The Benefits of WiFi Marketing

The benefits of WiFi marketing and analytics are abundant in the restaurant and retail industries.

Most marketers tend to think of a WiFi marketing platform as simply a solution that can automate marketing messages.

However, there is so much to take advantage of than that. In fact, it can literally drive your restaurant or retail location to the next level.

Below you will find the many benefits of WiFi marketing that you can take advantage of when implementing a WiFi marketing and analytics platform.

What Is WiFi Marketing?

“WiFi Marketing is a marketing technique that uses a physical location’s guest WiFi landing pages and access point(s) to collect customer names, contact information and demographics while measuring their behavior data at the location. The data is then used to create targeted remarketing campaigns to influence customers to increase their visit frequency and spend, and measure their satisfaction in real time.”

This is a great definition, but it doesn’t reveal the many other benefits of WiFi marketing and analytics.

Below we will discuss these benefits and show you how to improve your business using your existing guest WiFi access points.

1. Obtain Detailed Customer Analytics

When creating successful brick-and-mortar marketing campaigns, WiFi analytics can be the missing piece that marketers have been looking for.

Marketers know that to succeed in today’s marketplace, campaigns have to be built around accurate, comprehensive data about their customers.

Market research companies, however, can be very expensive.

According to market research company CSR, a 90-minute focus group of 8 consumers can cost nearly $6,000, and personal interviews can cost around $325 per person.

According to another market research company Hosted Survey, the cost for completing 200 phone surveys can vary between $5,000 and $15,000, and mail surveys cost between $5,000 and $7,000.

So, the problem for most marketers lies in exactly how to gather the necessary data without spending their entire budget.

In addition, many marketers have trouble finding reliable customer data in a safe, secure, unobtrusive, and inexpensive manner.

Likewise, they need to organize the data for studying and making data-driven intelligent decisions.

All of this can be challenging and expensive without the right tools.

With a WiFi marketing and analytics platform like Bloom Intelligence, you can collect this kind of data passively, at pennies on the dollar compared to other data collection methods.

Even if your customers do not login to your WiFi, you will see valuable anonymous customer behavior data.

This real-time data can give you a look into how your customers are reacting to your marketing and operations efforts.

You will discover things like:

• Dwell Time
• First Time Visitors
• First Time Visitor Return Rate
• Customer Churn Likelihood
• Popular Visit Times
• And Much More

Even more, if you have multiple locations, you can compare the data between stores, and for any date span.

2. Build a Large, Clean Customer Database

When customers decide to login to your WiFi, the system creates a customer profile for that patron.

Any anonymous data discussed above that is associated with the customer’s device is added to the customer profile.

Even if the customer never logs in again, their customer profile will be updated in real time with their behavior data.

In Bloom’s customer profiles you’ll find the following information:

• Customer name and email address
• Age and Gender
• The Customer’s Birthday
• Zip Code and Locations Visited
• All Customer Behavior Data
• Promotions Received and Redeemed
• Per-Person Average

Since the customer was required to enter their email address to gain access to the internet, you can now include the customer in your email marketing campaigns.

As you passively grow your large list of customer profiles, you can begin creating specific customer segments to use for more targeted, personalized messaging.

This type of messaging has been shown to be almost twice as effective as non-targeted messaging.

As a result, you will immediately begin increasing the overall effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

3. Execute Customer Segmentation

Being able to identify and target your various customer personas is extremely valuable.

According to a study from Mailchimp, marketing email recipients are 75% more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.

They also noted that email open rates are 14.31% higher in segmented campaigns.

Not only can you identify your core customer personas, you can create individual segments and save them for specific marketing campaigns.

For instance, if you discover a group of customers who only visit on Sundays during football games, you can create a campaign with a goal of getting them to visit for lunch or dinner on weekdays.

With WiFi analytics, there is no limit to the types of campaigns you can execute.

They can be static campaigns, or they can be fully automated based upon customer demographics and behavior.

4. Create Automated Marketing Campaigns

Most restaurant owners and operators simply do not have the time to manually execute email marketing campaigns.

Likewise, they do not have the ability to accurately measure the return on investment of individual campaigns.

Automated marketing is one of the biggest benefits of WiFi marketing.

It allows marketers to create a message and configure the system to send the message to specific customers whenever they meet the trigger criteria.

