iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy has been her­ald­ed by some com­men­ta­tors to be the sav­iour of brick-and-mor­tar stores. The abil­i­ty to track and inte­grate retail shop­ping expe­ri­ences is cer­tain­ly an attrac­tive con­cept for mar­keters, but will it improve con­sumer shop­ping expe­ri­ences?

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Along­side the much-hyped prod­uct launch­es announced at the annu­al Apple con­fer­ences in recent years was the qui­et roll­out of iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy. Despite its much less her­ald­ed sta­tus in com­par­i­son to oth­er fea­tures of Apple’s lead­ing prod­ucts, the tech­nol­o­gy has been hailed by some as the sav­ior for tra­di­tion­al brick-and-mor­tar stores.

What Is iBeacon Technology?

Apple describes iBea­con as “a new class of low-pow­ered, low-cost trans­mit­ters that can noti­fy near­by iOS 7 devices of their pres­ence.”

One of its most excit­ing, and use­ful appli­ca­tions for mar­keters lies in its abil­i­ty to pre­cise­ly locate the smart­phones of near­by users. In retail stores, this means users can receive phone noti­fi­ca­tions of what near­by items are on sale, or even enable com­plete­ly con­tact­less pay­ments to stream­line the user expe­ri­ence.

The tech­nol­o­gy falls under a grow­ing num­ber of dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives designed to inte­grate in-store shop­ping with dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, updat­ing high street shop­ping expe­ri­ences to keep pace with the tremen­dous change that dig­i­tal has brought to con­sumer buy­ing cycles.

Uptake And Momentum

Already, a large num­ber of high pro­file retail­ers have launched the tech­nol­o­gy in their stores. Macy’s recent­ly rolled out iBea­con in 4,000 U.S. stores, the largest imple­men­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy yet.

In a press release out­lin­ing the depart­ment store’s cur­rent devel­op­ments, the brand spoke of their part­ner­ship with shop­kick, a mobile app that gives shop­pers exclu­sive offers and rewards for sim­ply walk­ing into part­ner stores:

“After a test run last year dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son at Macy’s flag­ships in New York and San Fran­cis­co, Macy’s and shop­kick, one of the most wide­ly used real-world shop­ping apps, will expand the use of shopkick’s shop­Bea­con tech­nol­o­gy to all Macy’s stores nation­wide… Users of the shop­kick app [will be able to] get more per­son­al­ized depart­ment-lev­el deals, dis­counts, rec­om­men­da­tions and rewards… This enhance­ment in Macy’s mobile tech­nol­o­gy arse­nal will allow for increased con­sumer engage­ment and pro­mo­tion­al and mar­ket­ing rel­e­van­cy that will ben­e­fit cus­tomers nation­wide.”

Ear­li­er this week, UK-based health foods store Hol­land and Bar­rett revealed it was putting togeth­er a brief for a new con­cept “store of the future,” which will imple­ment iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy. In an inter­view with The Drum, CMO Lysa Hardy spoke of how the brand hoped to “even­tu­al­ly be able to tar­get cus­tomers indi­vid­u­al­ly based on a pro­file they have set for them­selves.”

They join a large num­ber of high pro­file brands who are also invest­ing in iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy. Promi­nent UK depart­ment store, John Lewis, award­ed mobile tech­nol­o­gy start-up Localz £100,000 in Sep­tem­ber, to bring iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy to their stores nation­wide.

In the U.S., Simon Malls, JCPen­ney, Amer­i­can Eagle, Tar­get, Best Buy, and Old Navy are some of the brands that join Macy’s in their roll­out of the tech­nol­o­gy.

Let’s look at five ways iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy will rev­o­lu­tion­ize in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

1. Integration Of Online And Offline Shopping Data

One of the biggest chal­lenges for retail stores today is bridg­ing the dis­con­nect between online and offline con­sumer shop­ping expe­ri­ences. These days, CRM and attri­bu­tion mod­els mean that mar­keters are able to tie togeth­er con­sumers online search pro­files, whether they’re brows­ing the web­site, or respond­ing to email mar­ket­ing. When the same user walks into a store, how­ev­er, they’re a com­plete stranger – they might have been mas­sive­ly engaged with the brand online, or just a few moments and inter­ac­tions away from a pur­chase, but their in-store expe­ri­ence will still be the same as for any oth­er con­sumer.

IBea­con tech­nol­o­gy changes that. It allows retail­ers to iden­ti­fy users as they walk into a store, tying up online pro­files to indi­vid­ual shop­pers.

Per­haps a cus­tomer’s recent online activ­i­ty indi­cates he or she is in a store look­ing exclu­sive­ly at over­coats, or per­haps to pick up a reg­u­lar gro­ceries order but could be tempt­ed by spe­cial offers. IBea­con inte­grates dig­i­tal with in-store retail, bridg­ing that divi­sion between online and offline, and the tech­nol­o­gy is begin­ning to gain the kind of pop­u­lar­i­ty that could see the tech­nol­o­gy take off.

