Sensoro Reports 16 Million Dollars in Sales Growth from Beacon Deployment

BEIJING, April 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- In the 2015 Chinese New Year, the Beacon based proximity market was boosted when WeChat (No.1 Smart Phone Social APP in China) entered the Beacon Market. Because of that, 1,000+ of stores have deployed Beacons and adopted proximity based digital marketing. Chow Tai Fook (CTF), the No.1 jewelry brand, also worked together with Sensoro (No.1 Beacon provider in China) to deploy Beacons in 237 CTF's stores (~10% of total 2,300+ stores). The deployment has raised more than 16 million US dollars sales[1]. This article will give details on CTF's Beacon deployment and proximity marketing such as the business data, business model, comparison with other promotion tools and the market trend.

Business Data Details

The promotion period was from Feb. 6 to Mar. 13. There are 237 stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou that deployed Beacons.

In this period, there were 32,712 customers participated the activity. And the total "Shake" count was 152,325. The average "Shake" count per customer was about 4.76. Among them, 37.22% customers "Shake" one time; 37.17% customers "Shake" 2~4 times; 15.56% customers "Shake" 5 ~9 times; 9.92% customers Shake 10~99 times; and the other 0.13% "Shake" more than 100 times.

From the data, we can see that ~37% of customers are interested in the activity and "Shake" 2 ~ 4 times; ~26% of customers are motivated by the activity and "Shake" more than 5 times.

There were 34,633 vouchers dispatched; among them, 24,694 were claimed by customers and the claim rate was 71%; the voucher redeemed count was 20,562 and the redemption rate was 59%. This number is far higher than the average redemption rate (<5%) of other promotion tools. The total redeemed vouchers value was almost 100 million RMB (~16 million US$) [1].

Because of the positive business results, CTF has decided to deploy Beacons in more stores later.

Business Model

The iBeacon was introduced by Apple in 2013. After that, many brands in the retail market have leveraged Beacons in proximity digital marketing. The common proximity digital marketing business model includes 3 roles: Brands, Beacon service provider and Beacon aware Smart Phone APP. In general, the brands will deploy Beacons in their stores; the customers will install the brands APP or other Beacon Network's APP; and the notification (voucher) will be triggered to show on the APP when customer enters the store or different area of the store based on geo-fence configuration in Beacon service providers' Cloud service.

In the Chow Tai Fook case, Chow Tai Fook, WeChat and Sensoro are involved. The brief introduction of them is as below.

Chow Tai Fook: No.1 Jewelry Brand in China. It takes No.1 annual sales of the market in China for years. CTF jewelry is mainly engaged in retail, wholesale and manufacturing operations. It has 2,300+ stores.

WeChat: No.1 Smart Phone APP in China. It has 600 million users and dominates the Smart Phone social APP market in China. WeChat APP is available on almost all Smart Phones in China.

Sensoro: No.1 Beacon provider in China. 70+% Beacons deployed in China are Sensoro Beacons. In this case, Sensoro provides the Beacon hardware, configures the Beacons, integrates the Beacons with WeChat and provides detail data analytics for CTF.

In the Beacon based proximity market, the Beacon's initialization deployment cost is not high. The crucial point of brands is to promote customers to install an APP which will detect the Beacon. The promotion cost is high. Without enough APP installations, the Beacon based digital marketing promotion cost might be higher than the output. So how to achieve the highest APP installation rate is key.

In China's Beacon based proximity market, the APP installation issue is solved when WeChat is involved. WeChat is the No.1 social Smart Phone APP in China. Because WeChat has strong market leadership and it has educated customers on the "Shake" feature, most brands have no need to promote customers to install the APP, instead, brands can focus on providing attractive coupons and leading customers to use the proximity feature in WeChat. The Beacon service provider's work is to help brands to deploy Beacon, integrate brands coupons into WeChat's coupon system and provide consultation service based on data.

As in CTF's case, the APP is a social APP instead of the brands or Beacon network's APP. The business model is slightly different.

First, the coupon is not "Pushed" to customer instead it is provided by the customer using the "Shake" feature on their Smart Phone.

Step #1: Launch WeChat and enter "Shake" page;

Step#2: When there is Beacon around the Smart Phone, there will be "Proximity" icon that will appear in bottom left corner;

Step#3: Customer Shakes the Smart Phone and then the Coupon button with CTF's icon will appear in the middle;

Step#4: Customer clicks the button and finally the discount page will appear.

WeChat uses the "Pull" model instead of "Push" model as common proximity usage. This is because WeChat can't leave brands to keep pushing notifications to customers which might hurt customers experiences. There is also argument whether it is good for customer experience [2] (http://walkthechat.com/wechat-ibeacons-why-it-doesnt-work-and-how-to-fix-it). There might be other way to handle this issue. For example, in Facebook's new feature "Place Tips," it allows customers to enable/disable the proximity based notifications manually.

It is hard to say which way is better. But the WeChat's "Shake" model does work. Actually, when one customer is surrounded by a group of others who are shaking their Smart Phones, he/she is also likely to "Shake" their phone as others. This is is something that push notifications are unable to achieve. And as multiple "Shakes" could lead to different coupons, this explains why there are 60+% customers who "Shake" more than one time, which also increases the participation rate.

