Delivering the most relevant promotional offers to consumers is the constant challenge marketers face in retaining and acquiring new business.

The connected consumer expects consistent experiences no matter by what channel and promotional offers need to reflect this. Retailers that bridge the gap between online and offline marketing and can deliver smart multichannel promotional campaigns will enjoy long-term business advantages over their competition.

For example, according to Promo Marketing up to 60% of UK’s consumers’ decisions are influenced by online promotions . This is mainly because online promotions are highly personalised, and if communicated effectively can later help identify brand characteristics and product benefits in both online and offline environments.

At the same time, it is a proven fact that offline promotions can increase sales through the offering of hands-on product experiences and samples. These are key at the in-store point of purchase.

With the connected consumer interacting with brands through a number of channels a vast amount of data is being generated, thus enabling the retailer to send them more relevant and personalised offers. This is proving an effective way of getting a customer’s attention, but it also increases the amount of competitors pushing offers in a similar way, making it harder for potential customers to differentiate between them.

How can retailers make their promotions relevant?

In order to design accurate promotional campaigns retailers have been using different techniques such as:

• Customer retention and repeat purchase via loyalty cards
• Targeted promotions through personal data
• Local online and offline advertising
• Social media promotions
• Promotions at the point of purchase
• Cross-selling and up-selling

Nevertheless, to streamline the use of these tools businesses depend on customer insight and marketing research. The biggest challenge is to define the context of the data they have in order to understand the real intent of their potential customers.

This generally forces marketing departments to design many kinds of different promotions for the different client profiles, which may not be as effective as customised promotions for individual stores and customer types.

How can location analytics help promotion design?

With so many brands rolling out promotional campaigns, promotional marketing has become as much about the timing as the content of the message. Knowing when and how to reach customers can make the difference when it comes to achieving the desired results.

Location analytics can help achieve this; by visualising multiple data sets on a map businesses can view their data in context and better understand their customers’ behaviour. An in-depth analysis can reveal their typical whereabouts, psychographic profiles, address, local demographic profiles and much more. This kind of insight gives marketers the fuel to run highly targeted and highly cost efficient campaigns.

With the data provided by location analytics, retailers have the ability to combine online/offline data and move towards the holy grail of marketing: the single customer view. Well-crafted offers can make the difference when it comes to increasing the sales volume and the customer pot.