Retail stores are undergoing a paradigm shift today, where only being a pure play brick and mortar store is not the best approach to connect with the target audience. A mix of online channels as well as physical stores, (otherwise called omni-channel) is the right way to reach customers.

While a majority of sales still happen in physical stores, online channels supported through mobile devices and smartphones have a huge influence on customer engagement, loyalty and sales. This is why retailers need to have a sound mobile strategy in order to effectively connect with customers while they are in or around stores. This is where technologies like iBeacon and Eddystone prove to be of great value. While iBeacon technology is helping create significant customer impact, it still heavily relies on smartphone apps (that need to be downloaded on customers’ smartphones). Eddystone is a much easier approach to reach customers with targeted, contextual and hyper-local content directly on their smartphones, without the need of specific apps.

With the recent announcement of Chrome support on both Android and iOS devices, retailers can practically connect with all smartphone users at any given area in or around stores. Retailers will just need Eddystone compliant beacons and a mobile website in order to leverage this easy and effective location-based solution. For a better understanding on the pros, cons and the road ahead for Eddystone and the Physical Web, you can read our earlier post.

In this post, we provide a step-by-step guide on setting up 5 different Eddystone campaigns or use cases that can be easily implemented at retail stores.

The first step is to come up with a clear campaign objective before installing beacons and setting up notifications.

Step 1 – Set Campaign Objective

Campaign 1 – Send targeted offers

The objective of this campaign is send targeted offers to customers in order to encourage them to buy complementary products. To illustrate this, we shall send an offer to all customers at the shirt section, about a special discount on pants that can be availed on purchase of any shirt. Let’s name the campaign ‘20% off on pants’ and set the display message as ‘Buy any shirt and avail 20% off on pants’

Campaign 2 – Help with new product promotion

Eddystone can prove to be quite useful for promoting new products at stores. The objective of the campaign is to attract customers at/near a store to visit the new product launch section. Let’s name the campaign ‘New Mother Dairy Ice Cream’ and set the display message as ‘Beat the summer heat, come taste the delicious new flavours of Mother Dairy Ice Cream’

Campaign 3 – Attract new customers to the store

The objective of this campaign is to attract new customers or customers without the store’s native app to visit the store. This campaign can prove to be a great way to increase customer reach. Let’s name the campaign ‘Discover the latest fashion trends’ and set the display message as ‘ Discover the latest fashion trends, visit the EastSide Store’

Campaign 4 – Send proximity marketing messages near mannequins

The objective of this campaign is push a customer closer to a sale when he/she is checking out the clothes/shoes/accessories on a mannequin. Such proximity marketing messages can be used to either send specific offers or relevant product information to customers. Let’s name the campaign ‘Mannequin 1 – Summer Dress’ and set the display message as ‘Stay cool this summer, with a soft, flowery summer dress. Special 15% off on all summer dresses today’

Campaign 5 – Collect valuable feedback

Eddystone provides one of the best ways to effectively run surveys and collect feedback. The objective of this campaign is to collect direct feedback from customers, by easily sending a survey form on their smartphones. One of the best times to send such surveys is while customers are waiting in billing queues. Let’s name the campaign ‘Customer Survey’ and set the display message as ‘Hope you had a good time shopping. Help us deliver a better experience by filling out this customer survey form’

Step 2 – Install Beacons

Once you have a clear campaign objective, you will need to purchase and install a few Eddystone compliant beacons. You can consider buying the Beaconstac beacons that are Eddystone compliant. Once you have purchased the beacons, their details such as the UID-Namespace, UID-Instance and URL, will be added to the Beaconstac dashboard (by us) before shipping the beacons to you. For easy identification, the beacons can be named based on their location, campaign objective or any other point of reference. The beacon names for the 5 campaigns are as follows:

Campaign Campaign Name Beacon Name Campaign 1 – Send targeted offers 20% off on pants Shirt section Campaign 2 – Help with new product promotion New Mother Dairy Ice Cream Ice cream section Campaign 3 – Attract new customers to the store Discover the latest fashion trends Store entrance Campaign 4 – Send proximity marketing messages near mannequins Mannequin 1 – Summer Dress Mannequin 1 Campaign 5 – Collect valuable feedback Customer Survey Billing counter

Step 3 – Set up notifications

After the beacons have been installed, all you have to do is to follow 3 simple steps to complete setting up your Eddystone campaign. The 3 steps are as follows:

1. Go to the Beaconstac app

2. Click on the specific beacon (named according to where it is placed), and click on ‘Edit’ on the top right corner.

3. Change the ‘Eddystone URL’ which is set to ‘www.beaconstac.com’ by default, to the specific link you want to send to your customers.

The notifications for the 5 campaigns are as follows:

The message and url will be sent to anyone in the range of the Eddystone beacon. By clicking on the url, the customer/user will be directly taken to the specific webpage that will display the intended message to the user (as mentioned in each campaign)

If you are planning an Eddystone beacon pilot, take a look at Beaconstac, that includes everything you need to kickstart your campaign in under 15 minutes. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!

Author Details

Author Details

Pavithra Babu Enthusiastic about marketing technology and helping businesses achieve greater ROI.

This blog was originally published on April 13th, 2016 at 10:48 am