7 THINGS ABOUT GEOFENCING YOU’LL KICK YOURSELF FOR NOT KNOWING

ACADEMYby Pulsate™

PATRICK LEDDY

Pulsate™

THE NUMBERS

30% of the world population is already using location-based services.

80% of them want to get location-based alerts from businesses like yours.

WHAT IS A GEOFENCE?

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Pulsate™

1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?

A Geofence is a virtual perimeter that you can draw around any location on a map, and then target customers who enter that location.

It is used for larger areas where you want to know if someone is walking by your store, by competitor’s, or coming into a particular location.

My Store

Competitor

Pulsate™

1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?

By using Google maps or other mapping tool, you can identify the area that you want to geofence.My Store

Competitor

Pulsate™

1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?

Then the app monitors for that geofence, and as people go about their business, it’s tracking that location in the background.

You know immediately when someone breaches a fence, when they dwell there, or as they are about to leave.

Pulsate™

1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?

Geofences can be used to target customers in physical locations, allowing you to trigger the right messages, the right campaign, at the right time and place.

Pulsate™

1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?

As mentioned last week…

A Beacon is a piece of hardware you can add to your location and target customers as they arrive, as they leave, or as they dwell.

They are great for proximities and knowing at a very granular level that someone is near a certain object or product.

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon

Beacon

BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING

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2. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING

CRM$Some of the benefits include increasing your sales and loyalty.

This can be achieved by mixing CRM data with location events to trigger the right message and content.

Pulsate™

2. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING

My Store

Customers

When customers are nearby that haven’t been in your stores, haven’t been in your location, or haven’t transacted in a while, it might be a good time to win them back.

Geofence

Hey, we’ve missed you.

Come in for a free coffee!

Yes, coffee!

USE CASES

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3. USE CASES

Give them incentives

Remind them of rewards

Survey customers as they leave

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3. USE CASES

My Store

Competitor Store

Geofence

Tracking competitors is something that is interesting as well. You can’t really bug out your competitor’s store with beacons but you sure can add a virtual perimeter - a geofence.

Pulsate™

3. USE CASES

My Store

Competitor Store

Geofence

You do need to put this in your privacy policy, that you’re geofencing not only your own locations, but possibly other locations that don’t relate to your business. You don’t have to list them specifically as competitors but mention something.

HOW IT WORKS

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4. HOW IT WORKS

+ +GPS Cellular Data WiFi

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4. HOW IT WORKS

Historically, it’s more about the cellular data. You can even go to your operator, ask them to geofence an area and then they will actually send a text message out to customers when they’ve breached that location.

Of course, they haven’t opted in for that. So that’s being phased out and being replaced by applications that can actually do the geofencing, where you opt in for location services you want to get some of kind of “push notifications” and you are aware that there is value exchange going on.

Pulsate™

4. HOW IT WORKS

We’ve moved from cellular to doing the “in” at the application level geofencing. You can use high-accuracy GPS to connect to satellite and get high-accuracy latitude and longitude of where customers are.

The problem is, using GPS radio, the very high-power consumption so you’re going to wear down the users’ battery. Another problem is you can’t rely on GPS in the background. Your customers are not going to walk by your business with the app open. They’re not going to be that helpful.

Pulsate™

4. HOW IT WORKS

We moved towards geofencing being passive, working in the background, always on, and always being low-power consumption and not using GPS.X

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4. HOW IT WORKS

How do the Operating Systems handle Geofencing?

Both iOS and Android, on the iOS side we have a thing called “region monitoring”, which is part of Core Location. The operating systems default API’s don't handle geofencing very well. It’s known to be buggy and inaccurate.

Pulsate™

4. HOW IT WORKS

Can you afford to do active Geofencing and use GPS? What is the opportunity cost if customers realize you’re not doing a very good job of your geofencing and you’re wearing down their battery? Your app is probably going to be deleted off their devices, ruining the opportunity for you, completely, as a business.

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4. HOW IT WORKS

My Store

Customers

No Geofence

If you can’t engage with them in passive mode when the application is in the background, what are the business opportunities that you’re missing out?

Of all those customers that are walking by your business, you don’t even know they’re there and you’re not reaching out.

