Maximizing Mobile with Beacons, NoSQL and Analytics
Talk to any modern marketer, Omni-channel marketing is their business’ holy grail, and something they are trying to implement at neck-breaking speed. One of the biggest challenges they face is connecting online and offline behaviors and insights to enable more real-time engagement with their consumers. One solution that has helped evolve this concept from dream to reality is the deployment of beacons, geofences and other location-sensing technologies. Marquee retailers, financial services, hospitality and venue operators, and more are thrilled at the opportunities this technology presents. However, to maximize their investment in Omni-channel and create in-the-moment experiences on mobile devices they need to integrate disparate systems and data to create more real-time, personalized offerings. This is where partners like Couchbase help in connecting disparate data-sets in real-time to enable more personalized and targeted engagement. Business intelligence experts, Intricity, helps make sense of the insights and data gleaned from interactions with these consumers across customer touchpoints.
For a moment, imagine you are a shopper going to a large home improvement store, lets call it “Home Project”. Home Project has over 2,200 stores and 700,000 product SKUs. Shopping there can be quite the adventure if you don’t know exactly what product SKU you are looking for or its in-store location. While Home Project has done an amazing job online helping consumers search and review products and plan out projects, the experience falls short when considering a mobile-shopper who is moving through their brick-and-mortar locations.
Here the shopper struggles to navigate their way around the store to ensure they get all the materials they need and the quantities required to complete a job. The eventual outcome is the consumer spends more time than expected in store and likely requires multiple trips to complete the project. Not only does this make the customer’s journey more arduous and difficult than they would like, but it also means Home Project is missing out on opportunities to further optimize this experience and the resulting increase in loyalty and sales that is a result of improved consumer convenience and delight.
Mobile presents a huge opportunity for a retailer like Home Project to bring the convenience of online shopping to their physical locations. Even further, beacons allow you to engage and send messages at the right place in those environments. However, solving this challenge in a mobile app can be daunting challenge, since the app needs to be responsive and quickly provide the relevant information to the in-store customer. Whether its navigating the consumer to the products they need for the project, providing product information and reviews, or showing items they have in their online shopping cart, the challenge is how to present this information in real-time without dealing with latency, connectivity and inventory issues. Further, creating actionable business insights from the resulting data and experiences is a process in itself.
By leveraging Gimbal geofences and beacons along with CouchBase’s Mobile NoSQL database solution together, a company like Home Project could push down all relevant content to be cached in the app when the consumer pulls in the parking lot of Home Project. This could include basket wish list details for the project, deals that are relevant to the consumer, inventory SKU details so that the shopper won’t be frustrated if products aren’t on-hand at this store, etc. Couchbase Mobile’s NoSQL database will enable the app to have a more responsive experience when the consumer interacts with various beacon-enabled places in-store. Additionally, by leveraging the capabilities of Intercity, a business intelligence service provider Home Project can analyze and view the performance of these campaigns .
Interested in learning more about how leading enterprises can leverage location, NoSQL and real-time analytics solutions to supercharge their omni-channel programs? Gimbal, Couchbase and Intricity will be hosting a webinar Thursday, June 9, from 10 – 11 AM PST that will further explore the topic.
For more information and to register, click here.