Beacons, the next generation game changers!

We have clearly witnessed a sharp inclination towards providing a superior customer experience by most companies within the last couple of years. Some companies plan on investing huge funds in glorifying their customer retention strategies; while some others plan on scaling up their technological integration.

An important factor, inter alia, which would overhaul UI/UX radically is the proximity based unique and personalized experience for every “in-house” user. Heard about Beacons? Beacons are utilized across the industries for building proximity based unique experiences. While most users consume information on-the-go, there is a large pie of smartphone-totting indoor humans surfing the internet at the comfort of their homes.

Beacons are the lighthouse for marketers

Beacons are small and cost-effective piece of hardware that work on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and have the capability to interact with applications on mobile devices by broadcasting small packets of data at regular intervals through radio waves.

With these packets, event organizers, marketers, enterprises and other smart folks can easily locate user’s device and trigger geo-targeting personalized messages, push notifications and so much more even when they are in-house.

Some benefits of using beacons include:

• Higher battery life
• Cost-effective investment
• Bluetooth Low Energy
• Compact size
• Good range
• Compatible with Android and iOS devices
• Easy installation

Effectiveness of Beacons in the era of real-time everything

Email marketing has become extremely real-time with an increase in the usage of dynamic and predictive content. In-store and mobile messaging are becoming personalized. Landing pages, paid ads and other mediums of communication are becoming personalized as well. In this era of real-time everything, Beacons play a crucial role.

Here’s more about the usefulness of Beacons:

• Personalized messaging and engagement based on the proximity
• Consistent omni-channel experience indoors and outdoors.
• Right person  + Right Time + Right offer = Relevancy = Interest = Conversion
• Ability to track the movements of customer & enhance engagement based on the active geo-location.

Beacons are seeing light of the day already – Business cases!

At airports, where there is a peril of missing the flight, airlines can place Beacons at the security gates connecting and transmitting information from passenger’s app data to know who’s at a higher risk of missing the flights, who’s arrived already and at a later stage also identify opportunities for operational excellence and fleet management.

Retail stores can power up their in-store experience by offering their customers custom recommendations and personalized offers based on their in-store buying patterns and do much more by utilizing the customer data sets and then connecting with Beacons to transmit custom messages. According to a recent report, beacons will directly influence over $4 billion worth of US retail sales this year, and that number will climb tenfold in 2016

The dark side of the lighthouse

Although Beacons help in personalizing triggers, there are certain challenges with Beacons.

• Increasing the number of Beacon installations might also increase the maintenance cost.
• Placing Beacons at right location is challenging. Installation should happen with minimum obstruction facilitating clear signaling inside and outside of Beacon.
• Security concerns about malware attacks and hacking should be addressed ab-initio preventing any data loss or passing of any inaccurate content to the consumer.
• As Beacons monitor and provide contextual information, it is also imperative to take care of your customers’ privacy and making sure it isn’t compromised or breached.

Takeaway

Beacon proximity solutions will surely surge to a new high especially as more than 76% of marketers define real-time marketing as personalizing content in response to customer interactions.  Over time, using Beacons will be quintessential across many industries. Down the line, Beacons will be extremely helpful tools in measuring the impact of personalization on buying cycles, decision making and retention.

Have you used Beacons or plan using them anytime soon? Do share your thoughts in the comment below.