Geofencing Explained

November 12, 2018

Geofencing is the use of GPS, RFID, or even Bluetooth technology to create a virtual, location-specific boundary. This allows apps to trigger a response when a mobile device enters or leaves the established boundary.

How Geofencing is Useful to Marketing

Geofencing makes it possible to target customers who are near your physical location, and can be a major driver of foot traffic to your office, store, or kiosk.

Because geofences detect when a person enters or leaves a physical region, this can be used to trigger a location-specific push notification, an in-app message, or an SMS text, that alerts the customer to your store, or to whatever deals and promotions you are currently running.

Or it can simply be used to track how many times someone enters your shop or how much time they spend there.

Accuracy and Positioning of Geofences

Mobile phones typically use native positioning (i.e. WiFi, GPS, cellular towers) but the accuracy is limited to an area of 20 to 50 meters. So if your app uses native positioning for geofencing, make sure you limit those virtual boundaries to 20 to 50 meters.

You can use Bluetooth positioning to gain accuracy that is down to 2 meters. This is useful for when you want to track where in your shop customers go, and how much time they spend in each area of your physical store. Just be aware that Bluetooth positioning uses up more battery than native positioning. You don’t want customers to get angry because you depleted their batteries while shopping!

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