Ranking Retailers from Top to Bottom on Customer Loyalty; inMarket Utilizes its Industry Leading Location Data to Project Growth and Closures

June 7, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in location, mobile, in-store, retail, advertising, location data, data, trends

Customer loyalty is vital to business health. Today, thanks to mobile location data, we can quantify customer loyalty and its impact on a business. In this report, we’re looking specifically at the retail industry, where each week it seems like there’s another round of mass store closures. But despite the “retail-pocolypse,” there are a few retailers that are expanding and thriving. What do they have in common? Loyal customers.

In our latest inSights report, we identify the top 10 and bottom 10 retailers for customer loyalty, based on inMarket location data. This first in a series of reports across brick and mortar verticals uses mobile location data from spring 2017 to identify customer loyalty at major U.S. retailers. The full report is available today at www.inmarket.com/insights. 

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The findings from inMarket’s Spring 2017 data show a clear correlation between low customer loyalty and announcements of store closings, while high-loyalty retailers are actually expanding in the face of the predicted “retail apocalypse.” Thus far in 2017, five out of the top 10 retailers for customer loyalty have announced store expansions. Contrarily, eight out of the bottom 10 retailers for customer loyalty are either closing stores, laying off employees or freezing growth in 2017. 

inMarket uses machine learning in order to analyze billions of data points and paint a picture of consumer behavior’s influence on business. This retail loyalty ranking is based on inMarket location data from over 50 million anonymous consumers -- focusing specifically on repeat device visitation as an indicator of customer engagement, loyalty and retention.  

In addition to predicting market trends, inMarket uses location data to power its suite of industry-leading ad products such as its Lapsed Shopper Program -- which launched in March as an equalizer for brick and mortar retail against e-commerce. Retailers are recovering over 40% of their lapsed shoppers with the program, which capitalizes on store visit data the same way online retailers uses web visit data to retarget shoppers. 

For more information on these rankings or to find out your business's loyalty score, contact us today. 

 

 

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How To Use Location To Power Smarter Mobile Moments

April 20, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, in-store, retail, apps, social, location, location-based advertising, in-store, adtech, location data, data, mobile marketing

As marketers, we’re always looking for ways to keep up with rapidly evolving consumer behavior. Social, mobile and location have created new windows into the most important moments in a shopper’s purchase cycle.

But as soon as you have the game figured out, the rules change.

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This is particularly true for social, where the largest players have focused on monetization strategies and are charging for what used to be free. Facebook is probably the best-known example: throttling organic reach for business pages while charging to promote content to the page’s earned audience. The result? Diminishing returns for advertisers in a crowded newsfeed.

But these challenges create opportunities, and the savviest marketers are exploring new, tech-forward ways to influence shoppers when it matters most. Location has matured to become arguably the most important piece of the mobile marketing puzzle. It’s no longer an innovation concept — it’s a critical marketing ingredient.

At inMarket, we help brands lift sales through cutting-edge location strategy. Here are a few exciting ways that we’ve seen marketers use location to create smarter mobile moments:

Augment Customers’ Reality

Pokemon Go, the summer’s biggest mobile fad, leaves us with a few key takeaways, the biggest being that the masses are willing to seek out great location-based content. In Pokemon Go’s case, it was the hunt for special characters, plus a healthy dose of nostalgia, that appealed to users. 

Augmented reality content, particularly with an air of exclusivity, is here to stay. Snapchat is a great example, having developed a geofilter product that bridges the online/offline worlds, providing specialized content based on where you are. The magic in these geofilters is that, by nature, you literally have to be there.

Marketers should ask themselves a few questions before jumping into location-based AR. How can it help the customer or improve their experience? Is the content designed for a smaller, more loyal audience within a brand’s app, or for a wider audience via third-party apps? Does it necessitate the micro-location of beacons, or can it be triggered by wider geofences?

Answering these questions upfront will help you wow shoppers while deploying the most effective AR strategy for your brand.

