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Direct marketers have long struggled to achieve the ultimate goal of getting the right message to the right person at the right time—and thereby gaining a sale. Now, the advent of location technology has added another dimension to that time-honored formula: getting a marketing message to the right place.
In a recent post at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog, Paul Barsch details how "geospatial location intelligence" can be used to pinpoint customer location beyond the standard ZIP Code + 4 process that marketers have traditionally employed. (The ZIP + 4 identifies Postal Service ZIP Code areas, plus more specific locations within those areas, such as apartment complexes.)
"Going much further than simple ZIP + 4 formats, geospatial comes to life via the transformation of a customer address into geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude)," Barsch reports. "With geospatial, a whole host of marketing analytics is now available to marketers." He lists a few ways that the new technology can help target more tightly, among them the following:
Calculate distances between store locations. "[M]arketers can determine the midpoint between two stores to meet the needs of an underserved customer segment," Barsch explains. "With geospatial, there's no guessing."
Market by the mile (or less). "Suppose you have a specific store location and you want to market to households 5.1 miles to the north, 2.5 miles to the south, etc; essentially building your own polygon for direct marketing purposes. With geospatial capability, you can do this exercise," he says.
Conduct risk management. "Customer concentration or density analysis can identify specific areas in which you may be taking on too much risk," he writes.
The payoff: Your targeting will move way beyond that of the ZIP + 4 guys. "[G]eospatial capabilities open a whole host of analytical options for marketers that ZIP + 4 just cannot match," Barsch concludes.
The Po!nt: Now you can market on-the-spot! Consider using the latest geospatial technology to better reach—and serve—customers right where they live.
Source: MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog. Read the full post.
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by Oliver Feakins
