There are nearly 280 million people in the US going about with cell phones. They are walking from their cars to their offices, playing with their kids in parks, and most importantly, on their way into the mall. Mobile phones – and the growing legions of wireless devices like iPads as well as portable gaming systems – are the only form of media delivery that actually travels with the consumer around and into retail locations.
In the marketing sector, we used to talk about demographics or past purchase history as a decent predictor of future intent. In online, “behavioral” data is used to target ads. Now, through the power of cloud computing combined with data from mobile devices, we can target consumers by location and as I believe, location is a much more precise way of predicting purchase intent than any other form of data. Let’s say Jill Smith is a loyal customer of Acme Applied Clothing and is heading to the Springfield Mall off I-91. Decent chance she might be in the market for the latest leggings – especially if she was reminded we have them in all the latest colors and styles.
This sort of marketing has long been discussed as if it were either a sci-fi potentiality or simply too intrusive to consumers. It exists now and consumers are more than happy to allow location-based marketing if the purpose is to increase relevancy and give them something of value. My client, Placecast, is the first location-based platform specifically designed to use digital marketing on mobile to drive consumers into physical environments. Placecast creates “geofences”– essentially a zone around any place (from a retail store to a natural attraction) - on behalf of large retail brands. When consumers cross into one of these zones, they receive a tailored message on their phone based on where they are and when they are there.
Cloud computing plays a key enabling role in the emergent location-based ecosystem. As location-based services, mobile smart phone applications, mobile data, the wireless Internet and smartphones become ubiquitous, the cloud becomes the fabric that enables each of these to function dynamically and at scale, delivering content (and advertising) that is instantly made relevant
based on place and time. From querying a large carrier network for location information, to serving media and providing local
search and discovery functionality – these and other services are dramatically improved (and affordably delivered) using the
infrastructure of the cloud.
In the fall of 2009, we conducted pilot studies involving three very different types of retailers (Sonic, American Eagle and REI) in two US markets over a three month period. We tested consumer response to their product ShopAlerts, which delivers location-triggered mobile messages when shoppers enter the geo-fences that can be created around virtually any area. Consumers who opted in to receive location-triggered messages from the select retailers were surveyed about their experience with the messages, their preferences and what impact the messages had on both store visitation and purchase behavior.
From a marketer perspective, the program was a huge success. ShopAlerts drove both store visitation and purchase that increased in likelihood over time: 79% said it increased their likelihood to visit by the end of the program. Sixty-five percent made a purchase as a result of a ShopAlert. But more importantly, what did consumers think about them? Seventy-five percent found them somewhat to very useful and 73% would definitely or probably use a service like this in the future.
With their “always with you” quality, mobile devices are proving to be an extraordinary and unique marketing platform: they operate as personal reminder mechanisms. Beginning to use the cloud to support marketing programs like this one makes it easy for the different players in the value chain required to deliver these kinds of services- from retailers to location aggregators, to platforms like Placecast – to collaborate and deliver compelling services for consumers.
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