Hit The In-Store Bullseye

“Location” is a big word, and it often doesn’t say what we need it to. Location targeting shoppers in New York is distinctly different than location targeting shoppers when they walk into Rite Aid. And yet they’re often lumped together, creating confusion for everyone.

If we think about location targeting like a concentric circle (i.e. a dartboard), we can understand how different technologies get us closer to the bullseye. We might use IP data to geotarget people on a wide scale. This works well if you’re a footwear brand advertising snow boots in New York and flip flops in Florida.

Closer to the center, we might use geofencing to create a virtual boundary around a particular retailer. For example, if you walk by a department store in New York, you could receive a personalized ad for snow boots.

But most brands want to hit the bullseye. That’s where we rely on cutting-edge technology like beacons, where IOT infrastructure creates the most precise targeting available to influence in-store decisions. Beacons allow marketers to trigger contextual experiences through an app on a shopper’s phone at the exact moment the shopper walks into a store or an aisle within that store.

When you’re this close to the end of the funnel, you want to remind shoppers why they’ve come so far. Great content examples include using a fashion app to deliver key design details about a brand of snow boots, or showcasing someone wearing the boots on a key Instagram account.

When you combine bullseye targeting with hyper-relevant content, the conversation gets really exciting. We expect the award-winning mobile campaigns of 2017 to incorporate bullseye targeting with exclusive AR experiences.

Target By Actual Need

Demographics have always been used to guide targeting. But the places people go are a better indicator of who they are and what they need. Today, we can aggregate location data to understand consumer patterns and determine actual need versus likelihood of need.

For example, a major car manufacturer might target men ages 34 to 45. They might even geotarget “men 34 to 45 in northeast cities” with region-specific creative. But they have no way of knowing who in that audience actually needs a new car.

What if they could target people who have been to an auto repair shop multiple times that month? Or better yet, to a car dealership? Both of these behaviors better indicate that the shopper is a hot lead, as opposed to any demographic qualifier.

Today, targeting by need is a practical concept. Location companies have already put the infrastructure in place to accurately understand individual consumer trends, creating a tremendous opportunity for impactful mobile moments. 

Predict Shopper Cycles

If we can tell when shoppers actually need a product based on their location history, you can look at those visits over time to determine their purchase cycle and when they’re “due” for a store visit. For example, if data indicates you grocery shop every Thursday, you’re more receptive to brand messaging on Wednesday when you’re actively planning to go, versus Friday after you’ve already shopped.

Modern targeting will focus on shoppers who “pre-qualify” themselves through offline behaviors and location visits. In other words, the data point of “Joe went to a car dealership” is just as actionable from a marketer’s standpoint as if Joe had searched for “new cars” online.

We’re at an exciting point in the evolution of mobile location where real, sophisticated campaigns are resonating positively with consumers at scale. Reaching shoppers when they’re most receptive to brand messaging is paying off for marketers in the form of foot traffic and sales. The next 18 months will provide fast-moving marketers with an opportunity to own the mobile/location ecosystem while the competition plays catch-up.

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Introducing the Lapsed Shopper Program

March 30, 2017 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in mobile, in-store, retail, apps, social, mobile, in-store, inmarket, lapsed shopper program, advertising

Digital advertising for offline stores just got a whole lot more powerful.

After a year in beta, inMarket has launched its Lapsed Shopper Program to identify and recover customers who have stopped visiting partner retailers' stores. 

The program is similar to what ecommerce has been doing for a nearly decade: Identifying web visitors who have lapsed, and retargeting them back to the site through tactics like display or email. But in the offline world, instead of tracking web visits, we're measuring real-world store visits over time. 

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Chuck Martin from MediaPost puts it nicely: "Location tracking over time is starting to provide totally new advertising opportunities based on longer-term behaviors of a shopper beyond a single store visit. inMarket...has created an additional shopper behavior model, by focusing on people who stop going to a particular store. The technology can identify a shopper who was regularly going to a store and then stopped, say after a 30-day period. Once identified, those consumers can be sent a relevant ad from the retailer, which could include an incentive to go back."

