5 Geo-targeting Success Stories (and What You Can Learn From Them)

1. Whole Foods Turns Good Fences Into Good Leads

   One strategy is to build a virtual fence around a certain area, then target the audience within that boundary. This is known as geo-fencing, and it’s a practice Whole Foods has mastered, creating boundaries around its own stores, and fencing out its competitors at the same time. Whole Foods makes a practice of targeting mobile ads to users near competitor grocery stores and health stores. In a recent campaign, the grocery giant saw a 4.69% post-click conversion rate (triple the industry average). To follow suit, marketers can erect virtual fences around hot spots relevant to their product or service. For example, a surfboard manufacturer might target coastal areas—particularly those that meet specific demographic criteria. By sending customized messages to select groups within those boundaries, they’ll see a bigger boost in conversion than if they just used mass marketing techniques.

2. PARCO Triggers “Just-in-Time” Discounts When Customers Approach

   Beacon technology is already being used by top retailers such as Target, Rite Aid, and CVS. Its rise in popularity is expected to breathe life back into brick-and-mortar retailers, offering highly personalized shopping experiences. Many retailers have deployed not only beacons, but also cameras, and other sensors that gather data on prospective customers as they move toward and through various retail locations. PARCO Co. Ltd., which operates 3,000 stores in Japan, uses Treasure Data enterprise Customer Data Platform (CDP) to pull data from geosensors, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, loyalty programs, mobile apps, and even rooftop weather sensors to feed its strategy for omnichannel personalization. When customers arrive at PARCO stores, tracking sensors trigger a series of highly personalized interactions and offers—everything from rewards if customers play their “POCKET PARCO” walking game (a sort of retail scavenger hunt), to special offers and discounts triggered when customers approach a particular store. Customer feedback, ratings, and interaction with these personalized offers and games become part of each customer’s profile for use in later targeting and segmentation, as well as in new interactions.

3. Helping Associates Win with the Right Customer Data

   Through the Arm Retail solution In-Store Mode software development kit (SDK) that connects Treasure Data CDP with the Reflexis ONE platform, sales associates in a variety of retail locations can easily pull up information on customers as they approach the store or browse the aisles. The In-Store Mode SDK helps retailers combine multiple customer data sources, such as average spend by each customer and loyalty info—all presented in easy-to-read dashboards tailored for each retailer’s handheld devices. This allows retailers to identify their most valuable customer segments in real time as they approach and differentiate their needs from one another. The In-Store Mode SDK incorporates sensor fusion, in-store beacons, and indoor maps to capture in-store shopper behavior from the retailer’s mobile app. Then it combines this information with existing customer data from email platforms, loyalty programs, CRM, previous purchases, social media, web browsing, and mobile apps. For example, if two customers approach a salesperson, he or she can immediately know which one has spent more money in the past 90 days or which one has been searching for the very floor model that is just steps away. Empowering associates with customer data results in better clienteling, with the potential to dramatically increase sales. Retailers can also hyper-localize planning and merchandising to meet the preferences of its most profitable customer segments. The data is enriched with the customer's opted-in digital and social data, and it’s used to deliver personalized offers to the shopper—either via the retailer app when in-store or for the next store visit. Using data from a myriad of sources—including IoT data from consumers’ personal devices, in-store cameras and beacons, and geofencing—will undoubtedly become more commonplace as the footprint of CDPs continues to grow. For retail associates, not knowing your customers or what they want could actually become a thing of the past.

4. Kirin Sells More Products Through Personalized Campaigns

   Global beverage brand Kirin—a company with 40+ brands in its portfolio—uses Treasure Data CDP to combine online browsing data, promotional event data and other data to round out profiles for 4 million customers. Augmenting and unifying this data with offline data, Kirin gains insights to improve marketing campaign performance. The result is increased sales by visitors who experience the personalized campaigns at the company’s concept shops, directly operated stores, and beer factory tours. By analyzing behavioral data, Kirin determines profiles of its best customers. Then Kirin creates customer segments to target in omnichannel personalized campaigns distributed via push notifications through Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Results of campaign measurements show an increase in purchase frequency and improved customer lifetime value (CLV) for personalized campaigns compared to the standard campaigns.

5. X Maps the Shopper’s Journey

   With all the sensors, beacons, and cameras used in retail, data about how people actually shop is now readily available—including the paths they take through the store, what they pick up, how they use their phones and which sites they visit to compare or research prices. Using Treasure Data CDP with In-Store Mode SDK, the Reflexis ONE platform—used by hundreds of major retailers—maps individual customer journeys by combining data from all these sources. This can help identify places where shoppers “get stuck” or “fall out” of the funnel. For example, when a shopper browses and considers a particular product, but doesn’t buy it, Arm Retail captures all of the corresponding data in real-time and stores it. The enormous value captured here is that this data—and insights from it—can be shared with retail store associates, providing them with actionable tasks like which customer to focus on. Data captured from shopper's engagement with products in-store and online can trigger alerts of interest in those products and opportunities to sales associates, prompting personalized service. Imagine this scenario. A customer walks into a home and garden store and makes her way into the area where the outdoor grills and BBQs are sold. She has spent over $700 here in the past six months. A retail associate could actually receive alerts that she was in that area and had examined the grills in person, then walked away. The retail associate might approach the customer to see if she could answer any questions, and perhaps offer a special discount or other perks, like free delivery to entice a purchase. The unique insights from combining digital and physical customer data to provide true 360-degree customer views have great potential to drive a dramatic increase in sales—and bring profound changes to the purchasing experience.

Location Information: Part of a Winning Retail Strategy

• Past behaviors, like multiple visits to a restaurant or retail location
• Demographic data, such as income level in various ZIP codes
• Search and browsing data, including research on products customers intend to purchase