Second, the Coupon is mapped to each Beacon ID instead based on geo-fencing. Multiple Beacons in one area could provide excellent geo-fencing features, but the deployment and the configuration cost is high. It is difficult for WeChat to adopt the geo-fence feature as it is very complex, at least in current phase. So in WeChat's Coupon mapping system, one Beacon ID could only map to one URL. The Beacon service provider could change the Coupon content by changing the html5 page content of the URL. Currently most stores will will install 2 ~ 5 Beacons based on the store size and all the Beacons will map to same URL. It simplifies the configuration and deployment and leaves room to improve.

Third, the end user information is hidden by WeChat. Because of security constraints and business model requirements, WeChat won't release the end user information to brands and Beacon service providers. Instead, WeChat only provides a unique User ID to brands for each end user. So the brand can only know the same end user has repeatedly used the "Shake" feature on their phone, but it doesn't know the end user name, gender or age. This helps protect end user's privacy; on the other hand it also limits brands and Beacon service providers ability to analyze customer data.

Comparison with Other Promotion Tools

Good customer experience comes from a suitable offer with good timing. The proximity "Shake" does achieve the better timing than other promotion tools.

Compared with traditional paper coupons, the proximity "Shake" does not need to be printed and sent to customers so the cost is much lower; while its redeem rate (59% in this case) is much higher than paper coupon (<5%).

Compared with QR code promotions, the proximity "Shake" wins as it is more interesting and flexible. From the customer "Shake" counts, we can see customers would like to "Shake" multiple times while waiting for different coupons. And the "Shake" could be done anywhere inside the store instead of finding the QR code. With this flexibility, brands have some interesting "Coupons." For example, one restaurant has one kind of "Cut-in-Line" coupon. When a customer is waiting in the queue of the restaurant, if he/she gets the "Cut-in-Line" coupon, he/she could Cut-in-Line. It does motivate the customer's participation and this is not something a QR code promotion could achieve.

Trends

WeChat's Proximity "Shake" feature has boosted China's Beacon based proximity market. More and more brands is adopting or planning to adopt the proximity marketing. There are some trends that appear.

• CRM and loyalty program integration: Good customer experience comes from suitable offers at good timing. The proximity "Shake" does achieve the "good timing" but alone it cannot achieve the "suitable offer." It is because it has no background information regarding the customer. In order to provide a good offer, a customer profile, purchase history and client list is needed. So the integration of the existing CRM and loyalty program is required. Because the WeChat takes control the customer information, there is some difficulty that must be overcome.
• Single Beacon positioning versus multiple Beacon positioning: So far, the majority of deployment is to promote the same type of coupon is one store. There are more and more requirements for different coupons in different areas of the store. For example, in one car exhibition, a company doesn't want to promote same coupon of the brand for whole store but promote car related coupon beside the customer. With this requirement, each car will be installed with Beacon and each Beacon's signal range will be set to less than 3 meteres instead of 30~80 meters. Triangulation will be good for this, but it is a challenge to integrate into the current WeChat system.
• Product deployment: More and more Beacon deployment has moved from Proof Of Concept (POC) phase to deployment phase. In the Enterprise deployment, the marketing department will shift the drive to the IT department.  The IT infrastructure department needs enterprise grade Beacons to minimize the maintenance costs. Because of this, battery life is more and more important. For example, Sensoro has the CR2477 powered Yunzi Beacon and 4xAA batteries powered SmartBeacon-4AA Beacon. Yunzi is smaller and looks better outlook but SmartBeacon-4AA has 4~6 times of Yunzi's battery life. At first, 50% customer prefer Yunzi but with deployment volume increasing, the number has dropped to 20% because of the battery life issue. Beacon's battery level is another crucial part of the Beacon's maintenance cost. The Sensoro Beacon can broadcast battery level and Sensoro provides E2E central Beacon battery level management system as [3], Sensoro has won competitors in some large volume deployments.
• Social APP enters the proximity market: WeChat is No.1 Social APP in China and its proximity feature has boosted China's Beacon market. It is proved that the social APP will push the market to a new era. With Smart Phones + Beacons + Social APPs, offline coupons will be shared with beacons and marketing can now be done offline. It is not just proximity marketing in addition to Social marketing but a revolution of Online-To-Offline business. Facebook is also working on its proximity feature. When it is released, will it also boost Beacon marketing in US and EU? What are other social APPs proximity strategies? And how could it integrate the brands CRM system based on the social APPs strategy?

About us:

Sensoro is a leading global Beacon hardware and service provider. Was founded in July 2013 at the Microsoft Ventures' accelerator. Sensoro is aiming to provide Enterprise Grade Beacon hardware and deployment/maintenance service to build manageable, reliable, maintainable and affordable Beacon Networks. Sensoro's Beacon has been shipped to 45 countries. Sensoro is No.1 Beacon service provider in China and 70+% deployed Beacons are from Sensoro. Sensoro has global teams in Seattle, Beijing and Shanghai.

Global Business:
Vivian
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Twitter:@01vivian

SOURCE Beijing Sensoro Technology Co.,Ltd.