Check out our official press release below, or drop us a line to hear more about how you can put it to the test. 

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inMarket Launches Lapsed Shopper Program to Recover Lost Revenue for Retailers

LAS VEGAS, March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- inMarket -- the mobile moments company with the largest verified first party location reach -- today announces the launch of its Lapsed Shopper Program to reactivate lost customers for retail partners. This first-of-its kind program provides retailers with unprecedented ability to identify and recover shoppers who have stopped visiting. Harnessing inMarket's reach via the world's most popular shopping and lifestyle apps, retailers uncover actionable insights about shopper cycles in their own stores as well as competitors' stores.

inMarket's Lapsed Shopper Program identifies shoppers that have not visited a partner retailer in a set amount of time based on store category. The program determines if the shopper is frequenting a rival retailer, or simply not shopping in that category. inMarket then leverages mobile and desktop display to reactivate lapsed shoppers back to the partner's stores.

A beta campaign for a national retail partner in Q4 2016 identified 293,000+ lapsed shoppers, successfully recovering 118,000+ (40%) back to the store, versus a control of 15% who returned to the store without being exposed to messaging. The campaign resulted in an ROI of 743% based on the retailer's own metrics for a single return visit by a recovered shopper.

"Retailers tell us just how hard it is to build brand loyalty in a competitive environment where customers are constantly bombarded by messaging," said Todd Dipaola, CEO, inMarket. "The Lapsed Shopper Program is all about identifying and reactivating shoppers who have already been to the store, and driving measurable foot traffic back in for brick-and-mortar retailers. We're leveling the playing field for real world businesses by unlocking hyper-targeting tactics that were previously the exclusive unfair advantage of e-commerce."

The inMarket Lapsed Shopper Program draws real-time, first-party location data from a combination of beacons, GPS and wi-fi in locations. Direct integrations with many of mobile's most frequently used apps -- reaching over 50MM people per month as verified by comScore -- provide inMarket with the largest and most accurate collection of first-party, in-store location data available in the industry.

The Lapsed Shopper Program is the latest addition to inMarket's powerful, timely and relevant suite of ad solutions that consistently outperform traditional advertising. Many of the world's largest and most advanced advertisers use inMarket's Preceptivity to reach people in the planning stages when they're "due" for a store visit -- and then use inMarket's Moments to deliver a message to shoppers precisely when they enter a store.

In January, as a result of its success at retail, inMarket expanded into entertainment with the launch of inBar: The first mobile proximity solution for on-premise advertisers to reach consumers in bars, restaurants and nightclubs around the U.S.

For more information, please visit www.inmarket.com.

About inMarket
inMarket is an integrated mobile moments company powered by its market-leading beacon proximity deployments and the industry's largest verified reach. With billions of first party data points and machine learning algorithms, inMarket creates personalized and instantly relevant mobile experiences based on location context. Brands and retailers use the platform to drive significant lift in sales by engaging with customers at the ultimate point of receptivity. inMarket is headquartered in Venice, CA with offices in NYC and Chicago. 

Media Contact:
Dave Heinzinger
VP, Communications
dave@inmarket.com

 

 

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Retailer Apps Struggling to Gain Traction Inside the Store

November 1, 2016 / by Dave Heinzinger posted in location, location-based advertising, mobile, in-store, instore, retail, apps, mobile usage, mobile advertising

In its latest whitepaper, inMarket takes a look at consumer mobile usage habits inside of stores.

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The findings are a bit surprising: Social, which makes up a huge percentage of mobile usage outside the store, accounts for just 4% of mobile momments inside the store. On the flip side, approximately 55% of mobile moments direclty relate to the purchase decision.

The image above provides a nice overview. If you're interested in a deeper dive, you can download the full whitepaper here

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