Gebrüder Derksen GmbH is a family-run company that has been in business for over 50 years, initially getting its start in the coal trade, but later building its first petrol station in 1976.
As owners of one of the largest petrol stations in Emmerich-Ost – occupying 8,000 square metres and featuring a retail forecourt, a large convenience store and a 60-seat restaurant, as well as an extensive truck stop area with dedicated truck refuelling and rest and wash facilities – Gebrüder Derksen was interested to see how they could enhance the sites potential. With tough competition in the area all vying for business, Gebrüder Derksen wanted to improve customer loyalty by unlocking the power of media on their Emmerich-Ost site. This would allow them to differentiate themselves with multimedia, creating a sense of theater on the forecourt, as well as promoting a wide range of products and services on site alongside their loyalty programme to improve customer retention.
Many customers simply stop at a retail forecourt to refuel, so enticing them to take advantage of other offers can be difficult. Yet, given that the average motorist spends three to four minutes refuelling, it’s a perfect time to draw their attention away from the fuel meter to promotions and offers from inside the convenience store. For Gebrüder Derksen, the answer to generating store traffic and loyalty programme registrations was T-Media™ by Dover Fueling Solutions® (DFS).
After previously installing T-Media at their Emmerich-Elten site and seeing the huge benefits it brought to the fuel station – by generating impulse purchases to drive sales uplift on promoted products and services – Gebrüder Derksen wanted to replicate this success at Emmerich-Ost. Following conversations with DFS, Gebrüder Derksen learned it was possible to retrofit the T-Media solution to their existing Wayne Helix® fuel dispensers currently on site.
T-Media turns a fuel dispenser into a promotional powerhouse. Instead of using static graphics that can be easily ignored, a high-resolution digital screen commands a customer’s attention, displaying colorful text, images, video and sound. It’s perfect for promoting products and driving store traffic, or as was one of the key areas of focus for Gebruder Derksen, driving new registrations for their loyalty scheme. T-Media can also be used to upsell fuel by promoting premium fuel grades when the motorist lifts the nozzle for the regular grade, or to effectively upsell other high-margin services such as car wash right from the dispenser where the consumer is a captive audience during the refuelling process.
Another benefit of T-Media is that it’s a cloud-based tool, which enables remote management and deployment of media content. For Gebruder Derksen, who owns several petrol stations, this means there is no need to update dispenser media in person at every site. T-Media makes it easy to schedule future promotional activities online, where fuel retailers are confident that any and all media content scheduled will be pushed to the correct dispenser screens at the exact date and time as desired. This allows for more targetted messaging, as it is easy to play different promotional messages at different times of the day, or even different days in the week. It’s mire effective and less time consuming than updating static signage on every forecourt.
Gebruder Derksen’s investment in the T-media solution has proven to be extremely effective at their Emmerich-Ost fuel retail site. According to Heinz Derksen, Managing Director, “We are certainly seeing an increase in the sales of the products we are promoting. We have also seen a 30% increase in our loyalty programme registrations. It was important to push our loyalty programme… T-Media is definitely a revenue driver and it’s a massive advantage in that we can be certain about getting a customer’s attention at the dispenser.”
