Using WiFi marketing to capitalise on your guest WiFi

Are you familiar with WiFi marketing? This concept refers to all the techniques enabling the use of a guest WiFi network as a communication or data acquisition channel. As the digitalisation of point of sale networks continues, WiFi marketing is positioned as a strategic marketing tool that should not be missed. Indeed, 21% of consumers access free WiFi in-store (according to a study by Ruckus).

Customizable captive portal and redirection

The captive portal is the page through which network users pass to authenticate themselves. It is an obligatory passage and therefore the ideal place to promote your brand.

WiFi solutions offer more or less advanced customisation features, ranging from simple background adaptation to the introduction of customised messages.

During authentication, the choice of redirection page is possible. The user can thus be redirected to web pages related to your brand: website, social networks, contests organised by your company...

Social WiFi

Social WiFi aims to exploit social login (authentication on social networks) to simplify the access path to a WiFi network but above all, to collect data on users (in compliance with GDPR). Indeed, when a user connects to the captive portal via a social account (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), he agrees to share the public data of his account.

Social WiFi thus provides valid email addresses (as opposed to fake addresses used on forms) and demographic data (gender, age, interests, etc.) on point-of-sale visitors.

Marketing departments and/or point-of-sale managers are able to use this information to better understand their business and direct their marketing strategies.

Push marketing

WiFi marketing is an ideal medium for push marketing operations. Indeed, current solutions allow direct communication with users. This offers a wide range of actions to implement: calls to action, improvement of customer knowledge, loyalty...

A few examples:

• Redirection to a dedicated web page to encourage engagement
• Promotional announcements ( coupons) to encourage purchases
• Satisfaction survey to find out the level of customer satisfaction
• Invitation to join your loyalty programme
• Newsletter sign-up to facilitate acquisition
• Prize draws to stimulate the customer experience

Customer journey analysis

The in-store WiFi network is an analytical tool in its own right. It collects a lot of data on customer journeys and the number of visitors at your points of sale. The analysis of the customer journey via WiFi is also a common practice within the framework of shopping centre digitalisation.

For the in-store customer journey, WiFi provides indoor tracking, thanks to visitors' mobile device connections and geolocation information in the form of a heat map. The tracking of devices and geolocation can thus be the basis for in-store push marketing scenarios. WiFi marketing solutions are thus able to provide you with statistics such as average time spent at the point of sale, recurrence of visits, in-store traffic vs. out-of-store traffic, transformation rate (number of buyers over number of visitors), etc.

At a time when customer knowledge is a major challenge for points of sale, WiFi marketing is taking on its full meaning. The adoption of WiFi in point of sale networks is already strong, either as a network for business needs or as a guest WiFi. A WiFi marketing solution thus makes it possible to exploit the existing network to transform it into a real business tool in shops.