Open, Integrated, and Automated: Selecting a Quality Proximity Marketing Platform

Welcome to the second installment of our series on Bluetooth proximity marketing, where we’ll give some tips on what to look for when evaluating Bluetooth proximity marketing solutions. With so many vendors out there, here are some ways to tell whether you’re looking at a best-in-class platform:

1. Look for a standard, open source platform.

Standards reduce risk for companies looking to use proximity marketing. By reducing or eliminating vendor lock-in, standards make your content and campaigns portable. What’s more, standards mean your campaigns can easily be extended across multiple networks of Bluetooth access points, expanding your geographic reach easily and economically.

Standards don’t mean that your brand will be hidden or overshadowed by the platform itself. Many standards-based proximity marketing solutions put your brand front and center. The customer only sees and interacts with you and your brand.

A standards-based proximity marketing solution lets you focus on the pieces of the campaign you really care about: creating quality content and integrating it into compelling applications for the consumer.

2. Look for solutions that integrate with other delivery platforms.

As we stated in the last article, Bluetooth proximity marketing offers unique advantages not available through any other location-based marketing method, not the least of which is its ability to function anywhere to locate an access point. Because it does not rely on external GPS or cellular signals—it requires no additional connectivity besides the direct short-range Bluetooth link—Bluetooth proximity marketing works indoors, within dense urban areas, and even in underground locations like subway stations and parking garages.

That said, your customers aren’t going to be in your store or place of business 24 hours a day. At some point after you’ve made contact with them via Bluetooth proximity marketing, they’re going to walk out of range of your Bluetooth access points.

 

Ideally, you would like the customer to be able to interact with you at his or her convenience. Integrated proximity marketing solutions do just that, offering the best of both worlds. You can make the initial customer contact and acquisition using highly targeted and location-specific Bluetooth proximity marketing, while the customer can follow up at any time afterward using a standard 3G data connection. A phone-based application downloaded during the initial contact provides this connectivity, letting your customers reach out to you anytime, anywhere.

3. Look for solutions that automate as much as possible.

Proximity marketing solutions have become much “smarter” just within the past several years. Where a large amount of grunt work was required of you, the client, by past-generation systems, the best proximity solutions today no longer require you to become an expert at the many details of Bluetooth technology, mobile content optimization, or managing networks of access points. Today’s top solutions feature automation of many tasks including:

· Adapting your content to a wide variety of mobile phone models and platforms

· Creating custom applications

· Deploying your campaign to one or more networks of access points

· Tracking your campaign in real time and adjusting for optimum results

· Integrating statistics and customer data with your CRM system

These tools free your time and resources for more important things, such as creating content and defining your campaign.

With these tips in hand, you’ll be well-equipped to evaluate the many Bluetooth proximity marketing offerings available today.

Stay tuned as we take a more in-depth look at some specific proximity marketing solutions in future issues. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 9:52 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.