Measurable Consumer Engagement

Toushay TouchPoints™ — Beacons

What are Beacons?

How Beacons Can Be Used

Beacons give retailers the ability to more pre-

cisely target customers, based on their physical

location, to improve customer engagement with

their brand, and influence purchase decisions.

Here are a few examples:

A retail brand has beacons deployed in several

locations around their stores - at the entrance,

on several mannequins, near the cash, etc. Each

beacon is broadcasting a unique ID identifying

the Brand, the store number, and the location

in the store. The customer has the brand’s

mobile app installed on their smartphone.

When the shopper enters

the store, their smartphone

detects the entrance beacon,

and the mobile app sends

a message to the shopper,

highlighting special deals.

In addition, the app does

an ‘auto check in’ that earns the shopper

loyalty points, just for entering the store.

As the shopper approaches

one of the mannequins, the

mobile app responds to the

mannequin’s beacon, and

shows more information

about the clothing and acces-

sories being displayed. The

shopper can get information about each product,

including in-store location, pricing and availability.

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A beacon is a physical device

that uses Bluetooth LE (BLE)

to broadcast its identity to

nearby devices. An app on the

receiving device can then use the

beacons identifying information

to know exactly where it is.

Think of it like a lighthouse — it

sits in one location and broadcasts

out to any App that is listening.

A shopper opts-in by having a brand’s

beacon-enabled mobile app installed,

and by having Bluetooth turned on.

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The iPad that allows shop-

pers to browse a Product

Catalogue is also enabled

as a beacon transmitter,

and it triggers the mobile

app to offer coupons on

products the shopper is looking at.

The Store Associate’s iPad

notifies the Associate that

someone is looking at bea-

con-driven content in the store.

The Associate’s application

can bring up content that is

related to what the shopper is looking at, allowing

them to effectively engage with the shopper.

Sales

Managing Beacons?

When managing beacons, it is important

to consider the following things:

• A way to identify individual beacons with human-friendly naming

• Secure tools to manage identification codes, configure the beacons to broad-cast the right code, and get the right beacon in the right location

• Monitoring for beacon health and bat-tery strength, to ensure that beacons are functioning as they are meant to

• Content management system to allow authorized individuals to update the con-tent that is delivered to the mobile appli-cation, when in proximity to a beacon

• Layered management approach to

permissions letting different people

manage different aspects of the solution

• e.g. Corporate Marketing defines and

manages the store welcome message

and brand-wide promotional content

• Regional Marketing determines

seasonal or location-specific con-

tent for stores in a region

• Store Manager monitors beacons and

adjusts configuration as necessary

• Store staff verify that beacons are

properly interacting with the brand app

• Remote configuration and monitoring of beacons where possible (e.g. with iOS devices programmed to act as beacon transmitters)

What Beacons Can Measure/Learn?

It is important to experiment with the place-

ment of beacons, and the content they drive,

to maximize customer engagement. Data

on which beacons are being detected by

shoppers helps retailers understand traffic

patterns in-store, as well as which displays and

products customers are most interested in.

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