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Marketing and Location Intelligence

3 Ways Brick-and-Mortar Stores Are Using Location Intelligence

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Many brick-and-mortar stores suffered financial losses in recent years due to the ease and efficiency of online shopping. While some businesses view the rise of online shopping as the ultimate enemy, innovative businesses are using the shift in consumer shopping habits as an opportunity to develop new and exciting incentives for driving traffic into their stores.

Omnichannel marketing is a powerful way for brick-and-mortar businesses to leverage multiple marketing channels to drive greater brand awareness, in-store traffic, and sales. Location based insights are at the core of this, helping businesses illustrate their unique value proposition and provide fun and fresh ways for customers to engage with their brand.

Here’s how successful brick-and-mortar stores drive foot traffic and generate sales using location intelligence:

Leverage Geofencing:

  • Gain competitive insights: Conduct trade area analysis by placing geofences around competitors to reveal how often your customers visit them. You can pair this with tracking competitor deals and incentives to gain knowledge on how to steer customers back to you…or keep them from visiting competitors in the first place.
  • In-store incentives: If your customers allow notifications, you can deliver limited time pop-up ads every time they are within a certain distance from your store, or an extra deal when they are about to leave your store.  Input customer data: Location intelligence platforms allow you to input customer information, useful for developing targeted marketing campaigns. This includes precise mailing addresses and detailed demographic information.

Precise direct mail campaigns:

Studies show that direct mail ROI is strong when marketers use omnichannel marketing methods to deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience to match lifestyles with customer buying trends. Pairing digital intelligence with direct mail can produce powerful results. Location technology delivers detailed demographic information along with accurate postal codes so that you are delivering the right message to the right people rather than wasting time and money on consumers that are unlikely to be interested in your product or service.

Location-based insights for site selection:

For brick and-mortar stores looking to open a new shop or to relocate, location intelligence platforms provide essential information on ideal locations. This includes demographic data, a historic view of how an area has changed over time, new developments, nearby points of interest, and much more.

Using location technology and the powerful insights it provides helps businesses integrate marketing channels for an omnichannel marketing approach. This leads to precise messaging and a highly compelling customer-centric experience that will have customers regularly engaging with your business on and offline.

To learn more download our guide Using Location Based Insights for Omnichannel Marketing

Additional Reading:  

5 Ways Canadian Retailers Should Be Using Location Data and Technology

GIS Mapping Software

A Lesson in Map-Folding Origami

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Do you use maps? I’m fairly certain you do, possibly a GIS mapping app on a daily basis. When I was 16 and learning to drive maps were these sticky, dirty, impossible to fold, gigantic pieces of paper I always managed to rip while shoving back into the glove box. “You be the navigator, I’ll be the driver.” Remember those days?

Today we don’t have to worry about map origami (seriously, who actually folded it right the first time?!). I personally have 2 mapping apps on my Android, both of which have totally different purposes.

GIS Mapping Apps in order of favouritism:

1) Waze – Hands down one of the most fun and accurate traffic applications out there. Excellent UI and hilariously fun Voice Navigation, (I highly encourage everyone to try “Boy Band”). This app is intended to effortlessly navigate you through high traffic and accident-prone areas. Definitely my choice of app when it comes to getting from A to B.

2) Google Maps – With over 4.8 million Android users alone, this application is well known for its pros and cons. While it is definitely the easiest application to operate, it nearly never locates my gps position in under 5 minutes. This is my app of choice when looking up an area or trying to find a specific address.

You will notice these apps are very centered around my inability to navigate when driving, or using transit. How else would I use maps as a consumer?

Here’s Why the Average Person Needs a GIS Mapping App:

  • Get me from Home to ‘X’
  • Get me from Work to ‘X’
  • Find me the closest Subway to ‘X’

Pretty simple isn’t it? Not if you’re a Business.

Using GIS Mapping Software in the Business World

Maps in the business world are complex. Heck, that’s why we have GIS mapping apps. As this Esri link tells us, nearly every business benefits from understanding their environment. Better decision making, cost savings, etc. Whether you are in Retail, Land Development, or Health Care, it matters to know where your Customers/Clients are located. Better yet, if you have a GIS professional on your team – they can build you a map!

