Fioulmarket｜TotalEnergies

Success Story: Fioulmarket｜TotalEnergies

Fioulmarket, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies and France’s leading online retailer of domestic heating oil, has chosen to partner with Actito to optimise its marketing activation strategy and strengthen customer loyalty in a rapidly changing energy market. A look back at an inspiring success story.

The client

Founded 12 years ago, Fioulmarket has established itself as the leading online seller of domestic heating oil. As a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, the company has gained greater agility and autonomy in its technological choices. Over the years, Fioulmarket has expanded its offering to include firewood through Proxy Total Energie and energy-efficient renovation solutions through L’Energie Tout Compris. Three business areas, all driven by the same priority: customer satisfaction.

The context

Fioulmarket operates in a highly regulated market that is being disrupted by technological developments. With the phasing out of domestic heating oil by 2030, sales volumes are set to fall dramatically. At the same time, energy-efficient refurbishment is gaining momentum, driven by financial incentives. For its B2B operations, new challenges are also looming on the horizon for 2024–2025. Against this backdrop of uncertainty, Fioulmarket must reinvent its business model and customer relationships to ensure its long-term viability and growth.

The challenges

Fioulmarket faces several major challenges in ensuring its long-term viability and growth in a rapidly changing market.

Customer engagement: The first challenge is to reinvent communication with customers throughout their journey. The aim is to create a more personalised, more emotional relationship by being present on the right channels at the right time. The aim is to build brand preference in a market where customers are more fickle and more price-sensitive than brand-loyal.

Customer retention: The second challenge is to retain customers who exhibit atypical purchasing behaviour. In the heating oil and wood sector, customers place orders on average only once or twice a year. Order values are high (in the region of €1,000) but repeat purchases are not guaranteed from one year to the next. To secure its turnover, Fioulmarket must succeed in bringing customers back by maintaining a long-term relationship that goes beyond the single transaction.

Cross-selling: Finally, the third challenge is to anticipate the planned phase-out of domestic heating oil, which still represents the core of the business. To prepare for the future, Fioulmarket must gradually steer its customers towards alternative solutions, such as energy-efficient refurbishment or wood-fired heating. This involves a fundamental transformation of the customer relationship, shifting from a transactional approach to one based on long-term advice and support.

The solution

To address these transformation challenges, Fioulmarket decided in 2023 to overhaul its marketing ecosystem with Actito. This platform was chosen for its ability to streamline the technology stack, standardise campaign management processes and make full use of customer data.

Actito offers advanced features for segmentation, scoring and preference tracking, enabling the company to refine its customer insights and orchestrate personalised customer journeys. The tool’s ease of use enhances the teams’ autonomy and responsiveness.

Beyond the technology, Fioulmarket was also impressed by the quality of support offered by Actito. Throughout the project and in day-to-day operations, this close partnership enables the company to rapidly build up its expertise and improve performance.

With Actito, Fioulmarket is equipping itself to sustainably reinvent its customer relationships, by focusing on intelligent automation and personalised customer journeys.

The results

After just a few months of use, the teams at Fioulmarket have already seen some very encouraging initial results. Thanks to new conversion mechanisms (collecting email addresses via pop-ups, following up on abandoned baskets, etc.), the conversion rate has been optimised. Automated campaigns, fuelled by more detailed customer insights, are showing improved performance (open rates, click-through rates, repeat purchases).

Particular emphasis has been placed on promotional campaigns, which generate 70 per cent of sales. Thanks to Actito, Fioulmarket can now quickly launch these key sales initiatives, precisely targeting customers at the right time. The stakes are high, because if a customer misses a promotion, they risk switching to a competitor. By being more responsive and relevant in its communications, Fioulmarket limits this risk of customer churn and optimises the profitability of its campaigns.

AB testing and AI within the messages also enable the company to take message personalisation even further, ensuring it aligns ever more closely with each customer’s expectations.

Upcoming initiatives

Building on these initial successes, the Fioulmarket teams now have new ambitions. To drive greater engagement, new scenarios will be implemented and new channels activated: push notifications, chatbots, conversational agents on WhatsApp… Gamification mechanics (surveys, quizzes, simulators) will complement the system to enrich customer insight and strengthen brand preference.

By embracing marketing automation with Actito, Fioulmarket is equipping itself to reinvent its customer relationship. Getting to know its customers better, supporting them more effectively, and building greater loyalty: these are the objectives of this strategy, which is resolutely focused on satisfaction and long-term value. A rewarding and inspiring approach, at a time when the energy market is undergoing a profound revolution.