Geofencing is a powerful way for retailers to engage with their customers, boost footfall and strengthen customer loyalty. It allows brands with mobile apps to gain insights into their users’ real-time behavior, and adapt their marketing strategy and operational processes.
As more consumers are returning to in-store shopping, here are 10 geofencing strategies for supermarkets and grocery chains with smartphone apps.
1. Send relevant, hyper-local notifications
Shopping and location-based notifications are a match made in heaven. In a world where people are bombarded by irrelevant messages, there’s huge value in being able to communicate with your customers in the way that they want – with highly-relevant messages at exactly the right place and time.
Geofencing is the key to driving this type of engagement. When implemented with a highly-accurate solution such as PlotProjects, this technology enables brands with apps to send relevant, hyper-local notifications that boost engagement, store visits and revenue.
The Vouchercloud app uses geofencing to deliver highly-targeted notifications to its users when they are near participating stores. Supermarkets such as Aldi, Tesco and Sainsburys all offer location-based deals and discounts via the app. By replacing generic messaging with relevant, location-aware notifications, Vouchercloud has been able to boost footfall and in-store sales for its partners.
The PlotProjects plugin is easy to integrate with your customer engagement platforms, enabling you to send highly accurate and relevant location-based notifications at the right time and place.
Our geofencing platform offers a vast amount of features including anti-spam tools, advanced privacy options and top features for location-based segmentation. Our real-world Audiences feature lets you build audiences or profiles based on real-life movements. This helps you identify places of interest, predict purchase intent and create richer segments.
2. Provide a personalized shopping experience
While shoppers are on-the-move, they still want personal attention from the brands they love. Many supermarkets and grocery chains are leveraging geofencing to offer just that – a personalized, location-aware shopping experience for their customers.
US supermarket chain Meijer Inc used geofencing and beacon technology to transform its app into a handy shopping assistant. Customers who prepare shopping lists online can also open up the retailer’s app in-store where it re-orders the list based on their exact location in-store. Users can use the app to navigate their way around and easily find the items of their shopping lists.
Similarly, Home Depot uses location technology to improve the shopping experience for its app users. When a customer enters a store, the app automatically switches to an in-store mode, making its ‘product locator tool’ available to guide customers in the right direction.
Not only do these features assist shoppers, but they also make the shopping experience less mundane and the brand more memorable. The data can also help brands retarget customers at a later date. If a consumer has shown interest in a product, the retailer can use this information to send a related email or offer.
PlotProjects offers industry leading accuracy down to 10 meters, just in time for your customers’ arrival. Easily build unlimited geofences with our easy-to-use dashboard, and enjoy full support for beacons, too.
3. Offer seamless in-store & curbside pickup
A seamless pickup experience is one that ensures convenience for customers. It’s no surprise then that many supermarkets and grocery stores leverage geofencing to roll out options like curbside pick-up, click & collect and ‘buy online pay in-store’ (BOPIS).
Walmart is a great example of a grocery store nailing its curbside pickups. Shoppers simply place an order, schedule a pickup time, then check in with the Walmart app when they’re on their way. When the customer pulls into the parking lot, the app recognizes they’ve arrived and notifies staff. Within minutes, the shopping is delivered to the driver’s trunk.
With PlotProjects, it’s easy to track customer arrival times, send welcome messages and alert staff upon customer arrival. With no hardware required, our geofencing platform can be launched quickly, plus it comes with a suite of tools to detect exactly where a customer is in real time.
4. Geo-conquest your competitors
The battle for brand loyalty is fiercer than ever before. Consumers are feeling the pinch of higher prices and are willing to switch to another brand if they find a better deal elsewhere. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of geo-conquesting, allowing you to geofence your competitors nearby and drive their customers to your brand instead.
When you target competitor’s locations, you can push timely ads and notifications to their visitors to win them over. All retailers and brands can do it. Walmart could target Costco. Pizza Hut could target Domino’s. Even small businesses can geo-conquest their competitors. You can geofence other related businesses too.
The American supermarket chain Whole Foods recently ran a successful geo-conquesting campaign. In a bid to improve post-click conversion rates for its mobile ads, the brand placed geofences around its own stores and near competitor locations to target ads at shoppers who passed by. The campaign yielded Whole foods a 4.69% conversion rate, more than three times the national average.
PlotProjects offers all the tools you need to build and monitor your geo-conquesting campaigns and see custom location metrics such as store visits, dwell time, heat maps, user profiles and A/B testing.
