WiFi Data Segmentation – You Might Need it More Than You Think

October 5, 2017
Marketing
hospitality

Capturing data on WiFi is one thing, and segmented that data for email marketing is quite another. A recent study by Mailchimp showed that open rates on segmented lists were 14% more likely to be opened and 101% more likely to be clicked when compared to non-segmented email lists. By narrowing your focus and sending content to targeted groups within your list your email campaign will be more relevant and as such will deliver better results. Sending generic content to a very diverse group of people will not be relevant to a large portion of your email marketing list and unfortunately will result in higher bounce rates, lower open rates and more unsubscribes. WiFi data segmentation can help you maximise your email marketing campaigns effectiveness.

What is segmentation and how is relevant to WiFi

Data is ordinarily segmented by a range of variable starting with demographics, and much of your ability to segment will depend on the availability of that data, and in this case we are talking about data capture by WiFi. Most basic hotspots capture only email, however social WiFi hotspots can capture much more info on your customers. When social registration is active you can get much more demographic information on guests, as listed below:

First Name
Last Name
Email
Gender
Age Range

With this basic info, you can tailor specific content for different genders or age groups. For example, a hotel with this level of info can send tailored messages to females for special offers in the spa, or people over 60 who may be interested in mid-week breaks. Sending such tailored content to the entire email list would just not be relevant to most of them. This is standard segmentation methodology and it all depends on the data captured during WiFi registration. Your WiFi services provider should be able to enter additional fields during sign up for even more targeted info and WiFi data segmentation

When standard segmentation is not enough

For large venues, specifically hotels using standard segmentation offered by WiFi data capture is not enough. Hotels, specifically full service hotels have such a diverse range of customers. These guests all have different reasons for using the hotel services. A typical hotel could have many different guest types, including:

Midweek business overnight guests
Weekend leisure overnight
Conference and event guests
Restaurant customers
Bar customers
Meeting rooms/business centre
Lobby meet ups
Spa Treatments
Gym and leisure users
No visits one year

It would be nigh on impossible to send a targeted email with hotel services or offers to this group of users, that they all will find relevant. This is why you need to go deeper to get the best results, specifically when you are using WiFi to capture customer email data (LINK) in larger venues like hotels.

Hotels with Standalone restaurants

Many hotels have standalone or separately branded restaurants attached. Even though these restaurants are separately identifiable and have their own independent entrances they more often than not are associated with the hotel brand. Hotel restaurants can find it difficult to break away from the hotel brand and struggle to get the brand independence that is needed to maximize social promotion and recognition. This can be particularly acute when it comes to TripAdvisor, where hotel restaurants that want to improve their TripAdvisor ranking can find it difficult to gain traction vis a vis their independent competitors, largely due to the hotel brand association. WiFi data segmention will give the hotel the additional level of detail that it needs to identify and target hotel restaurant customers directly and independently.

[bctt tweet=”Hotel restaurants can find it difficult to gain brand independence” username=”myplaceconnect”]

When segmenting WiFi email data is necessary

The requirement WiFi data segmentation will ultimately depend on the size of the area offering WiFi. A small cafe with a WiFi Hotspot, will not really have customer types and may not need to segment the data captured by their WiFi hotspot. You could equally apply this to a restaurant or bar, however there may be a case to segment users by service times, i.e. lunch time customers vs evening customers. A good integration with Mailchimp will allow you to bring this level of segmentation across to your email marketing platform

Technical implementation

Implementing WiFi data segmentation is not difficult from a technical implementation perspective. Your WiFi services provider should be able to source a suitable WiFi captive portal solution that will allow you to segment any data captured on WiFi, like this UniFi captive portal solution for Ubiquiti hardware. WiFi software that can capture the data based on access point location rather than a gateway solution will be much better at returning accurate results although gateways can be effective with the right configuration.