New Zealand’s fuel industry has become increasingly competitive since fuel discount programme Smartfuel launched in late 2010. With distinct advantages such as brand, New Zealand ownership and Fly Buys, Z’s strategy is to leverage these advantages rather than competing in a price war.

When Fly Buys and Z identified a growing group of customers who had previously been frequent, high-volume shoppers but who had become more sporadic or lower volume, they knew they had to act – Fly Buys members are exceedingly valuable to Z. Together they analysed the data and discovered these customers were likely to be more motivated by fuel discounts than by Fly Buys points, so they did something entirely new and used Fly Buys as the database and communications channel for a campaign that had fuel price discounts as its leading offer.

This enabled a below-the-radar method of reaching customers without competitors getting wind of the offer. Z and Fly Buys also undertook substantial targeting and refining across three versions of the DM, to determine the most effective and cost-efficient way of reaching these customers in the future.

Across all three iterations, the average lift against the control of 22% made it one of Z’s most successful campaigns ever – distinctive performance in a channel where lifts of a few percent are celebrated. Even better, as well as delivering on the short term goals, they continued to see a lift against the control in the weeks and months following the campaign.