how we could remain relevant with our customers for the next 50 years. The answer was to modernize our brand and become a more contemporary version of ourselves,” said Sebastian. “Digital was the first expression of the contemporary Casey’s. “

“Casey’s is an innovative brand who has been able to use real-time data to become a customer company,” said Bobby Jania, senior VP, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. “Using Salesforce, Casey’s has been able to consolidate marketing tech tools onto a single platform, while unifying data from within Salesforce and elsewhere to create tailored customer experiences.”

Based in Ankeny, Iowa, Casey’s operates more than 2,400 stores located across 16 states.