Win Customers with Geofencing
The old saying goes: It’s not just selling the person the right product, it’s the right product at the right place at the right time. Now, the marketers have the best opportunity to target their customers at the right place and at the right time. And that opportunity is called geofencing. It’s definitely worth tapping into a whole world of geofencing.
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is to create a virtual geographic boundary by using GPS or RFID technology. It triggers a response when a mobile device enters or leaves defined borders. It’s that simple:
- Define a location by longitude and latitude: You can target more than one location
- Choose from a wide range of messaging options: You can send rich media push notifications or interactive push notifications
Why should we use Geofencing?
Geofencing Increases Conversions
What’s a better time than sending a push notification to a customer when they walk into a shopping mall and offer a discount? It may not be this valuable 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after. Geofencing enables you to capture that extremely valuable micro moment. You will be able to make timely and relevant connections with your customers. And, they will be more receptive to your call to action.
Researches show that in 60% of purchasing are decided within the store. While many in-store factors influence such unplanned purchases, companies should further explore new opportunities. Without waiting for potential customers stepping into your store, you can reach out to them when they’re near your stores. You can create multiple geofences for one campaign and send rich push notifications to your customers that might trigger their interests. Or you can notify customers about a limited promotion. Time pressure is always important in driving unplanned and on-the-stop purchasing decisions. Therefore, leverage geofencing with time pressure and generate higher open and conversion rates.
Geofencing Makes the Best Use of Mobile
For quite some time, shopping habits of customers have been shifting to mobile. Customers turn to their mobile devices to order food, find a ride or explore new places and things. If you offer products or services to customers through push notifications designed with real-time location data, you will be meeting their needs and providing them with benefits. It can both pull potential customers in and improve engagement of existing customers.
Starbucks is effectively using geofencing with its Mobile Order and Pay feature. Customers close to the Starbucks store can order and pay ahead on the app before entering the store. As customers have embraced mobile ordering, Starbucks’ mobile order and pay service grew to 11% of transactions in U.S. company-operated stories in Q1 2018 from 10% in the prior quarter. Such steady growth path shows that geofencing can help companies improve the customer journey by taking advantage of mobile-first purchasing path.
Moreover, the fact that mobile commerce sales worldwide surpassed 1 trillion dollars in 2017 and is projected to reach 3.5 trillion dollars by 2021, proves that geofencing shows a great potential as an effective way to generate higher revenues.
Geofencing Offers Great Opportunities for Event Marketing
Concerts, conferences, festivals bring hundreds and thousands of people together in a day in one place. So, if an event fits your target customers, you will be able to reach out to many potential customers. With rich media push notifications, you can even increase your chances to create engaging contents and get their attention. Here are a couple of scenarios for event marketing:
- A nearby restaurant can provide discount codes to attendees of a concert.
- At music festivals, brands that want to engage with millennials can offer giveaways.
- During a football match, a sports magazine can remind users of its app at the stadium.
- A sponsor of a conference can welcome conference attendees with push notifications while they are entering the venue.
You can harness the power of event marketing with geofencing. You will have a higher chance of increasing your customer base and customer engagement at the same time.
Conclusion
Geofencing is not about bombarding customers with irrelevant and useless messages regardless of where they are. Geofencing does not only add relevance to the push notifications but also it enables you to reach your potential customers live and on-site. Therefore, you should add geofencing to your app marketing activities.
Original Article