Shoppers today expect a personalized omnichannel experience from retailers, whether they are shopping online, in physical stores, or brick-and-mortar spaces. The advancements in AI and IoT technology present a significant opportunity for retailers to not only analyze customer behavior but also to capitalize insights effectively by providing more relevant and personalized offers.

Beacons exemplify this trend, offering retailers the ability to personalize shopping experiences by delivering tailored notifications, loyalty rewards, and in-store promotions. Additionally, beacons provide valuable insights into customer engagement and revenue attribution.

In this blog, we present benefits to using beacons and seven simple use cases to help you get started with using beacon technology to enhance retail experiences.

Seven beacons use cases

  1. Seamless In-store navigation

Beacons have the capability to guide users through aisles to locate products on their digital shopping list or provide a customized route based on customers’ past purchase behaviors.  

This assists customers in efficiently navigating large supermarkets and department stores, avoiding aimless wandering, saving time, and preventing unnecessary purchases.

Additionally, customers can use the store app to quickly determine their location, search for specific items, and obtain directions to their desired products.

  2. Location-Based Marketing

Beacons offer precise location tracking, enabling targeted message delivery with greater accuracy than cell towers, Wi-Fi, and GPS, which typically have an accuracy range of up to five meters.

This enable retailers to send targeted promotions to customers passing by, encouraging them to visit the store, specific departments, or products for potential purchases. These notifications can be generic advertisements or personalized based on the customer's shopping history. Beacons can also alert customers about in-store events, such as product launches or makeup tutorials, to entice them to visit and make purchases.

  3. Data collection

Beacons can help you collect data on the areas of a store receiving the highest and lowest foot traffic, the extent of shopper interaction with different categories or products, and information about both new and returning customers.

By analyzing this data, retailers can enhance the layout of their stores and merchandise displays, reduce queues at checkouts and other customer touchpoints, and enhance customer profiles to facilitate improved segmentation and targeted marketing strategies.

  4. Loyalty program

Retailers can utilize beacons to promote their customer loyalty programs, fostering a sense of community among consumers and building trust in the brand, leading to increased brand preference. Moreover, loyalty programs serve as an effective incentive for customers to download the store's app, enabling them to access discounts, product information, and participate in contests while shopping in-store. 

  5. Mobile payment

Point-of-sale systems can leverage beacon technology for seamless mobile payments. Upon entering a store, a visitor's payment app detects a beacon signal, notifying the POS system of the customer's presence. Subsequently, during checkout, the store app initiates the payment process, sending it to the nearest terminal for the customer to finalize the purchase.

Beacons also enable mobile self-checkout through BLE. In this case, beacons help determine a customer’s location, and if they are in the allowed proximity range, trigger a mobile payment terminal to facilitate the purchase without involving store personnel.

  6. Customer Attribution

Companies can enhance their understanding of the impact of online advertising on offline customer behavior by aligning beacon data with their Google Ads account. This integration enables tracking customers who interacted with online ads before visiting the physical store, enabling companies to optimize their paid advertising strategies. Utilizing Google Ads along with beacons allows businesses to access features such as showcasing their business on Google Maps, gathering photos and reviews from visitors, and providing insights on popular visit times and average visit duration to aid customers in planning their day effectively.

  7. Improve in-store management and service

Retail brands can optimize employee tasks in real-time, enhance customer-centric service procedures, and refine training programs, leading to improved staff productivity and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, beacons can alert store workers about shelf stock levels and remind them to restock depleted items, aiding in efficient inventory management.

Provide Better Shopping experiences with Beacons

Beacons are a key customer experience technology for brick-and-mortar businesses, serving as a bridge between the offline and online realms amid the increasing reliance on mobile notifications. This technology also empowers retail staff to deliver a higher-value, well-informed customer experience.

Resulticks enables retailers in implementing beacon-powered retail campaigns to effectively achieve their marketing objectives and enable phygital retail experiences.

If you are interested to learn more, schedule a meeting with us today.