How Retailers Drive EV Charging Loyalty with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Read Time:10minutes
Jul 14, 2025
In 2025, petrol retailers are in the perfect position to turn EV charging into a loyalty machine.
EV drivers are already stopping to charge. You already have the location, the footfall, and the convenience. What’s missing is the digital connection that keeps them coming back.
With Salesforce Marketing Cloud EV charging integration, petrol retailers can trigger personalised journeys at every stage: before, during, and after the charge.
In this article, you’ll see how to use real-time data, automation, and customer insights to increase loyalty and grow revenue.
For the full setup and architecture, explore our Salesforce EV charging integration guide.
How to turn EV charging into a customer loyalty driver
EV charging is now a central part of the customer experience at petrol stations. It is no longer just a transaction. It creates time, attention, and opportunity. Drivers pause for 20 to 30 minutes. They check their phones. They visit the shop. They are open to communication.
This creates a valuable loyalty moment.
With Salesforce Marketing Cloud EV charging integration, you can automate this entire flow. When a session starts, you can trigger a push notification offering a drink discount. Mid-session, you can send a coupon for store items based on the customer’s past purchases. Once the session ends, you can follow up with loyalty points, a thank-you message, or an invitation to book their next charge.
All of this runs automatically. The timing is based on live charger data, and the content is pulled from customer profiles that update in real time.
This approach gives your marketing team the tools to act with precision. Every message supports a customer action and builds value across the full charging experience.
The best customer journey triggers for EV charging stations
EV charging sessions are predictable, structured, and measurable. This gives petrol retailers a clear framework for engagement.
With your Salesforce Marketing Cloud EV charging integration, you can build journeys that respond to each phase of the customer’s charging experience.
Here’s how that can work:
Before charging: customers often check availability or plan their route. This is the moment to send a personalised message when a charger becomes available at a nearby station. You can prompt action with a reservation link or offer an incentive to choose your location over a competitor’s. This type of journey helps you secure footfall early in the decision-making process.
During charging: the customer is on-site with time to spare. This creates space for interaction. You can trigger in-app offers like a free coffee, a discount on a hot meal, or a reminder about their loyalty tier. These messages are not just promotional—they drive immediate in-store conversions while also reinforcing the value of choosing your station.
After charging: there’s an opportunity to extend the relationship. You can send a thank-you message, confirm reward points earned, or offer a voucher for the next visit. If the customer is enrolled in a loyalty program, you can also show their progress toward a reward. These small follow-ups help close the loop and keep the brand top-of-mind for the next journey.
Each one of these touchpoints is automated, data-driven, and easy to adjust. Together, they create a rhythm of engagement that turns single sessions into a repeat pattern.
This is how loyalty is built into the daily habits of EV drivers, and how your station becomes their preferred stop.
How to segment EV charging customers using charging data
EV drivers have different routines. Some charge daily. Others stop only on weekends. Some linger for coffee. Others charge and go.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud EV charging integration lets you track and group customers based on actual usage. You can segment by:
Charging frequency
Station location
Time of day
In-store activity
App engagement
Now you can match offers to the moment. Here are some examples:
“Three sessions this week? Enjoy a free snack on your next visit.”
“Heading out this weekend? Book your charge and grab lunch.”
“Thanks for charging. You’re 10 points away from your next reward.”
When the message fits the person, loyalty and cross-sales grow faster.
Proven loyalty tactics for petrol retailers with EV charging
Retailers who succeed with EV charging loyalty programs keep their Marketing Cloud setup focused on what matters: clean data, fast execution, and clear value to the customer.
The systems work in the background, and the customer experience feels seamless.
Here are 5 best practices that help you scale without complexity:
Connect EV charging events to Salesforce CRM in real time. Each session start, end, location, and duration is linked to the customer profile. This keeps data fresh and usable. When the next campaign runs, it reflects actual behaviour, not outdated logs.
Automate multichannel journeys across email, SMS, app push, and mobile wallet. Customers don’t all respond to the same channel. Some want a push notification. Others prefer email or a message inside your loyalty app. With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can coordinate the journey across all touchpoints and keep it in sync.
Use A/B testing to fine-tune offers, subject lines, and timing. Even a small difference in message format or timing can impact conversion. Testing helps your team learn what works across different customer types and locations.
Keep messaging consistent across every channel and station. Whether a customer charges in Berlin, Milan, or Stockholm, the experience should feel familiar. Brand tone, offer structure, and reward logic all need to align. Salesforce Marketing Cloud gives you central control over that consistency.
Add location-based triggers to prompt nearby action. When a driver is close to one of your stations, you can send a message that prompts a visit. This could be a reminder that a reward is waiting, a limited-time offer, or an availability update for chargers at that location.
Together, these practices allow you to personalise the charging experience at scale. You can serve hundreds of stations and thousands of drivers without increasing manual workload.
The system adapts, the campaigns learn, and loyalty grows with every session.
How to track loyalty program performance with EV charging data
When your loyalty journeys are powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud EV charging data, you move from assumptions to facts. Every interaction is measurable. Every customer action feeds your next campaign. You’re no longer relying on guesswork or delayed reports. You get real visibility across the full customer lifecycle.
You can track:
Repeat visits: See how often customers return to your stations after engaging with a message or reward. Identify which journeys drive the highest repeat behaviour.
Charging frequency: Measure how often specific segments use your chargers. Compare weekday vs. weekend traffic, and track trends across locations.
Offer redemptions: Monitor which offers get clicked, opened, or redeemed, and which ones are ignored. This helps you refine both your message and your incentives.
In-store spend per visit: Link charging sessions to retail transactions. Understand how promotions impact basket size, and which channels drive store traffic during dwell time.
Loyalty point activity: Track how customers earn, view, and redeem points. Identify drop-off points and see who is close to a reward.
Channel performance: Compare SMS, email, app push, and wallet passes. Find out which channels perform best for different customer types and campaign types.
With all this data in one place, you get a complete picture of what’s working. You can see how campaigns impact both charging behaviour and retail sales.
More importantly, you can adjust fast, improving results without running large, slow campaigns.
Build Customer Loyalty with Every New Charging Session
EV charging has become a core part of the petrol retail experience. It creates time, attention, and touchpoints that petrol retailers can use to drive loyalty, increase revenue, and stay top-of-mind with drivers.
In this article, we covered how to turn EV charging sessions into personalised customer journeys using Salesforce Marketing Cloud. We looked at key use cases like pre-charge messages, mid-session offers, post-session rewards, and follow-ups that build repeat behaviour. We outlined best practices for automation, segmentation, testing, and multichannel delivery. And we showed how to track performance with clear, real-time data.
The engine behind all of this is the eMabler Salesforce Connector, bringing real-time EV charging data into Salesforce, updating customer profiles instantly, and driving the automation behind every loyalty journey.
If you’re ready to grow your EV charging business through smarter loyalty programs, get in touch and see how the eMabler Salesforce Connector can turn every charging session into a measurable, repeatable loyalty win!