Trigger criteria can consist of demographics, behavior data, or a combination of both.

With Bloom, triggered messages can be sent based on:

• Milestone – when customers reach predetermined milestones such as their 10th, 25th, or 100th visit.
• Loyalty – every time a customer reaches a predetermined number of visits
• Rating – when a customer provides a rating at or below a level you specify
• Anniversary – when customers reach the anniversary of their first visit
• Birthday – a few days prior to a customer’s birthday
• Upon Exit – a predetermined number of days or hours after a person leaves a location
• Upon Registration – shortly after a guest first registers (logs in) on your WiFi
• At Risk of Churning – when a customer has been determined as unlikely to return by our statistical model
• At Risk (number of days) – when a customer has not returned after a set number of days

Once the trigger criteria are configured, you can then tell the system which customer segment to send the message to. Or, you can configure it to send to any customer who meets the criteria.

Likewise, you can schedule the campaign with any end date you choose. And you can send it to customers at every store, or for a single store or group of stores.

Once the campaign is configured, there is no more to do. You simply watch the performance in Bloom’s detailed campaign reporting dashboard.

Even more, you will be able to accurately tangible ROI of the campaign.

You will see how many customers engaged with your message, how many came back, and whether or not they redeemed any offer you included in your message.

5. Improve Customer Loyalty, Spend and Trust

Perhaps the most valuable benefit of WiFi marketing is the ability to improve customer loyalty and trust for your brand.

By sending targeted, personalized messages that resonate with your customers, you will inherently build their trust in your brand.

You will know who your customers are and they will engage more actively with your messaging

This results in more loyal, higher-spending customers who will spread the word.

You will stay top-of-mind with your customers, so they think of your brand when decided where to dine or order delivery.

Likewise, if you include discounts or specials with your messaging, the customer can benefit as well. It’s a win-win.

6. Build More Positive Online Ratings

Today’s consumers have made it a habit to use online ratings and reviews when making purchasing decisions.

It is a fact that great ratings can get customers through your doors.

At the same time, however, poor ratings can send potential customers – and even loyal customers – elsewhere.

Bloom has created a way for businesses to improve their positive online ratings, while mitigating the poor ones.

When a person leaves your establishment, the system will wait a period of time and then send a message asking the customer to rate their recent experience.

If they leave a good rating, you can respond thanking them with links to your online ratings pages.

However, if they leave a bad rating, you can respond with an apology and an incentive to get them to comeback and give you another chance to make things right.

Over time, not only will you win back customers who may have never returned, but you can increase your online positive ratings and see fewer negative ratings.

7. Save Churning Customers

When it comes to the benefits of WiFi marketing, there is one campaign that is extremely powerful for restaurants.

It involves customer attrition, also known as customer churn.

For restaurants, an out of control churn rate can spell serious disaster for business.

Bloom uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to determine when any customer appears to be at risk of churning or has already churned.

This alone is a valuable tool because it is impossible to identify churning customers in a brick-and-mortar environment.

Moreover, using the automated marketing suite of tools, you can send a message to these customers as soon as they are identified as being at-risk.

The message can include an offer, discount, or coupon to help persuade the customer to return  and re-establish their loyalty.

Bloom users are seeing up to 30%+ of their  at-risk and churned customers come back through their doors using this powerful tool.

Click the banner below to read a case study on saving at-risk customers.

8. Improve Restaurant Operations

The benefits of WiFi marketing go beyond increased customer loyalty and improved marketing.

It can be used to improve restaurant operations, as well.

Understanding who your customers are, how they behave, and what their sentiment is, you have the information needed to help you improve your operations.

For instance, knowing how many customers visit on specific days and times, you can make more accurate decisions on staffing, food prep, and purchasing.

This can save on payroll costs and help you avoid expensive waste.

In addition, by reading the reviews customers leave, you can make data-driven decisions on things like ambiance, menu changes, cleanliness, and other important customer-facing operational decisions.

This, also, will increase customer loyalty and trust in your brand.

Discover Bloom Intelligence

It’s time for you to discover the benefits of WiFi marketing for yourself, and for your business.

Bloom Intelligence delivers the most complete and robust WiFi marketing solution and analytics suite of tools that you’ll find today.

If you’d like to see how Bloom can grow your business, schedule a free demo here or call us at 727-877-8181.