May 14, 2014
At Home Shopping, English/Spanish, Geo Fencing
Online “At Home Shopping” at your store?
English/Spanish Translation button on your website?
Geo-Fencing Promotions outside and inside your store?
Many of you are too young to remember this TV show but long ago there was a TV Show that ran from 1963-1965 called “Burke’s Law.” Amos Burke (Gene Barry) , was a millionaire captain of the Los Angeles police Homicide division and was chauffeured around to solve crimes in his Roll Royce Silver Cloud II.
The show title, “Burke’s Law” reflected Burke’s habit of proclaiming to his police underlings in a professional manner “Never ask a question unless you already know the answer….that’s Burke’s Law.”
I have three questions to ask and I think I know the answers already…… but unlike Amos Burke, I’m asking because I want to know your answer. It’s important to us.
One week from today (on Wednesday, May 21st) you’ll receive a special edition of the Media Solutions Corporation’s Idea of the Week Posting- a very simple 3 question survey.
Next Wednesday you’ll receive an invitation to complete a very simple survey dealing with three technologies that MSC has been studying and is likely to develop in 2014 and 2015.
We need your opinions on whether you think these digital media solutions are needed by your store(s) to compete more favorably in 2014, 2015 and beyond. There’s no obligation to use any of these features if we decide to go forward with them but we are interested in your perspectives on these three ideas.
We’ll also ask if there are any other technology solutions you think we should focus on to help you compete with your larger national and regional competitors.
For now, here’s a briefing on what each of these items are about:
At Home Shopping – Do You Want/Need it in 2014 or 2015?
Amazon Fresh has launched in Seattle, San Francisco and Southern California. Consumers in those markets can buy groceries on line and have their orders “home delivered.” They’ve been working on the shipping logistics and plan to move this new business across the nation and the sales impact to independent grocers is concerning.
What has been keeping stores from jumping into At Home Shopping so far?
1. The expense. There’s a one time expense to put all your items into a master database so your customers can order any item from your store online. Most on line shopping providers charge a percentage of the sales processed and/or a transaction fee. On line shopping is not inexpensive and requires a foundation of online sales to work.
2. Selecting orders during the day. If your store has everyone scheduled to work today and you receive 20 orders that need to be picked up in your store in 4 hours – who is going to pick the orders? And, can you pick multiple orders in one “pass” so that you can efficiently and accurately select the orders for pickup or delivery.
3. Synchronization of pricing, out of stocks, substitutions, EBT processing — You know, all the stuff that you deal with day to day in your store need to be handled in your “virtual world” as well.
What are our thoughts?
1. We’d be interested in developing a low cost – actually the LOWEST cost online ordering system if we had enough interest and if we could streamline the system to make a system basic and easy to use.
2. Stores would need to commit to this type of business. Your competition (Amazon and others) take this business seriously and each store has to commit to promoting their Online Ordering system, commit to staffing and commit to deadlines for consumers so shoppers become repeat buyers.
3. It may be that we develop a very basic offering to smaller, lower volume stores and a more advanced “option rich” solution for stores in metro areas with more specific needs.
English/Spanish Translation on your Website– Would you want/need it in 2014/2015?
La mayoría de las tiendas en América podrán ver el número de compradores hispanos crezca en los próximos años. ¿Está usted preparado para los servicios bilingües? Esto incluye tener un botón de traducción en su Web site del almacén.
Translation:
Most stores in America will see the number of Hispanic shoppers grow in the coming years. Are you prepared for bi-lingual services? This would include having a translation button on your store website.
On our survey next week we’ll be asking your opinion on having the option for an “English to Spanish Translation” button on your website. This will allow more shoppers to experience your website.
What are our thoughts?
Sure, there is no “downside” to improving communications with your customers and inviting them to your website. In essence you end up with 2 versions of your website – an English and a Spanish version.
How About Geo-Fencing and iBeacon Technology– Would you want/need it in 2014/2015?
What’s geo-fencing?
 |
| Geo-Fencing around your store using GPS |
It’s a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries.
