Read original story on: Mobile Marketer
McDonald’s tested a new in-store proximity program at 15 McDonald Cafés in Istanbul, Turkey, sending beacon-enabled promotions to its customers via Shopping Genie, a popular Turkish loyalty app, with some very positive results. Over two six-week periods, the fast food chain staple saw a conversion rate of 20 percent, with an impressive 30% of users who received the promotion using it more than once.
Read original story on: Mobile Commerce Daily
Chinese jewelry brand Chow Tai Fook teamed up with Beijing-based beacon-provider Sensoro to install a beacon-powered e-coupon distribution system that operates via popular messaging app WeChat, in 237 stores across 4 major cities in China. The campaign, which reportedly resulted in over 32,000 participating consumers and over $16 million in sales, highlights the advantages of seamlessly integrating beacon interfaces within an app that consumers are already using and familiar with.
Read original story on: Business Insider
Twitter is investing in Swirl, a Boston-based startup specializing in beacon marketing, according to CEO Hilmi Ozguc. Swirl’s technology is intended to surface relevant ads to smartphone-wielding shoppers in stores. Although Twitter has yet to incorporate Swirl’s technology into its ad offerings, it will probably happen soon.
Twitter’s own ad platform could greatly benefit from Swirl’s beacon technology, as it would contextually trigger notifications of targeted ads or value offers and boost relevancy of its real-time ad bidding.
Yesterday, the Lab trekked into the west end of Hell’s Kitchen to attend the first day of MobileWeek 2015. Great talks were given on new developments in the rapidly growing mobile world, and enthusiastic discussion on the future of mobile ensued. Here are the four key takeaways for brands seeking to conquer mobile.
Connectivity is Growing
The evolution of the connected car has long been on our radar and mobile is the current medium fueling it all. Vijay Doradla of Verizon predicted that “by 2025 every car shipped in the world will have some sort of connectivity”. He also believes that the underlying fabric of this revolution is due to low latency and the ability of the network to scale to consumers.
Make Data More Ubiquitous
“There’s too much data out there and too many secrets”. Kurt Collins of built.io explained that if we create a back-end that holds the data of all our mobile devices, we can have a more seamless experience; currently, bowered, data is stuck in silos. In order to have a fully unified experience, Collins believes that the implementation of “personal API’s” that can access all data on all devices will enable personal preferences to continue across all interfaces.
Mobile Security Matters
Gary Davis of Intel put the importance of mobile security in perspective: “the value of the data that sits on your phone is worth 10x that of a stolen or breached credit card”. With the progressive growth of IoT, our connected devices are producing prolific data and the weakest link in this ecosystem of connectivity is the smartphone. Davis states that “30% of people don’t have a pin or password on their smartphone”, which is alarming considering the hypergrowth of malware in mobile apps. Davis also predicts that the “adoption of NFC for digital payments from mobile devices will attract cyber thieves”. Similarly, Andrew Sugaya of APX Labs expressed his concern towards the security concerns of connected devices when discussing the future of wearables.
New Tech To Blend Into The Background
During his presentation on the endless potential of beacons, Kevin Hunter of Gimbal made it clear that the beacon is not only great at sending contextual value offers in retail environment, but can also power new discoveries and experiences at events or venues, seamlessly bridging reality with the digital world. Wearables could be a particularly effective medium for this, but for wearables to go mainstream, they have to seamlessly blend into the background with a natural, intuitive user experience.
We interviewed Charlie Karstrom from leading beacon provider Gimbal about how proximity technology is changing the way people experience events, how brands can benefit from beacon-generated data, and more.
The NRF’s BIG Day is a little like CES for retail: there are big tech announcements, thought-leading keynotes, and large showcases at New York’s Jacob Javits Center. Here’s a recap of a few of the larger news reveals:
NCR is releasing a new touchscreen pay kiosk, called SelfServ 90. With a small and nimble form, it’s meant to upgrade the self-service checkout experience. Wincor Nixdorf also premiered its new moPOS system, as did Panasonic.
Panasonic also premiered PowerShelf, an electronic shelving unit equipped with beacons that can be enabled for both advertising and inventory management.
Lots of partnerships this week: Samsung is integrating with tagging/payment system PowaTag. Gimbal, which is also premiering its new Series 21 Beacon, is partnering with audio recognition giant Shazam and mobile offers solution Koupon Media.
Spearheading the intersection between retail and tech, Intel has a big booth this year. It is showcasing beacon solutions, mobile payments, a Beef-o-Brady tabletop tablet payment implementation for Beef-o-Bready, its SteadyServ iKeg system for intelligent bar inventory, and its Memory Mirror apparel virtualization tech (on display at Neiman Marcus).
IBM released a suite of sales apps, called MobileFirst. Developed by Cognitive Scale, the apps will be Sales Assist (for customer acquisition + management), and Pick & Pack (smart inventory via beacon integration).
Stay tuned for more product news—this is only the beginning of retail innovation in 2015.
Read original story on: Ars Technica
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has approved a new version of the Bluetooth standard. Besides improved speed and support for IPv6 and 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth 4.2 also adds new security features preventing unauthorized users from hacking your Bluetooth signal and using it to track your phone and devices as you move about, a clear attempt to address privacy concerns.
Read more on: Estimote Team Blog
Estimote just announced a new array of software that includes developer SDKs, APIs, and other tools to help developers and retailers alike deploy and manage beacons at scale. IPG Media Lab signed on as one of the marquee launch partners (and so far, is the only media company on board) because we are very excited about the innovative approach that Estimote takes with its open APIs, which allow beacon data to be integrated into existing enterprise software systems. We’re particularly excited to see this amazing new platform start gaining grounds in the hyperlocal market.
Read original story on: TechCrunch
In-store analytics firm Brickstream has acquired the New York-based startup Nomi. As Brickstream has already installed more than 100,000 in-store devices for camera-based analytics, this deal helps Nomi sidestep the hurdle of actually getting its technology into stores. And with this acquisition, the hyperlocal analytics industry appears poised for its first wave of consolidation.
Read original story on: Street Fight
After testing in-store beacon technology in ten locations across the U.S. and Canada with positive feedbacks, Lord & Taylor now plans to expand the pilot program to its stores nationwide by the end of November. The company installed four to six beacons in each test store, and used a centralized system to send discounts and editorial content to the signed-on mobile devices of its customers. The company reported an 18% engagement rate for in-store messages from its pilot program, while the average engagement click-through rate for a mobile banner ad is less than 0.4%