It is an opportunity that you’re missing to reach out, connect, and engage, and bring them back into your business, create that loyalty, and deepen the relationship.

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4. HOW IT WORKS

Moving on to how we can actually put this to work and how we’ve done it in Pulsate.

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4. HOW IT WORKS

Geofences are virtual perimeters, you can send notifications based on loyalty, transactions, and segment data. You can also send campaign messages when customers walk into a competitor’s fence. Or simply track their presence.

We’ve got better deals than this company. Come by

and see for yourself!

My Store Competitor Store

Pulsate™

4. HOW IT WORKS

So remember, geofences are virtual, you can create them in any location. They’re about macro location and you don’t need to deploy any hardware.

They’re obviously very cost-effective because you can just fire up a map, create geofences all around the world, and instantly your app can begin to monitor for those location.

OUR REQUIREMENTS

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5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

Requires no hardware

Works passively in the background

Very, very, very little battery drain Customers are able to update our fences remotely

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5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

+So, we wanted that remote management, better accuracy, robustness, and combine all of the sensors on the device that we could use to geofence.

We ended up taking cellular data and WiFi data combined with sensor fusion.

Pulsate™

5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

In order for a phone to be a phone, it has to connect to cellular towers. Otherwise, when you get a phone call or a text message its not going to alert you.

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5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

When a WiFi Router or SSID is first sighted, the Operating System of your device will power up GPS in the background, and take a high accuracy location fix on where this WiFi Router is located.Essentially every smartphone is crowd sourcing what wifi signals map to physical locations.

Pulsate™

5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

Pulsate piggybacks on those WiFi pings. We have a database of all those WiFi routers and where they are.

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5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

We combine the cellular tower known locations to the WiFi known location, which you can do very accurate geofencing with, right down to, on average, 100 meters and even below in some situations.

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5. OUR REQUIREMENTS

This means we don’t have to run GPS. It means we can do it in the background, and we’re not going to upset the user by draining their battery.

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BEST PRACTICES

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6. BEST PRACTICES

Geofence mainly in urban locations. We recommend targeting customers with a minimum fence size of 100 meters if using default API’s provided by the device. If using Pulsate you can geofence down to 10 meters.

Pulsate™

6. BEST PRACTICES

If you create geofences in a countryside location, you won’t have the same density of WiFi routers and cellular towers, so you want to make those fences a little bigger, maybe several meters or even kilometres.

Pulsate™

6. BEST PRACTICES

You don’t want your geofences to overlap unless you have unusual use case that calls for it. Try to have at least a couple of hundred meters between geofences.

Pulsate™

6. BEST PRACTICES

You need WiFi turned on on the consumer’s device for this to work. Cellular towers are not enough to do accurate geofencing.

Pulsate™

6. BEST PRACTICES

Bring segmentation into it. Do not rely on, “Hey, I’ve geofenced my store, I’m sending the same generic template to people that walk by.” Use purchase data, behaviours and interests that you have on customers to really segment out your campaigns.

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6. BEST PRACTICES

Instead of having one generic geofence campaign, have 5, 10, 20 campaigns that address all those different personas that you have in your customers base, making sure that you’re reaching out not only at the right place, but also at the right time, with the right message as well.

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PRIVACY

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7. PRIVACY

Customers need to download your mobile app and opt in for location services. If you want to send push notification, you must ask them to opt in for this as well.

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7. PRIVACY

In your Private Policy, you should mention that you’re collecting and storing location data from customers.

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7. PRIVACY

Don’t ask for location or push permissions the first time they open the app. Wait until they need access to the specific feature that requires these permissions.

http://bit.ly/1TqG9s9

Watch our video on how to ask for permissions the right way:

Pulsate™

7. PRIVACY

If you earn a customers trust and they decide to opt-in, make sure you only send relevant, personalised content that provides value.

IN SUMMARY

Pulsate™

Pulsate™

IN SUMMARY

7 Things About Geofencing That You’ll Kick Yourself for Not Knowing:

1. What is a Geofence 2. Benefits of Geofencing 3. Use Cases 4. How it Works 5. Our Requirements 6. Best Practices 7. Privacy

Pulsate™

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