The ability to collect customers’ information without annoying them is a valuable skill for any marketer to possess. Yet sometimes the marketing industry overcomplicates matters, looking for the most inventive new ways of capturing data and, in doing so, overlooking more straightforward methods that are already proven to be effective.
For example, while more and more businesses now offer guest Wi-Fi to their customers at their stores and business locations, many of them are failing to capitalise on the ability to create highly targeted marketing lists from the services they offer.
It’s relatively easy, without significant additional investment, to turn your Wi-Fi service into a tool for collecting customer information – managing social media profiles, recording customers’ opt-in permissions, turning the data into targeted lists and integrating it with email marketing platforms.
Crucially, this data focuses on real customers who have agreed to receive your promotional communications. The information gathered could be as simple as a customer’s email address, or – depending on the Wi-Fi login method you offer to customers – it could be name and demographic data such as birthday/date, gender, telephone number and home address for mailings.
A great many customers will readily provide the requested information, because they appreciate free Internet and already like the business providing it to them. The result is a list of the company’s most loyal and often most frequent customers, all of whom have agreed to receive your messages.
Below I’ve outlined some best practice tips for building better databases through guest Wi-Fi:
Be flexible: Customers will want to login in different ways, so while choosing a guest Wi-Fi platform, make sure it supports multiple login methods and that it can collect the information you desire
Ensure data compliance: Select the login options that meet your business needs, whilst assuring compliance with local privacy regulations
Be transparent: Tell customers up front how often they should expect to hear from you and what types of messages they will receive
Give them more: Provide clear benefits for customers who share their information, above and beyond just free Internet access. Coupons, loyalty programmes, and other benefits keep customers returning to your business
Learn from your data: Use the information you collect, such the number of visits to your business and customer demographic data, to generate personalised messages to your customers. Finding what customers want and like, then giving them more of it, are keys to success
Elena Briola is vice-president of marketing of technology provider Cloud4Wi
