AirTight Networks Social Wi-Fi and Analytics Deliver Dividends for Local Businesses

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Airtight Networks has cracked the code on how to deliver meaningful customer experiences specific to each individual through the delivery of personalized analytics in real time. Understanding individual customer behaviors can now be driven by actionable data. Businesses are always looking at ways to improve sales and efficiency. AirTight analytics provide answers to common questions like:

• How long does each customer stay and shop?
• How often do they come in?
• How effective are my marketing campaigns?

All of this data can be collected and analyzed with just a few clicks of a mouse. Drew Lentz of Frontera Consulting, a systems integrator in McAllen, Texas, is building a new service business around AirTight's analytics and platform, by packaging social media management and retail intelligence with his traditional integration services around Wi-Fi.

Retail intelligence, social media management and Wi-Fi at an affordable price

One of Lentz's customers is SALT: New American Table, a local farm-to-table restaurant. "For the price of just a social media management service, we get not only that but also AirTight's guest Wi-Fi, retail analytics, social sign-in, and wireless PCI compliance – all from a single provider, with local support from Frontera," said Larry Delgado, Chef and Co-Founder, with his wife Jessica, of SALT.

Big company analytics are now within reach of the little guy. Now any business, even one with a tight marketing budget, can validate the effectiveness of its marketing spend by gauging if it's attracting more customers or more dollars per customer in real time. This is done non-disruptively through automated Wi-Fi collection of anonymous or customer opt-in analytics gathered via a customer's smartphone or wireless device. The easy and automated manner in which this customer data is gathered is what makes it so effective – sample sizes of data are much larger and more representative than a business could secure via manually administered and otherwise disruptive surveys.

Small businesses could have only dreamed of such precise affirmation of their marketing programs before – and all of this is being done for them by Frontera's team, so they do not have hire additional staff to conduct surveys, IT personnel to manage the system or number crunchers to analyze the data. The service packages run from $399 to $699 monthly and include social media updates and metrics, retail intelligence, and local 4-hour service guarantee (included in the $699 per month package).

Actionable Wi-Fi analytics drive business decisions

"We get to validate both our offline and online marketing. For example, by encouraging social sign-in into guest Wi-Fi, we can see effectiveness of our Facebook marketing – without interrupting our guests' dining experience with a face-to-face survey or a paper questionnaire," said Mark Garza of Roosevelt's at 7, a celebrated local restaurant and pub.

The potential of analytics is huge in a service business. Restaurants can customize menus based on what's popular on a particular day, schedule staff properly based on high and low traffic data, conduct A/B testing and understand how promotions and events effect sales.

Garza explains: "We noticed that we had a slowdown in business on weekdays between 6-8 pm. By analyzing data provided by Frontera, we saw that we had a significant drop off in our key demographic, 24 to 35 year-olds, at that time. Assuming these were families or couples with children, we are evaluating a promotion geared towards families. We hope to see an increase in traffic during those hours and get a measurable return on our marketing effectiveness."

On the social side, you can use the data to cater to your customers. For example, Frontera's system and custom middleware application integrate favorite artist information gleaned from Facebook: when a user connects via a social plug-in, the soundtrack of the restaurant automatically adapts to include their favorite artists via a customized internet radio station on Spotify.

"Our Wi-Fi analytics data is telling us that customers are spending longer in the restaurant once we began monitoring personalized services three months ago. We've had a 10 percent increase each month in those customers staying longer than the average 45 minutes. We also saw a 20 percent increase in traffic on 30 to 45 minute stays," says Garza. "This is just the type of data we need to continue to study effectiveness of our marketing programs, promotions, and visitor experience."

New service opens doors for Frontera; from zero to 20 percent of service revenue

"There are two sides to the story with the new services. First, it's the immediate impact on my ability to generate new business. AirTight's analytics capabilities enabled me to open doors previously closed to me," says Lentz.  "The IT discussions around retail Wi-Fi have always been around 'manageability,' 'installation costs,' 'network impact,' and other real or perceived roadblocks to deployment. With social analytics and retail intelligence data, I am now talking to marketing and line of business folks about how this can grow their revenues and validate their online, offline and social media marketing. The benefit of having an opex and a capex model gives us flexibility to work within even the tightest of budgets with customers of all sizes."

Lentz continues: "Second is the recurring revenue model. We launched the social media management and retail intelligence service in January of 2014. In just 3 months, it went from zero to now representing 20 percent of our service business. My goal is to sign up 10 new customers a month in the next 12 months. This will drive social media management service revenues to be twice as high as those for traditional service in just 12 months. I'm looking at 20 percent compound monthly growth rate (CMGR), vs nine per cent CMGR for our traditional services and four percent for our integration business. To top it off, I'll be at 15 percent recurring revenue – this is huge for a mid-size integrator like us."

AirTight's new business model: brand lifecycle management

AirTight delivers brand building and awareness through guest Wi-Fi services and visitor analytics; brand protection through security, WIPS (wireless intrusion prevention) and PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance; and brand engagement through social Wi-Fi, customer promotions and loyalty programs.

"AirTight is not simply about Wi-Fi or being the best WIPS player in the business. We are in the 'brand lifecycle management' business," says Anita Pandey, vice president of marketing and business development at AirTight. "And we are bringing this all to our customers for the price of a traditional Wi-Fi system, so even mom-and-pop businesses can take advantage of it. We are also aggressively building our channels and, as Frontera's example shows, offering 'brand lifecycle management' services that lead to new revenues, fast growth and greater customer lifecycle value for our partners."

About AirTight Networks

AirTight Networks is the global leader in comprehensive cloud Wi-Fi solutions. The company's family of products and cloud services combines a true carrier-class multitenant cloud architecture with breakthroughs in Wi-Fi location, user analytics, social engagement, manageability, ease of deployment, and cost effectiveness, as well as AirTight's longtime top-rated WIPS technology. AirTight's global customer base includes leading enterprises in the government, financial, technology/telecom, manufacturing, health care, retail, and hospitality sectors. For more information, please visit: www.airtightnetworks.com, or follow @AirTight.

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SOURCE AirTight Networks

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