If you have a smartphone, chances are you have an app that uses “geo-fencing” technology. As an example, you may have a Walgreen’s app on your phone and any time you drive near a Walgreen’s your smart phone may present an audible signal to your phone that might state “Walgreen’s Ice Cream is $2 per half gallon today. Swing on in now to buy some.” If you have the Ibotta app on your phone, you know geo-fencing as you drive around town.
To use this technology you need a 3rd party app on your smartphone.
 |
| iBeacons for inside your store |
iBeacons Technology for retail stores:
Now, if you get the geo-fenced alert from Walgreens and decide to swing in to their parking lot, it may be that as you walk past the Vitamin department in the store you get another alert on your smartphone that states “Walgreen’s Vitamins – half price with this smartphone coupon today only.”
The coupon is delivered to your smartphone using iBeacon technology. It’s similar to GPS “geo fencing” because it’s location based but iBeacon works great inside stores and doesn’t need satellites to locate you. A bluetooth enabled iBeacon (about the size of a quarter) can be placed anywhere in your store and can trigger location specific messages or offers.
If you place 3 or more iBeacons in your store it becomes easier to triangulate where a customer is in relationship to where you want deals presented to their phones. Think of this in terms of an “deal zone” where special offers are sent to their smartphones.
It’s interesting technology but……. you need to have a 3rd party app for this.
What are our thoughts?
Rather than having your customers download multiple apps for these types of technologies, we think there should be one app (your store app) that has these technologies running in the background so they can activate in predestinated zones. It might be measured by 500 yards from your store front door or 4 feet away from your Pet Food Aisle.
One app would be ideal. That is if that one app is your store app, not a third party app.
So, we ask that you think about these three ideas for 2014 and 2015 and next week at this same time and place, click on our easy to complete survey to provide us valuable feedback on these 3 ideas and any other ideas you have relating to digital marketing.
Watch your mail next week for our survey – we need your feedback!
____________________________________________________________________
Double Your Store Email Database Challenge:
This week’s Leaderboard
Update for week 4 of the challenge—
We’ve now have 4 stores who have doubled their initial email database in our “Double Your Database” challenge. All 4 will be getting a free E-Blast during the 4th quarter but we need to make sure they all hang on to their new subscribers by mid September when we end the challenge and award the prizes. The previous week we had 5 stores who had doubled their database of email address but one of the 5 stores lost some subscribers who took them out of the running. Actually they are at 99.98% of the number needed to double their database so they can be back in the running soon.
Stores in the upper midwest seem to be leading the challenge although stores in Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma and Louisiana are within reach to win as well.
Here’s our Leader Board for the fourth week of our “Double Your Database” challenge. Remember, there are 3 categories to compete in: 1 to 250 subscribers group, the 251 to 750 subscribers group and the 751 and over subscribers group.
This challenge can be won by any store.
You’re only competing with yourself so be sure to show up on the leader board next week.
Leader Board of the subscriber increases since our challenge start!
Over 751 subscribers group- top 3 leaders:
Pierce’s Mkplace- Portage, Wisconsin – gained 52 subscribers
Patrick’s Market – Omaha, Nebraska – gained 37 subscribers
Coopers Foods – Chaska, MN – gained 21 subscribers
251 to 750 subscribers group- top 3 leaders:
Gene’s Heartland Foods, Smith Center, Kansas – gained 193 subscribers
Lueders Food Centers, Belle Fourche, S. Dakota – gained 139 subscribers
Gene’s Heartland Foods, Anthony, Kansas – gained 92 subscribers
1 to 250 subscribers group- top 3 leaders:
Thriftway Mkt, Neligh, Nebraska – gained 191 subscribers
Thriftway Market, Tilden, Nebraska – gained 41 subscribers
Thriftway Market, Tilden, Nebraska – gained 41 subscribers
Hillsboro Heartland Foods, Hillsboro, KS – gained 38 subscribers
* We have 5 stores within 2 subscribers of being on the leader board