Take Health Care for example. DMTI Spatial worked with the Ontario Medical Association to understand where their Physicians were located in relation to the population in Ontario. While this exercise sounds easy, it was a complex project that resulted in a table of over 142 billion records – one of the largest data deliveries in DMTI’s 20 year history. Where your Customers are located matters.

Now consider Retail. What if you found out your most loyal customers (aka the ones that spend the big bucks) are located within 10 km of your store. Would you consider marketing to these neighbourhoods? Or divert marketing dollars that were intended for a 30km + distribution?

Today we use maps to make business decisions. Only these maps are digital, and sometimes come with a boy band singsong voiceover (again, I highly suggest it).

Want to integrate a basic map into your Business process? Want to visualize where your customers are? Let me know and I can help. But, I can’t fold that blasted paper map back up for you.

Using data to find your ideal customer

How well do you really know your customers?

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“They don’t know that we know that they know we know!” – Phoebe Buffay

What do you know? About your customers that is.

Most likely you have assumptions and these assumptions are often backed by data. Perhaps a survey that was conducted a few years ago, or through your experience with your clients first hand. Regardless of how you have acquired this intel, what you think you know about your customers is what should drive your business. But does it?

Effective Market Analysis to Target Your Ideal Customer

Who is your ideal customer? Your absolutely worst customer? Who would you be lucky to nab this quarter? Who could be your Lighthouse Customer?

These questions swim around every Marketer’s, Sale’s and Product Manager’s brain when building new marketing campaigns or planning new sales initiatives. The reality is, we think we have a good idea but may not have enough data to back it up.

Try googling “Ideal Customer”. A lot of businesses think they know the secret formula, but it should be you who determines who is ideal for your business.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Who do I want to be partnered with?
  • Will I take any customer? Or do I want to portray a branded image?
  • Do I want to grow my business from the outside-in?
  • Does my database contain updated and accurate information about my customers?

Once you have begun to identify who your target customer should be, let the data tell you otherwise. From our experience at DMTI Spatial™ the data often surprises our clients. Most are unaware their database contains inaccurate and outdated data. Often times CRM’s are not kept up to date when employee attrition or customer churn takes place. Your data is what drives your business, not the other way around.

Using the Right Technology for Customer Insights

Need help cleaning this mess up? Start with the basics. Cleanse your address database. Then, ensure your customer records are up to date. Are you customers current? If not, when did they leave?

Once you’ve done this, enrich the data with as much information as possible. What campaigns went out to these customers? When did we reach out to them last? Start with the basics and build a rich repository of data.

Your data is what makes your business unique. Leverage and exploit this well of information to determine who your actual ideal customer is.

Need help? That is where Location Hub® Analytics comes in.

To learn more about how location analytics can help your business, shoot us an email or give us a call at 1.877.477.3684 .

Marketing Relies on Location

Strong Marketing Relies on Location. Here’s Why.

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Accurate location information may not be the most exciting topic for your next dinner party, but under the hood most businesses depend on it to fuel their business processes, and to help them reach the right audience to drive marketing results. The ability to access accurate location information is impacting many of our customers because strong marketing relies on location. Let’s explore why.

Inaccurate Location Data Impacts Business Growth

Inaccurate location data can be a major inhibitor to growth in your business.  Marketing relies on location, and with more than 85% of customer data tied to a location component, it’s important that your company operate on valid and accurate data.

Customer and prospect data isn’t static – customers move, postal codes change and rural areas become urbanized.  As these changes occur, customer location information quickly becomes outdated. In fact, research by Sirius Decisions shows that 30% of B2B data is out of date within 12 months.  To put this into perspective, if your company has a database of 100,000 records and neglects to implement address quality measures, over 50% of your customer records would be entirely outdated in just over 3 years!

The Impact of Outdated Data on Marketing

Outdated data has an impact on sales and marketing. It’s estimated that 30% of marketing campaigns never make it to the intended recipient. That’s wasted marketing dollars, time and efforts – but most of all lost sales opportunities!

According to a study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), every dollar spent on direct marketing advertising, on average, results in $12.61 in direct marketing-driven sales.  Calculate how many marketing dollars you can save by focusing on data quality. Maintaining high data quality can help you drive better results and get you to your revenue targets that much faster.

