Your Guide to Planning a Successful Beacon Pilot

Your Guide to Planning a
Successful Beacon Pilot
Ravi Pratap
CTO & Co-Founder
MobStac
Beaconstac Webinar
November 2015Neha Mallik
Senior Marketer
MobStac

What are beacons?
• Low-cost, low-power transmitters equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE
(also called Bluetooth 4.0 or Bluetooth Smart)
• Helps mobile devices detect proximity and determine micro-location

How beacons work
Beacons don’t transmit content; they transmit a series of numbers
• The transmitted signal allows another device to identify it and determine the
device’s proximity to the beacon

Today’s Webinar
• How to create your beacon pilot roadmap
• Defining metrics to measure
• Examples of successful beacon pilots
• Tools for running a smooth pilot

How to create your beacon pilot roadmap

(a) Goal of your beacon pilot
Define what you aim to measure with your pilot
(b) Mobile app
Your app vs third party app
(c) Budget
Depends on the use cases you plan to implement

(a) Goal of your beacon pilot
• Decide on the use cases that will resonate with your audience
• Discover areas in your store that are optimal for beacon deployment

(b) Your app vs Third party app
• Your app - If you have an app with sufficient number of downloads
• Third party app – If you don’t have an app or lack widespread
distribution, but are willing to invest in beacons

(c) Plan your pilot budget
• Number of beacons deployed
o Depends on complexity of use case
- Ideal set of use cases:
(a) Welcome message
(b) Discount offers/ Promotions
(c) Feedback form
o Size of the store
- Stores of 500 sq. ft - min. 3 beacons
- Stores of 2500 sq. ft - 12 to 15 beacons

(c) Plan your pilot budget
• Developer Time
o Your app - Depends on the scope of the beacon pilot:
- Prototyping an app – 1 week
- Integrating with a 3rd party software (eg: CRM) – 1 week
- Rolling out to end customers – 2 weeks
o Third party app – Depends on whether you plan to integrate with
a 3rd party software (CRM)

• Power Requirements
o Battery powered or USB-powered or Electromagnetic-wave
powered beacons
• Price - $10 to $70
• Interior Design or Aesthetics
• Compliance with
• Compatibility with

• Installation – questions to ask
o Are aesthetics important? Can beacons be left noticeable?
o Where will beacons be placed in the desired area of operation?
Are they evenly spread out?
o How to maximize the radius of operation? Account for
interference – avoid placing beacons near metallic surfaces
o Configure beacons by setting ‘advertising interval’ and ‘signal
strength’ according to required RSSI in the zone of operation

• Integrate your beacon campaigns with your marketing and
customer-engagement strategies
• Use a beacon platform that has good content management
capabilities
o Choose a CMS that allows you to deliver various kinds of
notifications – text messages, multimedia files etc.

• Using a beacon platform with good CMS capabilities
o eg: Beaconstac Platform offers ‘Cards’ (such as
photo card, media card and web page) that show
up as notifications

• Remind customers to switch bluetooth ON
o Beaconstac platform has a feature called ‘Places’
that allows retailers to define a geofence with ease

• Decide on a ‘limited audience’ who could experience how your
app works and how it interacts with beacons
• Try varying the ‘messaging intervals’ to understand what is the
optimum time interval for sending consequent messages
• Ask your volunteers for feedback - what they liked about their
beacon experience and what they didn’t

• Are the use cases you tried scalable?
• Did your volunteers see any ‘value-add’ to their experience?
• What kind of messages resonated well with your audience?
• What are the hotspots at your store/venue?

• Footfall metrics
o Number of visits, unique visitors, outside potential (people passing by the
store) etc.
• Customer path metrics
o Popular paths, zone dwell times, zone interdependence etc.
Defining metrics to measure

• Loyalty metrics
o Repeat visitors, visit frequency etc.
• Beaconstac dashboard helps you assess all such metrics around a beacon
campaign visually
o eg: Rules performance chart, Visitor analytics page etc.
Defining metrics to measure

# 1 JFK Airport broadcasted wait-times
• Leveraged beacons to track location of
travelers' phones by monitoring Wi-Fi &
Bluetooth signals
• This data was used to measure
wait-times at security checkpoints,
custom areas and the taxi queue
Examples of successful beacon pilots

# 2 Elle magazine brought editorial content to life
• Leveraged beacons and geo-fencing
technology to allow readers to shop
the magazine
• Provided users with exclusive beacon
triggered content and offers at the
participating stores
Examples of successful beacon pilots

• Installing beacons at heights (at the ceiling etc.)
o Use a custom made long stick (15m or more) with a grasp tool
• Making beacons stay put on walls
o Use a scotch adhesive
• Monitoring status and health of each beacon
o Use a platform with a dashboard to monitor battery left, last ping
time etc.
• Analysing impact of a beacon pilot
o Use a platform with analytics to gain deeper understanding of campaign
performance and visitor behavior
Tools for running a smooth beacon pilot

Beaconstac Eddystone Platform
• UNLIMITED user interactions
• Integrated with Google Analytics
• Rules-based rotating URLs
• Custom Domain
• Customer Support

Questions?
ravi@beaconstac.com
@beaconstac
http://www.beaconstac.com

Your Guide to Planning a Successful Beacon Pilot

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