Marketing Agencies Association partner zone. I love networking, and whilst others shun it I actively embrace it.
Who is out there that I can learn from? Who can open my mind to new opportunities - new ways for me to help my clients and my colleagues help theirs? For example, last year at an awards dinner I found myself sat next to Ian Malone, managing director of app development company, We Are Apps. And given that We Are Apps are currently developing solutions for deploying iBeacons in retail and other locations, the conversation soon turned to iBeacons' potential for helping retailers and brands engage shoppers with highly relevant content on the path-to-purchase, whilst shopping - fantastic! So what are iBeacons, how do they work and why should everyone be getting excited about them? iBeacons are small and relatively low cost, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) devices that can literally be placed anywhere because they have a self-contained power source that means they can run for up to two years.
So why is this so exciting? 8 Ways Retailers Should Target Smartphone Users. Not surprisingly, mobile played an increasingly important role this holiday shopping season.
According to Deloitte's Annual Holiday Survey, 68 percent of smartphone users planned to use their devices for holiday shopping, and these consumers would spend 27 percent more on holiday gifts than non-smartphone owners. During the holiday shopping season in particular, consumers experience sensory overload with all of the promotions and advertisements they come in contact with. On mobile, it is critical that retailers hyper-target all messages based on real-time situational factors and robust customer profiles and implement dynamic pricing on an individual level. If marketers push irrelevant content, consumers will perceive it as an annoyance and intrusion that will negatively influence not only their holiday shopping behavior, but also behavior throughout the coming year. Related: 3 Major Retail Predictions for 2014. Connect With Customers by Leveraging Smartphone Sensors. We not only live in a world of billions of smartphones, but we now also live in a world of sensors, soon to number in the trillions.
As smartphones start to really live up their name, new models are being outfitted with an increasing number of sophisticated sensors that can pick up cues from a user’s immediate environment. Samsung’s Galaxy S4, for instance, has nine sensors that provide a glimpse into someone’s physical world. Apart from embedded smartphone sensors, there are external sensors -- from iBeacons to connected devices within the internet of things category. Related: 8 Ways the 'Internet of Things' Will Impact Your Everyday Life People are moving through their daily lives with a great variety of sensors on and around them -- in their homes and cars and the stores they walk into. At no other time in history have companies been able to learn so much about their consumers, the actions they take and circumstances they open, tweet, click, "like," redeem, book or buy. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
This Slick iBeacon Device Helps Retailers Push Deals to In-Store Shoppers. Rudd Davis is a good son.
To help his aging parents financially prepare for retirement, the former USA Today digital marketing executive bought them the Underhill Country Store, the one and only shop in his rural Vermont hometown. He wanted his parents’ fledgling small business not only to survive, but to thrive -- something that isn’t always easy for mom and pop retail shops to do without having a good grip on their operations performance metrics, he told Entrepreneur.com. “Even though that country store had been around for 100 years, it just sort of bumped along and didn’t necessarily have any growth trajectory,” he said.
“So I looked around for tools for my parents to use to improve the business, tools that were simple enough for them to use, yet technologically advanced enough to capture and analyze in-store data, to help them better understand and serve their customers.” Swarm Mobile's app Image credit: Swarm Mobile Related: Tracking These 6 Metrics Could Boost Your Sales. Beacon technology offers plenty of opportunities for retailers. UK retailer House of Fraser announced in August that it will introduce beacon-equipped mannequins in its Aberdeen store to provide customers with a more engaging retail experience.
When a customer with an enabled smartphone app is within a 50 metres of the mannequin, the beacon sends a signal providing them with useful information: details about the clothes and accessories the mannequin is wearing, the price, where the items can be found within the store and links to purchase the items directly from the retailer’s website. Beacons are a type of a low-cost, micro-location-based technology that use Bluetooth low energy (BLE 4.0) for communicating with beacon enabled devices and this isn’t the first time we’ve seen them in use.
Waitrose also trialled the technology to push discounts and offers in its Swindon store, while fashion brand Michael Kors announced plans to integrate beacons into its flagship London store when it opens next year. But what’s so special about them?