Walmart is Leveraging Store Traffic for Ad Sales and Personalization – Why Don’t You?

Walmart stores have 300 million unique visitors a month – more than the big online players. They’ve decided to leverage those visits and the data they provide on spend and in-store/online behavior to create a compelling and profitable ad channel for their own business, as well as for CPG partners and other companies interested in reaching these consumers.    Walmart is expected to announce more details this week in NYC.

Source: Forrester Research
Note: Figures are estimates based on publicly reported data. Walmart only provides weekly traffic figures.

All store-based retailers should be following Walmart’s lead but not necessarily in monetizing data.   Leveraging in-store behavioral data and historical first party spend data can be a gold mine for helping retailers develop more productive offers.  Those that have implemented these tactics are reporting that personalization is delivering a staggering (30%+) of improvements in conversion as well as improvements in visit frequency and overall spend.

In order to make it happen, they must understand the capability to detect both a visitor’s PRESENCE and IDENTITY.  The ingredients to get started are often already in place:  in-store wi-fi and a basic splash page to capture customer email or phone number.  No full-fledged loyalty program or app is required (although it helps).

With wi-fi, retailers can gather data about where and how visitors spend time in their stores. This data on its own can help business leaders make smarter merchandising and customer engagement decisions and enable simple communication with the visitor to turn them into a known shopper and ultimately a buyer and promoter.

We’ve been working with clients to establish basic personalization capabilities with excellent results.  Leveraging wi-fi clients can gather data on:

• Who is passing by but not entering the store
• Who is visiting but leaving without a purchase
• Shoppers’ path in store and engagement with store associates, in-store experiences and ad campaigns

This enables clients to deliver the best in class marketing or service actions both in-store or post-visit through digital channels.   All resulting in increased sales and engagement.

Let us help you get started. Contact us!

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