Just two months ago, Circle K took its Inner Circle loyalty program and fundamentally changed how members earn rewards. Now, Inner Circle is a visit-based model, evolving from its previous everyday discount, spend-based model.
The original program launched in 2023, and over 16 million customers have since joined.
“You really do have to start with the customer and then figure out after how it makes sense for your business. I’d like to think we did that in a way that works for our customers first but also works for our business,” said Rick Rasor, VP of loyalty and digital experience at Circle K.
One of the largest c-store retailers in the U.S., Circle K operates 7,260 stores throughout the nation, and its reworked loyalty program offers a new sense of flexibility and value to its members.
A New Loyalty Currency
Inner Circle rewards members now accrue Visits, which equate to five gallons or more of gas pumped or $3 or more spent inside the store, thresholds determined through customer data revealing realistic and reasonable spend.
“A visit is our first foray into a loyalty currency,” said Rasor. “We’re adding a loyalty currency into this, and customers can then earn their visits and unlock rewards at different levels across our entire store. This really supports our transition into this ‘every visit counts’ strategy … to make sure that all of our customers, regardless of how they choose to engage with us, have the ability to earn and redeem higher value across our store.”
Circle K constantly monitors three different areas that influenced its decision to transform its loyalty program: how customers are behaving, both through data and what they’re saying; the chain’s business; and the marketplace and environment.
“All three of those have shifted over the last three years. Not a surprise. I think, obviously, everyone knows what’s going on in the fuel market and especially in our industry and what’s happening there,” Rasor said.
Other factors that led to the relaunch were the introduction of its Core + More strategy this year, with a focus on core categories while investing in growth areas and listening to customers ask for greater flexibility and value.
Leveraging Data
Since the initial launch of Inner Circle in 2023, Circle K has developed more data platform and tech capabilities that allows the chain to act on data in quicker manner.
“We really have to capture (the customer) when they’re on our site,” said Rasor. “We’re really in the moment, and so the real-time communication and connection with our customers is important. We really unlocked that over the last 18 months with our data, which has given us really great results in the program.”
While Circle K has always offered personalized challenges, it ramped this up because even with the loyalty program’s new structure, the chain wants to ensure the ability to take care of all customers.
For example, Circle K will recognize the loyalty of a customer that buys a Polar Pop every day, even though a Polar Pop is under the $3 minimum visit.
“(We can) reward them in meaningful ways that might be outside of that $3 minimum threshold or the value we’re providing in the everyday program, so they still feel recognized,” said Rasor.
Circle K can then take the data and introduce these customers to items that others who purchase Polar Pops enjoy, potentially building baskets.
The overall purpose of the challenges, Rasor continued, is recognizing and rewarding existing behavior while exposing customers to other parts of the business.
Circle K treats success as more customers visiting more frequently, experiencing more of what Circle K has to offer. The team is tracking customer growth, engagement and visit frequency after signing up for Inner Circle. As for experiencing more of what Circle K has to offer, the chain measures that through number of categories purchased and number of services and digital channels with which members engaged.
The Relaunch
When Circle K first relaunched Inner Circle, it had a few non-negotiables: current members should not have to sign up again and any value already earned by members is kept and able to be redeemed within an allotted amount of time.
Overall, the chain wanted the program to be simple; customers should immediately understand the screen when they pull up Inner Circle on their device. For current members, the idea of a visit-based campaign has been tested since late 2024, allowing a transition to a completely visit-based model to be easier.
Circle K tested the relaunch first with its employees, who provided feedback, and the chain was able to tweak a few things before launching publicly.
“There’s more stimulii being thrown at consumers every single day, and so we really took note of that and stripped this down to make sure it was really simple,” Rasor said.
He envisions customers placing significant value on simplicity going forward and Circle K using data and new customer intelligence capabilities to help customers make decisions within the program easier.
“We’ve really focused on creating an interconnected consumer offer that we can plug and play the best of everything that we have, and I don’t think I can emphasize that enough,” Rasor said. “I don’t think there are a lot of brands and companies at our scale in the position to do that like Circle K is. A global brand that can bring the best of everything is pretty valuable. You could see this over the years to start to cross borders in a way it hasn’t before and really reach our consumer in a new way.”