We see that marketing relies on location, and location data acts as one of the information backbones for all your company operations.  Having accurate location information allows you to move beyond simple addresses – it allows you to integrate cloud based solutions to integrate demographics, firmographics, proximity, drive time, drive distances and many other variables into your decision making process.  This additional data can help you gain invaluable insights about your customers, and identify new markets.

Accurate location information solutions will allow your company to:

  • Visualize your market penetration to help you plan your new campaigns
  • Prequalify and identify new entry markets to increase marketing reach
  • Increase direct mail delivery by up to 30%
  • Reduce customer churn and increase customer satisfaction
  • Boost your campaign metrics
  • and learn more about YOUR customers!

Click here to see a free demo of DMTI’s Location Hub for marketing! 

What CRM Tools have to do with a Bugatti

Would you put low octane gas in your Bugatti?

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Of course you wouldn’t, that would be unheard of! You would spend more to ensure you’re powering it with high octane fuel. The car would still run with lower quality gasoline, but its performance would suffer. CRM tools are similar to sports cars. They’re expensive and powerful, but they’re limited by how they’re powered.

The Mistake Companies Make with CRM Tools

Many companies spend thousands of dollars annually on their corporate CRM system. It’s the engine that drives them, and as a marketer, you rely on it daily. Yet with such a large spend and high importance, many organizations don’t spend enough effort ensuring the quality of information captured inside.

Customer, prospect and partner information is the fuel of the CRM. Poor data quality leads to communications breakdowns, slower transactions, ineffective analysis and wasted time. Studies show that inaccurate information can result in a 30% revenue decrease.

With interconnected systems, CRM data flows into other tools including financial and marketing systems, multiplying the impact of incorrect information. There are a number of causes of poor quality data. Manual user errors lead to missing or incorrect information. Combining multiple sources of data results in inconsistencies and a lack of standardization.

How does your organization ensure it’s working with the highest quality data in its CRM system? Click here for more information on leveraging the right market data for your CRM system.

Leverage Location Insight geofencing

Leveraging Location Insight to Drive Business Opportunity

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It’s clear that we live in an increasingly mobile society. Distance and time are reduced by technology and lifestyle.  But even in our virtual world, we still focus on the locations where we live, work and play. At the same time, the data we create has grown in volume and complexity. In order to effectively meet the changing needs of our mobile society, businesses must leverage location insight to drive new opportunities.

Business Data and Location Insight

According to a Deloitte report, 85% of all data has a location component. Many businesses are aware of the value that having good data can bring from a business perspective. You must have current, correct, complete and accurate location information. This helps to identify new opportunity through more effective targeted campaigns, and to upsell and cross-sell to existing customers. You’ll also improve targeting of new prospects.

The ROI of Location Insights

When data analytics is used correctly, the end result can lead to tremendous success for a business’ marketing efforts. Union Gas for example, leveraged location data along with key demographic content to focus their marketing campaigns.  This led them to the right audience with the right message:   Promote energy conservation programs to eligible clients in an effort to reduce natural gas consumption among this group.  As a result Union Gas realized a 400% increase in the uptake rate of their marketing programs.
For more information, check out how Location Hub is helping businesses use data insights to grow their customer base.

Additional Reading:

Leverage Location Intelligence for Precision-Targeted Direct Mail Campaigns

Customer Insights and Location Data

Unlock Customer Insights with Location Intelligence

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In today’s crowded marketplace, there is immense pressure on marketers to deliver customer insights that lead to new opportunities. These insights increase revenues and differentiate their product offering through successful campaign initiatives. One powerful example is the impact bad data can have on marketing efforts. In this use case, we look at current address information.

Impact of Current Address Information on Marketing

140 million addressed mail pieces don’t make it to the intended recipients and 70% of undeliverable mail is attributed to people who have moved. This means marketers must leverage accurate location information to their competitive advantage.

Successful customer insights begin with accurate and current address information to increase campaign effectiveness. Marketers can expect to see an increase in ROI by approximately 5% and reduce operational costs associated with erroneous data. Location Intelligence empowers marketers with the means to assess the ‘who’ and ‘where’ when maximizing marketing decisions.

Success begins with accurate and current address information to increase campaign effectiveness, increase ROI by approximately 5% and reduce operational costs associated with erroneous data.

View our video on Location Intelligence to see how it empowers marketers with the means to assess the ‘who’ and ‘where’ when maximizing marketing decisions.

Click here to see how DMTI’s market analysis tools help marketers