During COVID-19 we’ve dedicated more resource to service enhancements and new features for the SPARK® Platform.

Extending beyond just WiFi, our SPARK® Platform has many other features including integration capabilities for market leading campaign management tools.

We have been working closely with customers to understand how they use the WiFi data collected from the system as part of their marketing strategy. What we have learnt is that for those serious about outbound marketing, businesses are already using well established market-leading software to deliver their messaging, however there is a lack of synergy between collected data and promoted content. This sparked a need for a seamless integration facility and so WiFi SPARK now integrates with both MailChimp and Mandrill.

If you are still considering the value in using WiFi to promote your brand, read our blog for more background.

MailChimp

For those of you that are perhaps not familiar with MailChimp, it is an email marketing platform that allows marketing teams to manage mailing lists, branded email newsletters and automated campaigns through a highly intuitive graphical user interface. Perfectly suited for any size of business.

WiFi SPARK’s integration with MailChimp now means that data that is collected from the WiFi-user when they register for WiFi can now be sent directly to the campaign/audience list in Mailchimp. This data can include demographic information to allow users to receive information that is relevant to them through the automated campaign tools within MailChimp. 

Data is only used for marketing purposes if the user provides consent. WiFi SPARK also works with MailChimp’s optional double opt feature, whereby an email will be sent out asking the user to confirm that they would like to sign-up. 

Once the user is added to the mailing list, they will benefit from news and offers from the venue that they registered for the WiFi with.

Mandrill

Now here is the really clever part... As well as the above, we have also integrated into Mandrill. This is a transactional email plugin within MailChimp that sends emails upon request from the WiFi SPARK Portal API. This is used for the following 2 use cases:

1. When a user leaves the venue, a ‘Thank you for visiting’ email is triggered from Mandrill. This asks the user to participate in a survey.
2. When a user returns to the venue, a ‘Welcome back’ email will be triggered with information that is relevant for that day.

Measures are in place to ensure that the triggers above do not send to the same user more than once per day. In fact, the survey email is only sent out a maximum of once per month. The user can also opt out at any time.

Benefits

Using these integrations, you will:

• Gather more data from users than you are currently
• Ensure content is tailored to the audience
• Increase your brand exposure and engagement
• Achieve better success rate for your campaigns

Of course WiFi marketing does have its challenges, but you can learn how to avoid them in this blog. As long as you have a solid WiFi foundation to match your promotional efforts, you can’t fail.

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