Making that relevant connection to a customer at the right time is a concept that loyalty marketers everywhere strive for each day. Location and environment are two pivotal pieces of the customer loyalty puzzle and extending the right offer that is contextually relevant is invaluable to marketers.
Two companies−AccuWeather and Swirl Networks, a leading mobile presence marketing platform−have partnered to deliver the most advanced, real-time weather targeting capabilities to indoor mobile location marketing.
Retail marketers using the Swirl platform can now access AccuWeather’s comprehensive data sets, providing the most accurate, actionable weather data available worldwide, to tailor and trigger in-store mobile experiences based on a shopper’s local weather conditions. With this new integration, Swirl becomes the first and only mobile marketing platform to offer to target based on both weather and indoor location.
AccuWeather officials believe that combining outdoor weather conditions and indoor location presents a powerful new contextual layer for loyalty marketers, something that can take right time and place marketing to the next level.
Tom Stork, director, business development, AccuWeather, told Loyalty360 that AccuWeather officials had a good understanding of the Swirl business model.
“One of the things we look at at AccuWeather is helping retail brands with weather data,” Stork said. “Weather can be another element in a shopper’s path to purchase. We wanted to bring a contextual, relevant experience and tie it to weather and retail products being sold. It’s taking a blend of where am I and what’s happening to me? That experience informs the user of weather patterns and provides value with an ad, coupon, or content relevant to that person. This is a reality. It’s something that gives any retailer, in my mind, great power and helps with additional sales.”
Swirl’s mobile presence marketing platform enables retailers to take advantage of a variety of indoor location signals, including Bluetooth beacons, Wi-Fi, and Visible Light Communications (VLC) to deliver highly-relevant mobile content directly to a shopper’s smartphone based on their precise in-store location. In partnership with AccuWeather, retailers and brands can now tailor the in-store mobile messages, content, and services they deliver based on a variety of local weather data, including weather forecast conditions, temperature, wind, precipitation, UV index, and pollen count.
By targeting content based on verified indoor locations, as well as weather conditions near a particular store, marketers can deliver more relevant communications that drive higher levels of performance.
With the first-to-market integration, Swirl platform users have direct access to AccuWeather’s up-to-the-minute database of weather conditions and forecasts for more than two million locations worldwide. Weather targeting is available for campaigns delivered to a variety of mobile audiences, including users of the retailer’s branded mobile app, the AccuWeather mobile app, any third-party mobile app that is configured to work with Google’s beacon services, and Google Nearby notifications−a beacon-triggered notification service enabled on all Android smartphones.
Rob Murphy, vice president of marketing at Swirl Networks, said his company starts with a location within a store angle and brings weather to it make it relevant.
“We give tools to marketers to help them engage with customers and enhance the shopping experience,” Murphy told Loyalty360. “Make sure the content, services, or experience you’re delivering are as relevant as possible.”
The Swirl platform was designed to integrate data such as AccuWeather’s.
“We integrate with CRM platforms and this was another data integration,” Murphy added. “This adds another layer of intelligence and contextual relevance of where the consumer is and what their mindset is based on their knowledge of what’s going on outside.”