Do you have questions about iProximity? Below you will find several frequently asked questions about iProximity, beacon proximity marketing, and other interactive marketing devices. This FAQs aims to help marketing, procurement, and digital services managers, but if you can’t find the answer you want, feel free to contact us.
iProximity FAQs
Our customer engagement marketing platform is created by our traditional marketers, promotional marketers, and marketing programmers’ team. This powerful platform allows us to offer the latest location-based hardware and a full range of innovative customer engagement solutions such as:
- asset location
- proximity marketing
- promotional marketing
- IoT marketing through devices such as Beacons, Q-Tags, QR Codes and barcodes
- smart things
We connect you with your customers and consumers in-store or online. We fully support your team to create solutions to maximise your campaigns. Additionally, we can work with your agency to develop and manage all aspects of your own campaign.
Our advanced iPX platform is specifically designed for complex proximity and promotional marketing requirements. We also operate the Mobile Coupon Factory for all mobile phone interactive and scratch couponing requirements. ScreenSmarts connects a consumer automatically to the screen in front of them, allowing permission-based personalized screen messaging.
The iPX platform remotely manages IoT devices, including iBeacon, Eddystone Beacons, NFC (Near Field Communications) Tags, QR Codes, iPRs™, ScreenSmarts and RFID (radio frequency identification) readers. The cloud-based platform also determines the content or trigger actions that are presented when devices are triggered, usually through proximity or detection.
The iPX platform connects to any system, including CRM, ERP, marketing platforms, sign controllers, building automation, etc. It also presents usage data within an internal data analyst tool or allows API (application programming interfaces) access to the data. It is a complete, self-managed platform for IoT solutions, proximity information and customer engagement services.
Yes, devices that use beacons, including the SCS controller or Monitor are automatically imported into the iPX platform when marketing services are purchased with your SCS controller or Monitor program. The iPX platform then manages the beacon interaction, between the beacon and your customers, staff, or consumers.
In many cases yes. If you have existing beacons or devices, we can usually manage these via the iPX as well. However, any QR codes under management will have to be created by our systems.
iProximity connects people to spaces, people to things, or things to spaces. Any location can be a space; multiple locations can also be joined to make a single space. A space can tell us when a person or device is present, and by knowing where that space is – and the intent of the person or object in that space – we can contextually generate an automated outcome. A thing is usually an asset of some kind like a refrigerator, display rack, freezer, or something that you wish to monitor or track.
Crowdsourcing is a way to monitor the location of an asset simply by asking third parties (usually consumers) to interact with a device on the asset. The device is usually a QTag or QR Code, and consumers interact with the device to obtain information or to activate a promotional offer. Each time the device is activated the actual location of the interaction is recorded by the iPX platform against the asset.
Beacons
A beacon is a small, one-way Bluetooth transmitter, which can be used to trigger apps on smartphones as people pass nearby. They have a signal range of approximately 30m, depending on their surroundings.
When a smartphone app detects a beacon, it can determine its location and context. Marketers can target shoppers with offers or information that relates specifically to where the user is, or what they are doing (location-based marketing). In return, marketers can learn about users’ behavior and habits. Unlike previous GPS-type location-based systems, beacons work reliably indoors, and do not need a geolocation database.
A beacon is just a device that broadcasts its identification continually. A phone which comes in range reads the identification, decides if it has any apps which relate to that beacon, and if it does, wakes the app up and gives it the identification number. The app then does whatever it has been designed to do. This might include displaying messages, making sounds, or telling a database it has seen the beacon. All the intelligence is in the app, which makes it very easy for marketers to change the content delivered and target it to specific customers or locations.
All AoFrio SCS refrigeration controllers and Monitors have a built-in beacon.
Beacons are used to let you deliver content to consumers based on their location. This does not need to be a geographic location, it might be “in the shoe aisle,” “entering my store,” or “close to a fridge selling product X”. The content you deliver is entirely up to you.
Examples include:
- Showing promotional offers or extra information on products the consumer is looking at.
- Personalized reminders that appear when they are near the subject of the reminder.
- “Calling out” digitally to customers as they pass by, encouraging them to stop or enter.
- Linking customer activity to loyalty or discount schemes.
- Inviting customers to complete surveys or engage on social media, as they enter or leave your location.
- Beacons can also be used for other purposes, including “waking up” digital coupons stored in phones’ digital wallets, driving interactions with smart screens, tracking (consenting) consumers’ movements, and crowdsourcing asset location data.
The physical beacon is only one part of the beacon ecosystem. As well as a SCS controller, Monitor, or a simple beacon, you will need:
- A beacon configuration system.
- A brand app (or apps) that you can ask the consumer to install. This might be your own consumer app or provided by a partner.
- Digital marketing content to be delivered by the app. To persuade a consumer to use and value the app, this needs to be helpful, valuable, and ever-changing.
- For larger deployments (beyond a few tens of beacons), you will need a campaign management system. This relates the beacon to a location, decides what content should be given to the consumer based on this location, and collects data about the consumer to help you make better content decisions, and improve your targeting. A content management system can consist of several separate systems (e.g., Beacon Manager, Campaign Manager, Coupon Manager, Content Manager, CRM, Analytics Platform, etc.), or it can be a single integrated system.
AoFrio can support you with an end-to-end beacon marketing system, or work with your digital marketing team. If you opt for the latter, we can integrate beacon location information from our AoFrio SCS cloud-based fleet management system, into your own campaign management system.
AoFrio’s beacons are built directly into our AoFrio SCS refrigeration controllers and Monitors. This has several benefits.
- Standard “button” type beacons are powered by batteries. These only last between six months and two years, after which you need to change the battery or replace the beacon. Because the SCS controller is mains powered, it lasts the life of the cooler, and the beacon never runs out of battery.
- As battery life is not an issue, SCS beacons can advertise at a high repetition rate (which improves customer experience), and can simultaneously act as both iBeacons (Apple’s version of a beacon) and Eddystone (Google’s version of a beacon).
- Button type beacons are small and easily portable. This makes them easy to lose or install in the wrong place, and easy to steal. AoFrio SCS beacons are built into the fridge—they are always where you need them to be, and never go missing.
- To make the best use of a beacon, you need to know where it is. This lets you target your marketing activity to specific brands, stores, or geographies, and build the best picture of your consumers’ behavior. AoFrio’s SCS controller identifies its location as part of the fridge installation process and sends the location to the SCS system database. So that is one less process you need to go through, and one less thing to go wrong.
Our platform also allows to connect QR Codes and QTag (QR Code + NFC), and send campaigns to different audiences. The customer, staff, or consumer just needs to scan or tap, and then get our campaigns. Via these contactless devices, you can generate insights on proximity, optimizing your campaigns and make changes in real-time.
Other contactless devices
No, the information you want to transmit via our devices can be indefinite, or programmatically or manually changed in real-time via the iPX platform.
Anywhere! They are multifunctional, so you can use them in printed point of sales materials, assets (racks, pdq, coolers, furniture) in packages and labels, emails, coupons, and business cards.