Retail is booming on mobile and as retailers are more and more aware of this type of IoT, they are already looking into the potential of beacons to boost sales, improve customer experience, power retail operations and offer plenty of actionable business intelligence. A recent study from Business Insider revealed that beacons are expected to bring in over $44 billion in retail sales to top US retailers this year. So if there’s one technology that is bound to take the brick-and-mortar retail experience to the next level, it’s beacons. That’s why today we present some great ways in which beacons can seriously improve your in-store sales.
THE POWER OF PROXIMITY MARKETING
Hyperlocal marketing is incredibly effective because it engages customers on the basis of their location. And it definitely works in retail where beacons can communicate with consumer devices and help retailers accomplish different goals.
Geography- and time-relevant marketing is critical in retail sector and beacons allow brands to make the most out of every opportunity for engaging a potential customer.
And with a good reason – more than a half of consumers surveyed admitted to be willing to share their location to receive more relevant ads and more likely to engage with location-based advertising.
CUSTOMER LOYALTY REWARDS
Retailers have been using loyalty programs since forever, but proximity marketing combined with efficient contextual targeting allows to seriously expand this strategy.
Thanks to data obtained through beacons, retailers can offer promotions, discounts, and recommendations based on the location and purchase history of consumers.
Targeted loyalty rewards work wonders especially for returning customers who wish to reconnect with the brand. Smart retailers build apps which help users to take location-based actions – for instance, enter a specific section of a store.
An example? The food chain EAT partnered with a beacon-enabled consumer loyalty app Pouch precisely to overhaul the online and in-store experience. Thanks to this app, EAT can collect customer data and push out loyalty offers to customers, making precise predictions on how they can be further engaged.
COUPONS AND PROMOTIONS
Mobile couponing has a huge influence on retail sales, and beacons only boost its efficiency. With beacon technology retailers can offer targeted coupons to shoppers at particular locations or with specific shopping patterns.
For example, UK’s Tesco recently launched a beacon trial with Unilever by deploying the technology in 270 stores all over London. When passing a beacon in Tesco Express, consumers would receive a notification inviting them to download a special app and receive exclusive coupons for discounted Pink and Black Magnums directly to their phone.
ACCESS TO VALUABLE ANALYTICS
Offering an app connected to beacons, retailers can measure the amount of traffic in specific retail locations and track consumer behavior. Even when not triggering particular messages, beacons are immensely helpful for getting metrics showing the busiest sections of a store, or the length of time customers spend in locations. Retailers can use this information to optimize merchandising and allocate resources where they bring you most revenue.
Carrefour can be a good example. The company has deployed a large iBeacon network in its hypermarkets in Romania. Their app helps customers to explore different sections of the stores from area to area, automating the delivery of commercial content, and collecting essential data about in-store consumer behavior. Thanks to the beacon technology, Carrefour saw a 600% rise in the number of app users in just seven months.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Embracing the technology and developing a special beacon-enabled mobile app is a bulletproof strategy for boosting in-store sales in every sector.
If you are curious what other starategies you can use to boost your profits from commerce, read this article and find out why m-commerce is a good solution for your store.
