To maintain its rank as Thailand’s #1 convenience store chain, in 2023 7-Eleven Thailand invested in multiple mobile campaigns to help build more meaningful and long-lasting relationships with its customers. The main goal of these campaigns was to increase product stickiness and customer engagement, aiming to further strengthen the brand and lay the foundation for long-term business growth on both its online and offline sales channels.

Understanding their customers' preferences and behaviours, 7-Eleven knew that traditional marketing strategies would no longer suffice. They decided to incorporate modern technologies like augmented reality (AR) and gamification into their digital campaigns. To create a truly unified experience and bridge the gap between offline and online, the team incorporated all customer touchpoints to launch their campaigns, including the brand’s social media platforms, its mobile application, and physical storefronts.

Thailand is Southeast Asia’s second largest digital economy, and ranks third globally for online shopping penetration (behind only UK and Indonesia), most of which happens on mobile. The country's e-commerce market has experienced consistent growth since 2017, fueled by widespread internet and smartphone usage, robust logistics and e-payment systems, and strong competition among e-commerce players. The impact of Covid-19 served as a catalyst, accelerating the already well-established growth in this sector.

With a rebound in consumer spending and foreign tourists after the pandemic, 2023 posed high growth opportunities. Besides the signs of a more competitive market, 7-Eleven had to adapt to changes in consumer behaviour which now exhibited less loyalty to brands.

Similar to customers worldwide, Thai people appreciate discounts and free gifts, prompting 7-Eleven to reintroduce its stamp collection campaign, a cherished loyalty program and long-standing favourite among Thais for over a decade.

For Thais, brand reputation and cultural aspects strongly influence their behaviour. Brands that align with cultural values and social trends resonate well with Thai consumers. This is exemplified by 7-Eleven's strategic decision to partner with k-pop singer Jackson Wang, who gained massive popularity in Thailand between 2022 and 2023. K-pop itself has secured the largest fan base in Southeast Asia, with Thailand the second largest market. Apart from the influence of a celebrity, environmental awareness has been another hot topic amongst Thais, especially younger generations. They were more willing to support brands that incorporate environment friendly initiatives, and were more willing to participate whenever they could.

7-Eleven launched three campaigns through its mobile app: it’s loyalty campaign, M-Stamp, and two mini-games, the AR scavenger hunt and 7 GO Green. The ideas leverage technology and the brand’s digital touchpoints to bridge the online-to-offline experience through gamification.

The M-Stamp campaign, in collaboration with Minions and LINE Friends, enabled digital stamp collection, gradually transforming the user’s digital stamp book into a colourful display.

The AR scavenger hunt, featuring Jackson Wang, injects excitement into discount code collection by incorporating augmented reality. Players hunt for signature items in their surroundings, earning redeemable codes for purchases.

The 7 GO Green campaign raises awareness about climate change through customer and corporate action, rewarding eco-conscious behaviour with virtual tree growth. Each purchase made without single-use plastic earns water droplets towards growing a virtual tree, symbolizing their individual impact. Furthermore, 7-Eleven commits to planting real trees for every virtual tree cultivated within the app.

7-Eleven’s customers span all ages and locations. The strategy was to create different campaigns to resonate with different customer segments.

Stamp collection has been part of 7-Eleven's loyalty program for over a decade and M-stamp digitised that familiar format. To grab attention and build hype, 7-Eleven partnered with well-loved characters like Minions and Brown.

7 GO Green was made simple to participate; saying no to single-use plastic meant the customer already contributed to the environment, and for loyalty members the campaign automatically tracked and visualised their impact in the app, reinforcing the behaviour. Making this easy to share socially both made customers look good and amplified campaign reach.

To capture the attention of younger, tech-savvy customers, 7-Eleven combined the popularity of influencer Jackson Wang, with cutting edge AR technology. The game was designed to be fun, to increase customer engagement and directly drive commerce, by facilitating product and discount discovery.

The M-Stamp campaign ran between 24 August and 23 November, the AR scavenger hunt between 24 March and 23 June, and the 7 GO Green campaign between 24 April and 23 July 2023, all hosted within the 7-Eleven app.

The campaign was developed natively for both iOS and Android, requiring specialist skillsets familiar with AR technology. The execution also required the creation of 3D assets for different product items, for customers to hunt in their surroundings.

The GO Green campaign enabled customers to track their personal impact, and share this socially to showcase their contribution. Customers could also track overall campaign metrics to see how many trees were already planted.

7-Eleven used both traditional and digital marketing channels, promoting via TV ads and digitally to its 8 million Facebook followers. With a strong PR drive, 7 GO Green was also featured in Thailand’s top tier mainstream media.

Over 1 million users accessed the AR campaign, leading to a 6% increase in daily users, boosting overall sessions, engagement and stickiness.

The 7 GO Green campaign successfully promoted the cause amongst customers, with over 9 million customers participating over the 90-day campaign. The campaign surpassed its goal of planting 1 million virtual trees, with 7-Eleven planting 558k real trees in response. Thousands continued visiting the campaign page daily to track the number of trees planted.

The MStamp campaign catapulted the 7-Eleven app to the top of the Lifestyle chart rankings, holding the position permanently during the first 2 weeks of the campaign. It saw over 19m engagements through the 4 month campaign.

At the height of these campaigns the app also entered the top 5 Overall Downloads in Thailand.

In 2023 the 7-Eleven app was ranked as Thailand’s most downloaded app outside of banking, based on data.ai data.