How to Use Geolocation in Your Coupon Marketing Strategy?

The concept of geolocation allows you to tailor your coupon marketing based on a target location. The major goal is to fit your customers’ appetites to more accurate content combined with good timing. 

“74 % of adult smartphone owners ages 18 and older say they use their phone to get directions or other information based on their current location.”

Local favorites

The idea of geomarketing came out of the correlation between a particular area and a specific consumer’s behavior. It basically allows your coupon campaigns to reach the target audience at the right place. In other words, by tracking customer location and spending habits, you can more effectively tailor discounts and give customers what they want when they want it. Take a look at these examples:

Another market giant diversifies its coupon offer in international markets. Below, you can see the differences between Reebok campaigns in the USA and the UK:

Plan your events

Geo-located marketing can be used to promote your brand with local events and contests. By creating engaging local campaigns, your target will have more opportunities to interact with your coupons online or offline. Memorable events enable you to grab the attention of a local audience and drive real marketing results. Many giant brands use events entertainment as an alternative to the traditional marketing and advertising. This tactic works not only as a way of promotion but also helps to build a long-term brand image.

“Economies of scale aren’t going to cut it anymore. These days, you’ve got to go local or get out of town.”

What does ROI have to do with geolocation?

Without target location, it is hard to estimate if in-store coupons or free shipping won’t hurt your budget instead of increase revenues. Knowledge of a campaign’s reach is vital to evaluate expected ROI. This is why global brands use local-based marketing to schedule their promotion strategy. All the data taken from the area can be used to manage sales and conquer local markets.

You can limit coupon redemption to the particular area. Whether globally or locally, use it to promote a new store or to cater for different tastes amongst your clientele.

Don't be afraid to explore new fields

Geo-located campaigns allow you to overtake areas where your competition feels comfortable. How? By using more hard-hitting tactics called geo-conquesting. The point is to launch attractive discounts aimed at a competitor’s area and a domestic audience. Whether you plan this kind of campaign or not, you have to be prepared for the moment when you might be in the sights of such an action organized by your competition.

Data Privacy Hiccup

Today, people are getting more and more conscious when it comes to the privacy issue. The real challenge is gathering data without feeling intrusive. To keep loyalty without giving up on tracking, business has come up with the idea of transparent marketing. Next to the standard location tracking (based on user permission), you can use alternative, more subtle sources of customers data gathering. Coupon software such as Voucherify can provide client location with redemption details.

The workflow is straightforward – when a customer redeems a coupon, he/she leaves order details with location data. It’s an example of efficient tracking without hurting the customer experience.

“Customers say that relevant communication from sales and marketing plays a critical role.”

Keep pace with your audience

Traveling was never as easy as it is now. Accordingly, geo-marketing is only efficient when it's ready to handle market dynamics. Whether online or offline, people can seamlessly change their shopping location and shop around the world. The key is to capture these moves and turn them into dynamic customer grouping. Let’s use Voucherify as an example to show how dynamic geo-marketing works:The app enables you to split customers into groups (called segments). In the next step, you can send customized Voucherify vouchers to the chosen audience. Segments are built with filters which are based on spending habits, location, previous interactions with your coupons or any other custom property you’d like to include.

The crucial feature of Voucherify segments is the dynamic mode which allows for updating of a customer’s location in real time.

By way of example, let’s assume you’ve built a segment of New Yorkers. If a CRM notices that a customer from NYC changes their location, he/she will automatically drop out of the NYC segment. If the client comes back to the NY area, he/she will be visible in the Voucherify segment with the New Yorkers again. CRM data are updated in the dashboard automatically so marketers can be sure that coupons will find the desired target at any time.

How to combine location with other customer attributes?

Once the geolocation works successfully, a CRM can gather data about preferences related to the particular area. With a specific buyer profile, marketers can finally tailor a campaign’s shape. To model this in practice, let’s create a sale for a target group which –

• prefers in-store redemptions,
• uses a MasterCard payment,
• has the postal code 212/646/917,

and reward them with a product-specific discount.

While creating a segment, you can include all the details which define a target. Geo-located promotions can be based on a customer’s postal code, city, and country.With the segment completed, you can start to create a campaign with unique coupons. In our scenario, we want to run a geo-located, product-specific campaign. It comes down to using the campaign creator where you need to add validation rules. They define a customer segment, discount products or any other limits for a valid redemption.

Moreover, you can distribute codes automatically to all the clients who appear in the chosen localization. The workflow looks as follows:

1. Create a dynamic segment which defines your target group.
2. Create the coupon campaign with the manager and define redemption rules.
3. Choose a distribution channel and set automatic delivery.

In practice, customers will receive unique coupons when they join the segment.

Customized messages with codes can be delivered automatically by email, SMS or by your MailChimp account. Once you set the automatic distribution, Voucherify sends a code to each customer who enters the segment.

Maintenance

Geo-located promotions perform well only if coupons are secure from external misuse. The point is to keep an eye on customer’s data and verify his/her location once he/she is redeeming a coupon. This can be managed with an efficient information flow across a CRM and voucher software. Seamless integration with Voucherify ensures that customer data is updated in real-time. Additionally, the app looks after coupons, so a redemption won't be valid in the case of a dynamic location change.

Conclusions

The concept of geolocation supported by appropriate tools is like holding a key to open the door to great opportunities. The growing popularity of mobile devices has made geo-location an essential component of any marketing strategy. For the retail trade, it’s a chance to develop sales and catch customers with their wallet in their hand.

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