Italiana Petroli Partners with Yext to Power Digital Transformation

IP Gruppo api (the IP api Group) is the leading private player in Italy in the fuel and transport services sector. With an extensive logistics network and refining capabilities, it is an essential partner when it comes to transport and mobility and is involved in the entire downstream petroleum cycle, from crude to refining, right through to logistics, distribution, and sales, along with biofuels and electric charging. With a network of 4,500 points of sale strategically spread throughout Italy, the Group recognized the need for a robust digital strategy to effectively connect with customers.

Italiana Petroli, one of the biggest networks of gas stations in Italy, faced a significant challenge: making sure its reach online allowed customers to easily locate the brand's stations and services. Recognizing various gaps that limited their reach —such as the absence of a Google Business Profile and poor integration with a legacy IT infrastructure — their newly formed Marketing & Innovation team proactively looked for solutions to improve the brand's digital presence. This initiative marked an important step for Italiana Petroli towards embracing a customer-first strategy.

As a network of gas stations, Italiana Petroli's main goal is to provide accurate information about its locations to customers on the road. To do this, Italiana Petroli needed a comprehensive solution capable of seamlessly storing, organizing, and disseminating data for hundreds of stations, including opening hours, addresses for driving directions, and contact information. Additionally, the company required a scalable partner to align with its evolving strategy in the electric vehicle (EV) world. This encompassed digital rebranding activities and the management of EV charging stations, especially those affiliated with the newly announced brand, IPlanet, at various stations. Another important part of the brand's digital presence management strategy included monitoring customer feedback to continually improve the experience for drivers.

In their digital innovation efforts, Italiana Petroli set clear goals and business objectives to better respond to customer needs. They needed a partner that was able to provide them with insights and walk hand in hand together to adapt to an evolving digital strategy. The brand favored Yext for the team's ability to provide strategic advice and deliver a solution that could be tailored to accommodate their evolving needs. In the end, Italiana Petroli adopted innovative ideas and found opportunities to enhance customer value and attract a larger clientele to their points of sale, ultimately boosting sales.

Italiana Petroli started working with Yext in May 2023, with a focus on optimizing the digital journey for drivers, increasing the brand's discoverability, and providing accurate and consistent information about Italiana Petroli's gas stations across various online platforms.

The strategic adoption of Yext aimed to establish and manage accurate GBP listings, providing customers with reliable information about each gas station, across all relevant platforms including maps, navigator, and digital listings. Most recently, Italiana Petroli's digital strategy shifted focus towards monitoring and managing customer feedback. With multiple customer reviews per day, having a centralized tool to view and monitor their customers' feedback was a necessity for the brand.

Italiana Petroli and the Yext team jointly reviewed the brand's existing digital footprint across Google and worked together to correct and enrich the relevant data. Most importantly, they made sure that every IP gas station was properly represented in the right position and with the right branding and information. In total, since the launch of the project in May 2023, Italiana Petroli made over a quarter million updates to fields in Yext Knowledge Graph, which pushed over 1.6M updates to Listings. More than 1900 new Google Business Profile cards have been created, helping people to easily find the closest IP gas station via digital channels. Beyond Google, each point of sales' information is also synchronized with over 30 industry and geography-specific publishers.

The Yext Platform helped Italiana Petroli update and optimize over a thousand pre-existing listings, culminating in a 19% year-on-year jump in Listings engagement for existing Listings and pushing over nearly 2000 new Listings live — more than doubling Italiana Petroli's online presence on third-party publishers. The net result of both optimizing existing Listings and seamlessly pushing new or missing Listings live was more than a 2.5x growth in total Listings engagement. This led to a 252% growth in clicks for driving directions, 310% growth in clicks to call, and 270% growth in clicks to their website from Listings.

Italiana Petroli's collaboration with Yext is not just a short-term solution but a part of its broader commitment to innovation. The company envisions using Yext's platform for ongoing data management, making sure that its online presence remains accurate, consistent, and optimized for customer engagement. The brand plans to leverage Yext solutions to boost the newly launched engagement platform and loyalty program Ipiu' and keep the users informed about offers, promotions, and key operational changes, creating a real dialog with drivers. The customer voice will be at the center of the brand's digital strategy, and the marketing team will start spreading insights across the company collected from the reviews left by users.

Italiana Petroli and Yext will also collaborate to position the other brands of the Group in their digital journey, offering drivers the most updated information about new energy options to refuel or recharge vehicles and all their new services. This strategic approach aligns with Italiana Petroli's commitment to putting the future in motion, both in its physical and digital operations.

* May 2023-Sep 2023 vs. May 2022-Sep 2022