At inMarket, innovation is in our DNA. As one of the original location-based ad platforms, we're constantly bringing new tech and methods to the table for our brand and agency partners. 

This week, inMarket's innovative efforts were recognized by the Best in Biz International Awards, which is the only independent global business awards program judged each year by prominent editors and reporters from top-tier publications from around the world.

This year, inMarket CEO Todd Dipaola took home Gold as "Innovator of the Year" in the executive category, while inMarket took home silver in the "Most Innovative Company" category. Both awards come on the heels of two major launches for inMarket in 2017: inBar, the world's first on-premise Physical Web platform; and the Lapsed Shopper Program designed to recover lost revenue and customers for retailers.

You can check out the full Best in Biz results here. 

Winners in the 5th annual program were determined based on scoring from an independent panel of judges hailing from a wide spectrum of top-tier publications and media outlets and from 15 countries and all continents.

To learn about the next big inMarket innovation, contact us today. 

The New York Post is reporting that embattled retailer Nine West is close to shutting down, according to multiple sources.

"Nine West Holdings, owned by private equity firm Sycamore Partners, is mulling an auction proceeding that could spur a liquidation of the chain, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Licensing firms have been approached to determine their interest in the company’s brands, which include Anne Klein, Gloria Vanderbilt, l.e.i., Givenchy Jewelry and 14 others, which are sold in department stores and which have been hit hard by the shopping mall downturn."

The news isn't surprising if you look at the inMarket Location Data: In June, inMarket found that Nine West ranked last for customer loyalty in the non-grocery retail category -- behind failing retailers like Wet Seal and bebe.

While many might take this to be another sign of the retail apocalypse, we see it as a sign that retail is instead undergoing a massive evolution. There's a blend of online and offline happening in both directions. While retailers like Nine West head for closures, e-commerce giants like Amazon are jumping into the real world with their Whole Foods acquisition. There's a ton of value into serving customers in the here-and-now. It's up to the existing brick-and-mortar stores to adopt data-driven, e-commerce style practices that improve the in-store experience and attract customers back to the store. If they don't, the Amazons of the world will. 

E-commerce won't kill brick-and-mortar retail, the same way VHS didn't kill the cinema. But -- offline will have to adapt.

Last week, our Generational Power Rankings for Retail made the rounds in the press, receiving pickup from Business Insider, Retail Dive and Retail Leader, among others. A few points are resonating -- one, that millennials are cheap, and two, that Gen Z are more likely to purchase luxury brands than their older counterparts.

Gen Z, you say? That's right -- this group (born after 1995) is rapidly emerging into adulthood, and they're throwing brands for a loop. The first step in marketing toward Gen Z should be to take a step back and understand how and where they're shopping. Luckily, mobile location data tells that story.

Check out the full Generational Power Rankings for Retail at inMarket.com/inSights for a detailed analysis, or contact us directly today.

Cutting edge location strategies aren't just for techie brands. Any CPG can get in on the action thanks to inMarket's turnkey location platform and huge scale. 

Even a 400-year-old-mustard brand.

Recently, Unilever's upscale mustard brand Maille --founded in Paris in 1747-- tapped inMarket to drive product discovery and sales in U.S. markets as the brand expanded stateside. Given the upscale nature of the brand, this campaign had a critical distinction: it did not discount the product whatsoever, and relied on communicating unique selling points via mobile in-store to drive sales. Geomarketing has more:

“Through this program, we are accomplishing so much,” Elisa Galassi, Maille’s brand manager tells GeoMarketing. “We are engaging with foodies at a critical time and influencing their ultimate purchase decision. Maille becomes top of mind, and shines on the shelf. It also allows us to show our commitment to retailers by supporting their business and driving their sales. Also, from an internal perspective, it is very encouraging for our sales force to see the engagement and sales lift, beyond the classic discount way of promoting a product. It is also such an efficient way to very precisely target the markets we want to focus on to increase our brand awareness and ultimately our sales.”

To learn more about how inMarket's location-based ad products can help your brand build awareness, drive product discovery and close sales in-store, contact us today. 

Have millennials become the most frugal generation? The location data says yes. 

According to InMarket's new "Foot Traffic Power Rankings," millennials show a distinct preference for discount options when it comes to brick-and-mortar shopping. The rankings are based on analysis of foot traffic to physical stores, using mobile location data from January through April 2017. Rankings are determined by frequency of visits compared with the category average for each generation. 

For the general retail category, the top three brands were discount purveyors of apparel. The No. 1 brand was Ross Stores, followed by privately held Rainbow and then Burlington Stores. Bridal chain DaVinci and home-furnishing giant Ikea rounded out the list. In the grocery category, Kroger's Food4Less chain was the No. 1 retailer among millennials, attracting that demographic 48% more often than any other age group, InMarket said. Food4Less was followed by 99 Cents Only Stores, C-Town, H-E-B and Fry's, another Kroger property.

For a full look at the inMarket Foot Traffic Power Rankings -- including a detailed breakdown of Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X and Boomer shopping habits, please visit www.inmarket.com/insights. 

Location data can help us predict business trends -- and sometimes, those trends are quite surprising. This week, Bloomberg has featured inMarket location data in its story about customer loyalty at rapidly growing Shake Shack. 

"As Shake Shack Inc. expands across the U.S. from its New York home base, it’s missing a key ingredient: customer loyalty....

Though the upscale burger chain has more prestige than rivals like Subway and Chick-fil-A, its higher prices may be preventing customers from ordering as often."

You can read their full story here, or download the full  Loyalty Report for Restaurants at inmarket.com/insights.

Mobile location data tells the story of the world around us. At inMarket, we use it to power award-winning O2O ad products while analyzing business trends for brick-and-mortar businesses across many categories.

This week, we're using inMarket Location Data to rank the top and bottom Full Service Restaurants (FSRs) and Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) for customer loyalty. It’s the second installment in our inSights program that looks at loyalty across various categories (like retail). We use repeat device visitation from over 50 million anonymous consumers to determine which businesses are performing better (or worse) than average.

In general, the higher a business ranks for customer loyalty, the more likely it is to be thriving and expanding. Contrarily, many of the businesses toward the bottom of the rankings are struggling with bankruptcy, closures and poor sales.

The full report is available at inmarket.com/insights today. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Are you heading to the Street Fight Summit in Brooklyn this week? If so, swing by the inMarket booth and say hello. We'll be talking about how mobile location is powering best-in-class digital advertising for offline brands; and how that same data can be used to predict business and market trends.

Can't make it out to Brooklyn? Drop us a note anytime at inmaket.com/contact.

The latest inMarket inSights report on Retail Loyalty was featured by CNBC last week. Here's a quick synopsis:

Retail store closings are on track to hit a record high this year with retailers from department stores Sears, Macy's and J.C. Penney to specialty players like BeBe and Rue21 and footwear retailers Crocs and Payless shuttering locations.

It begs the question, who's next?

New data from inMarket's spring loyalty report suggest Nine West may be the next to close stores or lay off employees.

Check out the full story here. If you're interested in downloading the full Retail Loyalty report, you can get it at inMarket inSights.

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. 

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.