Before implementing a mobile location/proximity program, like for any other technical project or program, it is critical to establish measurable goals as early as possible up front. Not doing so can put the entire program at risk. How will you (or your management team) know if the program you’ve implemented is successful?  All of the hard work that you and your project team did may not be reflected in the results or campaign performance if objectives are not pre-defined. If you’re unable to define what program success means, it’s time to raise the red flag and take a step back. For those of you who have chosen to move forward with a location-first mobile strategy and are now planning your program’s implementation, you need to ask yourself, what metrics or KPIs can I use to measure success?

The first step in this process is to define your use cases for location/proximity and determine which mobile experiences can help you influence customer behavior to achieve your business objectives. Are you looking to surprise and delight your customers by providing a best-in-class mobile experience at your physical locations to increase brand loyalty? Are you looking to push engaging location-based offers to your customers to get them to come into your store more often and purchase a specific product line? Are you looking to measure foot traffic and customer flow through your physical location to improve operational efficiencies and lower costs? These are just a few examples, but there are many possible use cases and customer experiences one can come up with that are suited to address your particular business objectives and company vision.

As you begin defining measurable goals and KPIs to determine the success of your program, it’s important that these goals and KPIs align with your company’s main business and operational goals. For example, as a retailer you might have an operational goal related to increasing store revenue. During the process defined above, you determined that you want to run a campaign pushing a location-based message to customers notifying them of a new product line they might be interested in. Ask yourself, how would I know if this campaign is successful and valuable to my company? Well, since one of your main company goals is increasing store revenue, you can track this particular product’s sales over time, measuring the change during the period you ran the campaign. You can set a goal of increasing store sales for this product X% while running the campaign vs when you’re not running it. This is an example of a goal that is measurable and can help your company examine the value of the program and its contribution to your business objectives.

Another example could be as a QSR you may have an operational goal to increase average ticket size (revenue per purchase). You’ve determined that you want to establish a mobile ordering program and have your operational team notified when a customer who placed a mobile order is within X distance of the nearest store so they can prepare the customer’s order in time for their arrival. Again, ask yourself, how would I know if this program is successful and valuable to my company? Since one of your main company goals is to increase average ticket size, you can track the average ticket size of the location-based mobile orders vs in-store orders over time, measuring the increase in average ticket size for the mobile orders. You can set a goal of increasing average ticket size X% for mobile orders as compared to in-store orders. Again, this goal is measurable and can help your company examine the value of the program and its contribution to your business objectives.

Making the decision to adopt a location-first mobile strategy shows that you’re a smart decision-maker wanting to maximize your investment in mobile. Avoid making mis-steps, and instead continue down the path of making smart decisions by establishing measurable goals and KPIs early on. Not doing so will put your program at risk and likely set you up for failure. Following this advice will surely set you on the path to making your program an undeniable success!