Geofencing is a powerful and cutting edge tool that adds relevance to communications throughout industries. This week, we will be talking about how to use geofencing for events marketing and the opportunities it can bring . From music festivals to sports events, location based messaging takes visitors’ experience to a brand new level.
This week’s industry: Event marketing
Mobile marketing is being heavily used to promote events and add to the visitors’ experience. From SMS to push notifications to social media, visitors are bombarded with messages, all the time, everywhere. What if event marketers had a way to send more relevant information and overall experience enhancing messages?
Solution
Geofencing technology has more than one advantage for event marketing. To start with, it adds relevance to the messages sent. Indeed, instead of sending the same message to all potential visitors, geofencing allows to target specific groups of visitors based on their location. The use of your visitors’ location can help you to target only the people who physically are at your event, while leaving out all those who didn’t show up yet, or are never planning on doing so.
But geofencing can be much more precise too. It gives you the tools to filter people by location inside your event zone and to communicate with people in different locations differently. Thanks to beacons or small geofences, you can offer much more personalized and relevant notifications, creating more interactions with visitors and dramatically influencing the customer’s experience.
Successful Real World Application Example
NFL Superbowl Blvd
The NFL recently used geofencing to build up their customers’ experience during the Super Bowl Boulevard 2014. Held in the streets of New York from Wednesday, January 29 to Saturday, February 1, the Super Bowl Boulevard is a show that hosts all sorts of football based events and experiences.
NFL deployed a series of beacons throughout the Super Bowl boulevard as well as in the MetLife Stadium for the main event. “So essentially once people came into a geofence they got a push notification (depending on where they were entering Super Bowl Blvd.) that said, ‘hey there’s an autograph signing going on here, or there’s a toboggan run there, or you can get your picture taken with the Lombardi trophy here, or there’s a concert’; so basically highly contextual information based on very precise micro-location that these beacons are able to communicate” explained Manish Jha, General Manager of Mobile for the National Football League (via Mobile Marketing Strategies Summit).
NFL claimed to be very pleased with the results of their geofencing campaign, that fulfilled both marketing and informational goals. They talk about using it on a more regular basis during sport events in stadiums as well as outdoors.
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What is geofencing & why I need it in my app?Download the Ultimate Guide to Geofencing for Mobile Marketing to find out more about geofencing and beacons and why to use them in your app. |
