Thirty percent of the world population are already using location-based services, and 80% of them want to get location-based alerts from businesses like yours. In today's video, I'm covering seven things that you'll absolutely kick yourself for not knowing. We've a lot to cover today, so let's get into it. So I'd like to start off by describing geofencing. A geofence can be looked upon as a virtual perimeter that you can draw around any location on a map, and then target customers that enter that location. In last week's video, we talked about beacons and how you can add this hardware to your location and target customers as they arrive, as they leave, or as they dwell. So we look at beacons as really being the micro-locations, and geofences as being macro. They're used for very different use cases. WHAT IS A GEOFENCE? Beacons are great for proximities and knowing at a very granular level that someone is near a certain object or product, and geofences are generally for larger areas where you want to know if someone is walking by your store, by a competitor's, or coming into a particular location. You would go onto a Google Map or some kind of other mapping product, you would identify the area that you want to geofence, and then the idea is you're creating these circular regions, or in some cases, creating shapes or polygons or in the buildings or locations you want to target. Then the phone or your app is monitoring for that geofence, and as I go about my business, day to day, it's tracking that location in the background. You know immediately when someone breaches a fence, when they dwell there, or as they are about to leave. Geofences can be used to target customers in physical locations, allowing you to trigger the right message, the right campaign, at the right time and place. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING Some of the benefits include increasing your sales and loyalty, and this can be done by bringing in your CRM data. So when you know customers are near, that haven't been in your store, haven't been in your location, or haven't transacted in a while, this might be a great time to do a win-back campaign and say, "Hey, we've missed you, we want to show you the love, come on in for a free coffee." Remind them what their loyalty balance might be. Or tell about new lines that have come in to the store, new products that might interest them, based on that past purchase data that you've brought in. USE CASES In terms of use cases, and you can do incentives, you can remind them of rewards, you can also survey customers when they leave. So when you get an exit event for your geofence, it's an excellent time to say, "Hey, first name, thank you for coming in to ou

1. 7 THINGS ABOUT
GEOFENCING YOU’LL
KICK YOURSELF FOR NOT
KNOWING
ACADEMYby Pulsate™
PATRICK LEDDY

2. Pulsate™
THE NUMBERS
30% of the world population is already
using location-based services.
80% of them want to get location-
based alerts from businesses like yours.

3. WHAT IS A GEOFENCE?
1
Pulsate™

4. Pulsate™
1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?
A Geofence is a virtual perimeter that you
can draw around any location on a map,
and then target customers who enter
that location.
It is used for larger areas where you want
to know if someone is walking by your
store, by competitor’s, or coming into a
particular location.
My Store
Competitor

5. Pulsate™
1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?
By using Google maps or other mapping
tool, you can identify the area that you
want to geofence.My Store
Competitor

6. Pulsate™
1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?
Then the app monitors for that geofence,
and as people go about their business, it’s
tracking that location in the background.
You know immediately when someone
breaches a fence, when they dwell there,
or as they are about to leave.

7. Pulsate™
1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?
Geofences can be used to target
customers in physical locations, allowing
you to trigger the right messages, the
right campaign, at the right time and
place.

8. Pulsate™
1. WHAT IS GEOFENCE?
As mentioned last week…
A Beacon is a piece of hardware you can
add to your location and target
customers as they arrive, as they leave, or
as they dwell.
They are great for proximities and
knowing at a very granular level that
someone is near a certain object or
product.
Beacon
Beacon
Beacon
Beacon
Beacon
Beacon

9. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING
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10. Pulsate™
2. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING
CRM$
Some of the benefits include
increasing your sales and loyalty.
This can be achieved by mixing
CRM data with location events to
trigger the right message and
content.

11. Pulsate™
2. BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING
My Store
Customers
When customers are nearby that haven’t
been in your stores, haven’t been in your
location, or haven’t transacted in a while,
it might be a good time to win them
back.
Geofence
Hey, we’ve
missed you.
Come in for a
free coffee!
Yes, coffee!

12. USE CASES
3
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13. Pulsate™
3. USE CASES
Give them incentives
Remind them of rewards
Survey customers as they leave

14. Pulsate™
3. USE CASES
My Store
Competitor
Store
Geofence
Tracking competitors is
something that is
interesting as well. You
can’t really bug out your
competitor’s store with
beacons but you sure can
add a virtual perimeter - a
geofence.

15. Pulsate™
3. USE CASES
My Store
Competitor
Store
Geofence
You do need to put this in
your privacy policy, that
you’re geofencing not only
your own locations, but
possibly other locations
that don’t relate to your
business. You don’t have to
list them specifically as
competitors but mention
something.

16. HOW IT WORKS
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17. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
+ +
GPS Cellular Data WiFi

18. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
Historically, it’s more about the cellular data. You can
even go to your operator, ask them to geofence an area
and then they will actually send a text message out to
customers when they’ve breached that location.
Of course, they haven’t opted in for that. So that’s being
phased out and being replaced by applications that can
actually do the geofencing, where you opt in for location
services you want to get some of kind of “push
notifications” and you are aware that there is value
exchange going on.

19. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
We’ve moved from cellular to doing the “in” at the
application level geofencing. You can use high-accuracy
GPS to connect to satellite and get high-accuracy latitude
and longitude of where customers are.
The problem is, using GPS radio, the very high-power
consumption so you’re going to wear down the users’
battery. Another problem is you can’t rely on GPS in the
background. Your customers are not going to walk by
your business with the app open. They’re not going to be
that helpful.

20. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
We moved towards geofencing being passive, working in
the background, always on, and always being low-power
consumption and not using GPS.
X

21. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
How do the Operating Systems handle Geofencing?
Both iOS and Android, on the iOS side we have a
thing called “region monitoring”, which is part of Core
Location. The operating systems default API’s don't
handle geofencing very well. It’s known to be buggy
and inaccurate.

22. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
Can you afford to do active Geofencing and use GPS?
What is the opportunity cost if customers realize
you’re not doing a very good job of your geofencing
and you’re wearing down their battery?
Your app is probably going to be deleted off their
devices, ruining the opportunity for you, completely,
as a business.
1%

23. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
My Store
Customers
No Geofence
If you can’t engage with them in passive
mode when the application is in the
background, what are the business
opportunities that you’re missing out?
Of all those customers that are walking by
your business, you don’t even know they’re
there and you’re not reaching out.
It is an opportunity that you’re missing to
reach out, connect, and engage, and bring
them back into your business, create that
loyalty, and deepen the relationship.

24. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
Moving on to how we can actually put this to
work and how we’ve done it in Pulsate.

25. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
Geofences are virtual perimeters, you can
send notifications based on loyalty,
transactions, and segment data.
You can also send campaign messages
when customers walk into a
competitor’s fence. Or simply track their
presence.
We’ve got better deals than
this company. Come by
and see for yourself!
My Store Competitor Store

26. Pulsate™
4. HOW IT WORKS
So remember, geofences are virtual, you can
create them in any location. They’re about
macro location and you don’t need to deploy
any hardware.
They’re obviously very cost-effective because
you can just fire up a map, create geofences all
around the world, and instantly your app can
begin to monitor for those location.

27. OUR REQUIREMENTS
5
Pulsate
™

28. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
Requires no hardware
Works passively in the background
Very, very, very little battery drain
Customers are able to update
our fences remotely
100%

29. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
+
So, we wanted that remote management,
better accuracy, robustness, and combine
all of the sensors on the device that we
could use to geofence.
We ended up taking cellular data and WiFi
data combined with sensor fusion.

30. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
In order for a phone to be a phone, it has to
connect to cellular towers. Otherwise, when
you get a phone call or a text message its
not going to alert you.

31. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
When a WiFi Router or SSID is first sighted, the
Operating System of your device will power up
GPS in the background, and take a high
accuracy location fix on where this WiFi Router
is located.
Essentially every smartphone is crowd
sourcing what wifi signals map to physical
locations.

32. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
Pulsate piggybacks on those WiFi pings. We
have a database of all those WiFi routers and
where they are.

33. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
We combine the cellular tower known
locations to the WiFi known location, which
you can do very accurate geofencing with,
right down to, on average, 100 meters and
even below in some situations.
+ +
+
+
+ +

34. Pulsate™
5. OUR REQUIREMENTS
This means we don’t have to run GPS. It means
we can do it in the background, and we’re not
going to upset the user by draining their
battery.
+ +
+
+
+ +

35. BEST PRACTICES
6
Pulsate™

36. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
Geofence mainly in urban locations. We
recommend targeting customers with a
minimum fence size of 100 meters if using
default API’s provided by the device. If using
Pulsate you can geofence down to 10
meters.

37. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
If you create geofences in a countryside
location, you won’t have the same density of
WiFi routers and cellular towers, so you want
to make those fences a little bigger, maybe
several meters or even kilometres.

38. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
You don’t want your geofences to overlap
unless you have unusual use case that calls
for it. Try to have at least a couple of
hundred meters between geofences.

39. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
You need WiFi turned on on the consumer’s
device for this to work. Cellular towers are not
enough to do accurate geofencing.

40. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
Bring segmentation into it. Do not rely on,
“Hey, I’ve geofenced my store, I’m sending the
same generic template to people that walk
by.” Use purchase data, behaviours and
interests that you have on customers to really
segment out your campaigns.
A
B
C
D

41. Pulsate™
6. BEST PRACTICES
Instead of having one generic geofence
campaign, have 5, 10, 20 campaigns that
address all those different personas that you
have in your customers base, making sure
that you’re reaching out not only at the right
place, but also at the right time, with the
right message as well.
A
B
C
D

42. PRIVACY
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43. Pulsate™
7. PRIVACY
Customers need to download your mobile
app and opt in for location services. If you
want to send push notification, you must
ask them to opt in for this as well.

44. Pulsate™
7. PRIVACY
In your Private Policy, you should mention
that you’re collecting and storing location
data from customers.

45. Pulsate™
7. PRIVACY
Don’t ask for location or push permissions the
first time they open the app. Wait until they
need access to the specific feature that
requires these permissions.
http://bit.ly/1TqG9s9
Watch our video
on how to ask
for permissions
the right way:

46. Pulsate™
7. PRIVACY
If you earn a customers trust and they decide
to opt-in, make sure you only send relevant,
personalised content that provides value.

47. IN SUMMARY
Pulsate™

48. Pulsate™
IN SUMMARY
7 Things About Geofencing That You’ll
Kick Yourself for Not Knowing:
1. What is a Geofence
2. Benefits of Geofencing
3. Use Cases
4. How it Works
5. Our Requirements
6. Best Practices
7. Privacy

49. Pulsate™
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