5. Engage customers with gamification
With many big brands making the move into the gaming space, marketers are realizing the potential of the technology. A whopping 70% of global 2000 companies use gamification in some way. And by 2025, the global gamification sales revenue is expected to reach $32 billion.
Adding real-world elements such as location-based activities and games can help you engage your retail customers and drive more traffic to your stores. You’ll not only benefit from higher installs, more permission opt-ins and higher retention, but you can also make the most of increased revenue and stronger brand loyalty.
What’s more, adding gamification in your app can provide a wealth of valuable customer data, and gives you a better understanding of your customers’ real-world behavior so you can serve location-based messages and experience where they are most relevant.
When using PlotProjects, you’ll have everything you need to start building location-based experiences into your app. Create highly accurate gaming experiences, build unlimited gaming zones, and drive more foot traffic with location-based activities and rewards.
6. Foster customer loyalty
By powering your app with geofencing you open up numerous opportunities to retain and delight your customers. Unlock rewards based on your customer’s location, send welcome messages on arrival, and offer other location-based experiences that improve the shopping experience and strengthen loyalty.
For instance, US retailer American Eagle used geofencing and beacons to give customers rewards for trying on specific items. This behavior not only rewards customers, but it increases the likelihood of a sale as it introduces customers to items they might have left on the rail. Similarly, Nordstrom utilizes geofencing to identify when loyal customers are within the store to offer hyper-personalized customer service.
The result is happy, loyal customers who remember your brand and keep coming back for more. Let’s not forget that 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service!
7. Gain insights into customer behaviour
Use geofencing to power your marketing with location insights. Gain valuable data about app users’ behaviors in the real world, such as foot traffic to certain locations, amount of time spent there and whether they purchased something.
This can be used for building user profiles, improving customer experience and measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. For instance, you might add additional services where needed, send personalized notifications to customers, or for retargeting across other channels.
When properly implemented, location-based marketing can be very effective at driving footfall for your business and will improve your marketing ROI. Although the idea of it can sound intimidating, the strategy is easier to implement than it might sound, especially when you partner with an industry-leader such as PlotProjects.
8. Use geofencing to get instant feedback
Geofencing can be beneficial to retailers who want to prompt shoppers to provide real-time feedback when it’s most likely to be fresh in their minds. This could be as simple as sending them a notification when they leave, asking them to rate their experience.
This data can be highly beneficial for customer-experience focussed brands , giving them the chance to send timely surveys, get real feedback from customers and address a bad experience with a targeted apology or special reward.
9. Offer smarter payments
In the post-pandemic world, many shoppers still prefer contactless shopping experiences. Many supermarkets and grocery chains have self-service checkouts, and some are adopting scan-to-pay and even walk-in, walk-out options powered by location-based technology.
While PlotProjects is working on Be-In Be-Out ticketing, we don’t offer location-based payment solutions just yet. However our software can be implemented to trigger a variety of payment solutions such as payment portals and gift cards.
10. Encourage more opt ins
While there are many ways that geofencing can improve customer experience, not all app users are open to the idea of handing over their location data to brands. The key to convincing your app users to opt-in lies in explaining the added value of location data for user experience.
Take the time to welcome your user and introduce yourself, walk them through the reasons why location is needed and how the user will benefit from it. And minimize the required actions from the user’s side. When you app users realize the many perks for them, they’re far more likely to offer their location in exchange.
Once they’ve opted in, make sure you use the right technology to make your geofencing strategy work throughout all locations and deliver the right messaging at the right time. Avoid sending consumers too many notifications, or notifications at inconvenient times.
Luckily, PlotProjects has all the features and tools you need to retain and delight your app users. We offer an extra layer of customizable privacy options, along with anti-spam tools and other top features for segmentation such as place detection, pre-defined or custom audiences. With industry-leading accuracy and low battery use, it’s no wonder that businesses around the world use the PlotProjects software.
Get started with PlotProjects
Through PlotProjects leading geofencing platform it has never been easier for supermarkets and grocery chains to provide their app users with location-based notifications and experiences. If you’re interested in getting started with geofencing to boost footfall, increase engagement and supercharge sales, then we’d love to hear from you.
Contact PlotProjects today, or try our free trial to see how our software can work for you. Want to find out more about using beacons? Check out our guide about using Bluetooth beacons in retail.