Why the Future of Customer Engagement is Fueled by Analytics

Running a business means competition. Whether that competition is product, prices or shorter lines at checkout, you are competing against the other businesses in your area for customer engagement and satisfaction.

The best way to get ahead is by knowing what your customers want, their habits and how they interact with your business. Instead of stopping every customer to ask what they would like to see differently, customer insight analytics can cut survey time and provide more accurate insights. Implementing WiFi Engagement & Analytics could be your easy ticket to beating out the competition.

What is customer engagement analytics?

Customer engagement analytics is the process of capturing and examining how customers interact — or don’t interact — with your business.

To be a successful marketer, you must know where and how to spend your advertising dollars in a way that will produce results. WiFi analytics involves collecting data from devices (like smartphones or laptops) that connect to your WiFi network and then analyzing detailed information about where the device is located, how it’s physically moving around the area and what types of actions are being taken while connected. You can collect several data points using WiFi customer engagement such as:

• Demographic information, including name, age, gender and hometown.
• Digital marketing points like social profiles and email addresses.
• Behavioral data, including returning customers, how long they stay in the store and traffic patterns.
• Location of the device through heat mapping, footfall and crowd size.

If you offer free WiFi at your store, you could be missing out on hundreds of data points that will reveal your prospects’ preferences and shopping habits. This insight can help power your marketing and sales tactics such as placing valuable items at high-touch point areas. This can not only help your bottom line but increase customer engagement.

In a September 2021 blog, IBM found that “with big data, retailers can be more predictive, more proactive and more profitable in their efforts.” By pinpointing where customers are spending most of their time in-store as well as which items are easy add-ons for products they’re already interested in, you can strategically place these items nearby each other. One example is a beach-style retail store placing sun hats near their bathing suit rack.

Thanks to the accessibility of customer engagement tactics like WiFi analytics, brick-and-mortar stores have the same ability eCommerce stores do to alter the business to meet customer needs. 

Where did the concept come from?

WiFi engagement has evolved from a series of advanced technologies as it relates to the Internet of Things (IoT), or how all smart devices, from smartphones to your refrigerator, are connected. This conglomerate of information forms IoT and creates useful data to better serve the consumer.

The concept helps business to connect to their customers more effectively. As consumers take a greater interest in controlling what they see, how they shop and what brands they want to interact with, the old method of pop-up ads or door-to-door sales has become obsolete.

The shift started with the use of web analytics — typically associated with cookies, page hits and customer segmentation — in the 1990s. Then, in the late 2000s, Facebook and Twitter started to incorporate business profiles as part of their service. As devices became smarter, businesses followed suit and evolved into what it is today.

Do you need to use customer analytics to improve engagement?

Gaining actionable insights into your customers’ experience is one of the most important ways to grow your business. Building a customer profile of the shoppers who interact with your organization offers your marketing teams a competitive advantage over your competition. WiFi engagement can help you to:

• Build Profiles - Get to know your visitors by building detailed profiles
• Segment Data - Easily segment collected data to understand your visitor groups
• Custom Marketing - Use the data collected to deliver personalized marketing campaigns
• Optimize Venues - Optimize your space based on how your visitors move around

Understanding your customers

Building a customer profile is the first step toward an optimized customer experience. An Audience Growth Marketing Manager and Staff Writer for HubSpot, Pamala Bump, found that 92% of customers and prospects expect personalization.

Using information from WiFi engagement analytics can help you better understand what types of customers your business is attracting, which can then inform how to engage with them further. This can be done with a better store layout that aligns with how they already shop, putting your most interesting products to the forefront and using retargeting ads to get them back into your store.

Utilize feedback

Hearing directly from your customers is not only free insight but invaluable to your business’s future. After they leave your WiFi location, encourage customers to fill out a survey about their experience by integrating a feedback splash page once they disconnect from your WiFi. Then, analyze your WiFi engagement dashboard to both keep track of survey results and respond directly to them personally to resolve any issues.

Optimize your store

Once you’ve collected the customer data you need, put it to use directly in your store. Offer the items your customers are interested in right away – items they are likely to show excitement about and truly offer a seamless experience.

You can even set your store up for better flow. Notice where customers are forming lines or how they can get around more easily and see more of your products.

Tailor advertising to your shoppers’ needs

After the customer leaves the store, your interaction with them doesn’t need to end. While all businesses are looking for new customers, it’s important to continue to interact with existing customers as well. Current, happy customers can quickly become brand ambassadors for your business. HubSpot found that 81% of people trust their friends or family over a business for recommendations and new customer acquisition costs 5% more than it did five years ago.

Telesystem WiFi Engagement & Analytics

Telesystem can help you utilize your existing network and make the most out of every opportunity you have with your customers. Set up a dashboard of valuable data that will speak to the future of your business about the needs of your shoppers and visitors. With our cloud software enablement, you can easily gain key insights into customer behavior, preferences and location analytics to optimize your space.

WiFi Engagement & Analytics is your key to tapping into building detailed visitor profiles, boosting customer loyalty and optimizing sales and marketing. To get started, request a quote today.