Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE): Revolutionizing the Retail Industry

Today, BLE is being proclaimed as the hot new multi-channel device for retail operations, but will they actually change the way people shop?

Brick and Mortar stores are having a tough time against the online retailers such as Amazon, Shopclues, Snapdeal, Alibaba, etc. Because of this shift, they need to rethink on certain digital strategies to stand tall amongst the competitors. Huge competition is lying ahead and hence they need to put their right feet forward to create the next amazing idea which can give curve in the digital space.

What can BLE bring to table?

Since years, retailers and brand have been experimenting with the push marketing tactics but the technology and support from phone manufacturers was deficient. BLE brings three crucial features to table:

-Smart wireless connection to authenticate and manage interactions

-An enormously power-efficient connection that doesn’t drain phone’s battery

-All time support from phone manufacturers and mobile operating systems

How BLE can prove to be boon?

• Best tool to advertise: If you are entrepreneur of retail business, then making use of BLE hardware can help in attracting your customers. It can cater your advertising messages to the user when device comes within a beacon’s proximity. This personal, tailored message serves as a medium to enhance the customer experience. Beacons act like physical cookie – aids to generate precise customer segments, with exact interest based on the activities in the physical domain.
• Lucrative to adopt: BLE Hardware is reasonably priced and setting up hardware is effortless and consist of Universally Unique Identifier. After installing the transmitter, user only have to process with actions, tags etc. To be very precise, it is cheap and available in ready to use form and hence can be used spontaneously. So, if you are not certain about BLE technology, it will be still worth, lucrative and valuable to try it out once.
• Provides personalization: Personalization in mobile industry has already established prominent importance and with BLE, personalization is even more natural. Each and Everything ranging from coupons to product suggestions via BLE caters personalization and if done right way, it can prove worth to brand name and customer loyalty. Just as shopping applications can push personal shopping endorsements based on previous purchases, similarly BLE can and with even more efficacy. Other than that, if a store is predominantly crowded, customers can still have a personalized, assisted experience. Additionally, if somehow messages seem to be spammy, then users can turn off their Bluetooth thus disabling the notifications.
• Offers data analytics: An online store offers remarkable advantage to assess customer behavior due to their ability to utilize web and mobile analytics. But now, retailers can also assess the customer’s behavior within stores due to BLE. It enables the retail chain to set parameters for analyzing customer behavior and data inventory. For instance, retailers can evaluate full insights regarding the customers day date and time, they are likely to download coupons and make use of recommendations.
• Yields to the customer engagement: BLE act as a mediator between physical retail space and digital retail space. It enables the brands to engage with the wider audience. It captures the users’ attention and achieves higher level of response and in turn better ROI. This technology exhales in providing the best shopping experience to the users and can be regarded as a hand-held personal assistance for shoppers

Let the fear out – BLE is safe:

BLE has become one of the prominent tools for almost every industry especially the retail market. But, the best has the worst side too. It has its limitations and also, threatens privacy which the marketers need to address.

No Spamming: Most of the people think that BLE transfers unwanted messages. But actual fact is that, it just acts as trigger and cannot directly deliver the message. However, user gets the notification only if its app is downloaded.

No Tracking:  It just tracks the users’ proximity and can only identify how far the user from device and not the exact location.

Safe to use and share information: BLE has nothing to do with the user’s information. The information that user shares, is only available in the database, that too only on the apps database and not in the BLE database.

Accessed on any platform: This technology can be accessed from any Bluetooth enabled device that run on any mobile platform like Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc. Even Mac OS X, Windows, Linux.

The Bottom Line…

This technology has already brought paradigm shift in the way retailers communicate with shoppers. In coming years, BLE would potentially provide the life-changing solution which will provide 360 degree edge to the retail industry. TOPS, has extensive smart experience in designing IOT solutions. Whether you have your own app or no app, we can cater you with engagement and analytics strategy.