Johannesburg, 19 Jul 2024
In the retail sector, it is becoming increasingly important for mall owners and the individual outlets within these centres to have a deeper understanding of their customers. This, of course, is difficult, since customers in malls are broadly considered to be unknown entities.
While many retailers have tried to get to know the customer better by leveraging options like loyalty programmes, this alone is not enough in today’s digital world.
If retail businesses wish to maximise their brand, they need a much clearer understanding of their customers, suggests Quentin Daffarn, CEO at UC-Wireless. By leveraging WiFi as a key touchpoint, they can start to drive an increase in revenue by using this technology to gain clearer visibility around critical issues like customer footfall, relevant product mix and key decisions on tenant mix.
“Remember, though, we are not just talking about understanding the customers, but rather about knowing exactly who they are. For example, malls that utilise our Linkyfi technology can gather valuable databases of information, which customers willingly share through incentives under opt-in. This data can then be used for the purpose of know your customer (KYC), as well as to improve marketing and promotion efforts,” he explains.
“Retail space in malls comes at a premium, as the cost of floor space is relatively high. This means that customers, sales and marketing opportunities must be maximised for the mall owners and tenants to leverage the benefits that malls give brands, by positioning opportunities. It is vital to understand the needs of individual customers, including data such as their average income, their spending habits, and which are frequent shoppers and which are not,” which facilitates meeting customer demands and optimising mall revenues.
According to Daffarn, Linkyfi is the ideal solution to help retailers identify such details, and thus better understand the customer. The power of WiFi, he says, is that it can help you to understand things such as the number of people present at a given time, the total number of visitors in a day as well as comparing footfall to sales, understanding the average dwell time of a customer and much more, even without the customers joining the WiFi.
“This is even before we start talking about direct engagement using WiFi, which is where you use the technology to ask crucial questions and thus segment the audience further, ensuring you can address their needs and optimise your store accordingly.
“Essentially, by leveraging analytics derived from the free WiFi service provided by retailers and malls, it becomes possible to customise and personalise offerings according to individuals, including being able to use AI to further analyse the data.”
He explains that when users wish to access a mall's free WiFi, they generally must provide some type of credentials – usually by entering their phone number or e-mail address, logging in via social media accounts or by completing a short questionnaire. With the type of WiFi solution that incorporates next-generation technologies like AI ads, it also becomes possible to provide next-generation services to these individuals, including driving the right products and services to the right customers.
“For example, Linkyfi allows a retailer to undertake strategic mailers and marketing, enabling them to change user behaviour through targeted marketing and AI-driven ads. This ability to drive bespoke and tailored marketing to customers is a direct result of understanding them better. And these types of ads have greater traction because they are targeted and can even be linked to e-mail and text communications, which can incentivise customers to visit the store for a specific deal,” he adds. The ability to validate this contact information is a key benefit of Linkyfi, ensuring that customers can be contacted.
“From a retail perspective, the ways in which a store can look to optimise its revenue includes by decreasing losses, growing profits, increasing the number of sales or boosting customer retention and return – the latter often through incentivisation schemes.”
Whichever of these angles one considers, he adds, technology can improve and optimise this behaviour by, for example, ensuring your outlet has the products that are in demand from customers, which drives higher returns.
“Technology can help you address all the areas of optimisation needed, while improving your understanding of the customer and their behaviour, as well as addressing profitability.
“Ultimately, a combination of WiFi technology like Linkyfi, alongside internet of things (IOT), like the wide multi-application retail-capable WWW solution, business intelligence (BI) derived from Linkyfi, AI ads and WWW IOT, and location analytics tools, as well as an omnichannel marketing capability, should combine to deliver a compounded effect of increased revenue, better customer service and support and increased foot traffic, improved safety and reduced costs,” concludes Daffarn.
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