Foot traffic can be fickle. Plenty of customers can be avid window shoppers but never set so much as a single toe into your retail space. Unlike online traffic, once these people leave there are no magic “back” buttons to bring them back to where they were. When they are gone, they are usually gone for good.
Retail brands that let these customers slip away are missing out on a huge chunk of their available market. The revenue-earning potential of each person could tally up to quite a sizable figure when looked at over the course of the year.
Brands that want to be more effective in capturing this revenue must use strategies that appeal to customers with short attention spans and split-second decision-making tendencies. One of the best ways to reach this segment and gain fuller access to market potential is for brands to utilize the exciting and evolving technology of beacons.
The People Have Spoken
There are plenty of great arguments for adopting beacon technology as a means to expand your market, but none speak as convincingly as the public itself. Surveys indicate that consumers enjoy when brands engage in beacon-enabled campaigns, and they are more likely to give these brands their patronage.
More specifically, 83% of consumers stated that they would like discount codes to be sent directly to their smartphone or mobile device, according to a survey by UK-based Vista Retail Support. 84% were excited to receive special, limited-time offers set to expire that same day. 61% enjoyed seeing personalized offers based on their shopping history and individual tastes.
Altogether, programs like these were enough to convince 63% of customers to enter a store that they otherwise would have walked past. Looking at this data, it becomes clear as day that beacon platforms can engage customers in powerful ways and lead them into your store doors through push notifications and actionable offers.
Why Beacons Make a Difference
Often, the crucial component missing for consumers that walk past a storefront is incentive. Without clear and distinct incentives, they have little motivation to take action and actually enter the retail space. Sure, they may appreciate your logo, branding, window displays or even some of the products they can see at a glance, but they may also be generally apathetic and assume that the store interior has few unique selling points to offer them. In this era of instant-gratification and short attention spans, going through the effort of entering a store and browsing can seem pointless unless there are compelling reasons to serve as counterarguments to buyer skepticism.
Push notifications sent through beacon platforms can provide those reasons. Alerts on the users’ phones grab their attention, and suddenly they each have a tempting incentive to enter the store. Even if they end up not utilizing the offers sent to them, their imaginations start whirring. Suddenly, they can envision shopping in your store and encountering excellent values. Just a small factor like a beacon notification can be enough to break through the barriers of apathy and excite them about the prospect of shopping with your brand.
Doing Beacons the Right Way
Brands must be diligent when implementing a beacon program since not just any one is capable of achieving the desired results. Beacon messaging must be tightly controlled through an easy-to-manage beacon platform that can incorporate live analytics for instant feedback. Brands must also be cautious that the beacon messages are consistent with their overall brand position and values as indicated on other digital channels like social media and loyalty programs.
Digital Social Retail’s convergence platform can make this type of oversight simple. Our all-inclusive customer touch point management system allows retail owners, managers and marketing staff to have absolute control over the digital messages being sent to their market base. With rich data-backed analytics and cloud-based logins, retail brands can have absolute knowledge and absolute control over touch point systems from anywhere on the globe.
Visit our product page to discover more about how our beacon platform can help you reach your true market potential.
