Unacast, which operates a network of beacon and proximity data, recently released its Q4 Proxbook report that reveals a staggering 52% growth in the number of beacons deployed in the past quarter. We have seen a number of large-scale beacon deployments that would corroborate such a figure.

One of the top retail marketing strategies for 2016 are how you can add convenience in shopper’s buying journey. According to a Forrester study, 73% of shoppers expect retailers to have click-and-collect capabilities. Retailers like Woolworths are already using beacons to improve the click-and-collect services at their stores. For example, when a click-and-collect customer comes within the radius of the store, a notification is sent to Woolworths’ picking systems to prompt the staff to start completing the order placed by the customer. Consequently, a push notification via the app alerts the customer when his/her order is ready.

Campaign Objective:
Let’s see how you can use beacons to run a campaign similar to the one run by Woolworths. The objective of this campaign is to notify the customer to turn on bluetooth on his/her phone as soon as he/she enters a stipulated radius of the XYZ Supermarket store and then notify the staff of the customer’s presence so that the order is prepared on time. Finally, the customer must get notified when the order is ready for pick-up.

Step 1: Set up geofencing with ‘Places’

In order to make sure that the customers have enabled bluetooth to receive beacon notifications, we will use a feature called geofencing. It defines a geographical boundary that will trigger a message to a user’s phone if crossed. It uses location services on a user’s phone and therefore will work even if bluetooth is turned off. To achieve this, we can use a feature of the Beaconstac Platform called ‘Places’.

Choose ‘Places’ from the Beaconstac console navigation. After selecting it, click on ‘Add a new place’ and then add an easily identifiable name, an address, and the latitude and longitude values of your desired location.

You can adjust the size of geofenced area using the bar at the bottom of the screen called ‘Geofence Radius’. For this context, we have chosen a radius of 300m.

Now, every time a customer who has location services turned on, walks into that geofenced area, he/she will receive a custom message on his/her phone. This custom message would welcome them to the store and remind them to turn on bluetooth to receive app notifications such as pick-up details, exclusive offers, updates, and other features as they shop.

Step 2: Add Beacons to the dashboard

After you have created a geofenced area, you would need to install two beacons: one at the entrance of the XYZ Supermarket and the other one at the pick-up counter.

Once you have the beacons in place, name them and add their major & minor numbers in the dashboard. For instance, here we have named the beacon placed at the entrance as ‘Beacon Entry’ and the beacon that has been placed at the pick-up counter as ‘Beacon Collect’.

Step 3: Create Cards

Next, we’ll create one card for each beacon: the first card would be for the beacon placed at the entrance and the second one would be for the beacon placed at the pick-up counter.

For ‘Beacon Entry’, we will create a notification that the staff members will see once the customer enters the store. Cards are customised creatives that show up on a user’s mobile device when in proximity of beacons. Beaconstac offers several types of cards such as Summary, Photo, and Media.

I’ll choose a Summary Card for this campaign. I will name the ‘Beacon Entry’ card as ‘The Customer is here!’. And then go on to add text to the ‘Body’ section. For instance, I have added the following text for the ‘Beacon Entry’ card – “Prepare the order for pick-up.”



For ‘Beacon Collect’, we will create a notification that the customer will see when he/she approaches the pick-up counter and the order is ready for pick-up. I will name this ‘Beacon Collect’ card as ‘Hurray!’. The text for this card would be “Your order is ready. Please collect it from the pick-up counter.”



Step 4: Add Rules

After this, all we have to do is create a rule for the beacon placed at the entrance such that it triggers the message for the staff when a customer, who has placed an order, is in its proximity for 10 seconds or more.

We will create another rule for the beacon placed at the pick-up counter such that it triggers a message for the customer when he/she is in its proximity for 10 seconds or more.

Step 5: Create Custom Attributes

Next, we need to add a custom attribute to Beacon Entry. This attribute will determine which users would qualify to trigger a notification for the staff members. Custom attributes can be used to filter actions based on the criteria.

The app in the customer’s phone will send data about his identity to the server. The server will then locate the customer ID and check whether that customer ID has placed an order online or not. Once it is confirmed that an order has been placed, the condition will hold true and the staff will then receive the message with the order details and the Customer ID in their device through the app.

For the beacon placed at the pick-up counter, we will add an attribute that will check if the order is ready. If the information retrieved by the app from the server states that the order is ready, the attribute will trigger the notification to be received by the customer.



Step 6: Set Actions

After this, we’ll add the action to be triggered when the rule attached to the Beacon Entry is true. Here, the action is to trigger the ‘The Customer is here!’ card we created.



Here is the action to be triggered when the rule attached to the Beacon Collect is true.



And we are all set! Now the staff of the XYZ Supermarket will receive a notification upon the customer’s arrival to prepare the order.

Once the customer reaches the pick-up counter, he/she will receive a notification to collect the order once it is ready.

Try out this beacon pilot project and let me know your thoughts about this campaign. If you have any questions with regards to this campaign or if there is a specific campaign you would like to read about, I’ll be more than happy to share how you can get it done using Beaconstac.

If you are planning a beacon pilot, take a look at Beaconstac, that includes everything you need to get started. Using Beaconstac you can set up your own campaign, without a developer’s help!