2. Capture Data From Physical Interactions

It isn’t just data gath­ered from dig­i­tal sources that can make up a con­sumers shop­ping pro­file. IBea­con tech­nol­o­gy can be used to gath­er user infor­ma­tion in-store.

A typ­i­cal exam­ple might be a user who, hav­ing researched a pur­chase for a new set of head­phones online, then goes in-store to sam­ple the audio qual­i­ty to see if his or her expec­ta­tions match­es online reviews. IBea­con reveals that they spent a fair amount of time look­ing at head­phones in-store, and even if they don’t trans­act at that point, with this knowl­edge mar­keters can safe­ly assume that fol­lowup mar­ket­ing mes­sages with head­phone prod­uct offers and infor­ma­tion will be well received and appre­ci­at­ed.

3. Integration With Email Marketing

Email mar­ket­ing is a valu­able chan­nel for con­sumer-fac­ing brands, espe­cial­ly for con­ver­sion trans­ac­tions. It’s strength is in the lev­el of per­son­al­iza­tion that email mar­ket­ing pro­vide. For exam­ple, with clever use of data and CRM, mar­keters can make an accu­rate esti­mate of exact­ly when a user needs to make a month­ly pet food order; a pro­mo­tion­al email at the right moment with a dis­count on Felix’s favorite kib­ble is like­ly to see good con­ver­sion rates.

Now imag­ine if mar­keters had the same lev­el of con­fi­dence in a par­tic­u­lar con­sumers favored toi­letries. A con­sumer, let’s call her Jes­si­ca, might pick up her sham­poos and con­di­tion­ers reg­u­lar­ly, but not like clock­work, in the third week of every month, and from a vari­ety of drug stores that she vis­its in and around her most fre­quent­ed routes around town. She isn’t loy­al to a par­tic­u­lar brand, but she does have a loy­al­ty card on which she col­lects points when­ev­er she uses that par­tic­u­lar store. And of course, Jes­si­ca does­n’t know it yet because she does­n’t receive any, but she would love to hear about dis­counts and pro­mo­tions on her favorite prod­ucts via email.

This kind of infor­ma­tion is gold for any mar­keter, but until now has been beyond their reach. This is no longer the case with iBea­con.

4. Link Social Media Data And Responses To In-Store Experiences

Social media is great for two things:

• Cre­at­ing aware­ness about brands and the prod­ucts con­sumers might be inter­est­ed in.
• Fos­ter­ing a dia­logue between brands and con­sumers in real-time, pro­vid­ing brands with qual­i­ta­tive feed­back.

Link­ing this to iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy means hav­ing the abil­i­ty to respond to con­sumers in-store expe­ri­ences. Per­haps con­sumers have been send­ing annoyed tweets about prod­ucts they are inter­est­ed in going out of stock in a num­ber of your stores. Hav­ing your social media man­ag­er send an apolo­getic mes­sage is one thing, but imag­ine being able to respond in real-time to sup­ply issues based on data link­ing social media feed­back and iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy.

5. Completing The Customer Experiences With Cross-Channel Insights

When you con­sid­er mer­it of var­i­ous dig­i­tal chan­nels, there isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly one that can be said to be most influ­en­tial for all cus­tomers. Instead, it’s the inte­gra­tion of organ­ic search, email, social media, and paid adver­tis­ing that, in the end, puts forth a pow­er­ful and con­vinc­ing mes­sage to con­sumers.

iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy essen­tial­ly allows mar­keters to col­lect data, and ulti­mate­ly con­sid­er in-store shop­ping expe­ri­ences as anoth­er dig­i­tal chan­nel. In-store retail data will allow greater per­son­al­iza­tion of mar­ket­ing mes­sages, and pro­vide mar­keters with the infor­ma­tion they need to build more com­plete pro­files of their cus­tomers.

Innumerable Opportunities

Increas­ing­ly, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is com­plex in that con­sumers today are behav­ing, and inter­act­ing with brands in ways that are also increas­ing com­plex. The key is to man­age that com­plex­i­ty, and for mar­keters, this means hav­ing data, tools, and exper­tise nec­es­sary to build accu­rate pro­files of con­sumer behav­ior and respond­ing accord­ing­ly. Ful­fill­ing con­sumer needs across a range of touch­points, with per­son­al­ized offers and mes­sag­ing that enhances their expe­ri­ences with a brand is one of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of momen­tol­ogy.

iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy pro­gress­es that con­cept. It pro­vides innu­mer­able pos­si­bil­i­ties for mar­keters to stream­line and improve phys­i­cal expe­ri­ences, and link them up to dig­i­tal chan­nels and cam­paigns.

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Has you brand invest­ed in iBea­con tech­nol­o­gy yet? If not, do you plan to? Share your thoughts in the com­ments.