In-store Customer Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide

Customer tracking, or in-store customer tracking, does not mean physically watching your customers while they shop. It doesn’t mean employing a team to follow your customers around while they’re in your store. It means using customer tracking software and other devices to track customer movement within a store environment.

Therefore, if you own a retail store, you can use customer data tracking solutions to help you make better business and marketing decisions.

Growing Significance in the Retail Landscape

Technology has made customer tracking easier for business owners. Tracking customers in stores is easy with LiDar, apps, Bluetooth, matrix cameras, and Wi-Fi. This process continues to play a significant role in the retail landscape. And it will be even more significant in the future as competition between retailers heats up.

Effective retail store customer tracking means you can identify and make the most of peak shopping hours. You can adjust your store’s layout based on the tracking data collected. This will help you personalize each customer’s experience every time they visit your store. It also allows you to maximize your marketing campaigns at the right time, so you can boost revenue and make more money.

Additionally, speed to lead is critical in today’s fast-paced market, and Podium offers an unparalleled advantage by ensuring businesses engage with leads within a couple of minutes—guaranteed. Podium’s AI Employee guarantees your business engages with leads within a couple of minutes; during peak hours, off hours, and every hour in between.

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The Technology Behind In-Store Camera Tracking

The technology behind in-store customer tracking is quite ingenious. You can install several non-intrusive devices and solutions, and they all ‘talk’ to each other.

Overview

There are many single devices and combinations to choose from if you want customer tracking for your store. For instance, you could install an infrared sensor that monitors and records movement. These sensors help collect data on how many people visit your store and how long they stay.

You could also opt for video surveillance, which works hand-in-hand with facial recognition software. This combination allows you to collect demographic and buying data. The data gives insight into shopper behavior and spending patterns.

Moreover, you can implement a Wi-Fi tracking and data solution in your store. This solution allows you to track MAC (media access control) addresses, giving you more information on dwell time, foot traffic, and repeat customers.

How Do All Devices Talk Between Each Other?

Most in-store trackers are cloud-based, which means they use a cloud server as a central hub. Cameras and beacons send information to the cloud, where it is processed and analyzed. If you have a small store, you can use a local server to manage data collection on-site. Mesh networks allow data to jump between devices until it reaches a central point. This is mainly how these networks and devices communicate with each other.

4 Benefits of In-Store Customer Tracking

There are several incredible benefits to in-store customer tracking. These include the following:

1. Enhanced Customer Experiences

By tracking in-store movement and behavior, you can tell which of your products are the most popular. Even better, you can determine which areas of your store get the most foot traffic, and you can enhance the layout to avoid frustration and encourage sales.

2. Improved Store Layouts and Product Placements

When you have an optimized and improved store layout, your customers won’t bump into each other, and each one will have more than enough space and time to look at the available products. With the data you receive from your tracking devices, you can also place your products in the most visible areas, increasing sales.

3. Personalized Marketing and Promotions

You can even use in-store tracking to measure how well your existing promotions fare with your customers. You can apply the data in personalizing your marketing efforts so that your store and products appeal to all customers.

4. Better Inventory Management

Knowing which products sell the best and where customers view them will help you improve your inventory levels. Doing this will increase the chances that you always have a specific product in store and will not disappoint any of your customers.

6 In-Store Customer Tracking Strategies

With all the in-store customer tracking options available, you can easily create a strategy that works best for your store. The following are some of the most popular customer tracking strategies in 2024:

1. Wi-Fi Fingerprinting: Track the Strength of a Signal

You can track the Wi-Fi signal of smart devices in your store. You can do this through your store’s app as part of your loyalty program. The signal strength of your Wi-Fi will show you where customers tend to collect in your store. This will help you create an even better product placement strategy.

2. MEMS: Create a Heat Map of Customer Activity

You can also create a so-called heat map of customer activity. This means using the MEMS chip found in smartphones. Data from these chips show the position and even the angle of a phone. Combining this technology with your store’s app will show you a map of where your customers walk when they are in your store.

3. LED Lighting: Use Frequency Emissions to Determine Customer Location

You can even use something as simple as LED lighting to track your customers in-store. LED emits a frequency that is detectable by smartphones. This shows you where your customer travels when inside the store. This frequency also makes hyper-targeting easy by sending content directly to customers while they shop.

4. Bluetooth 4.0: Use Smartphone Signals to Send Deals to Customers

You can also use Bluetooth 4.0 as part of your strategy to send deals to your customers. All you need to do is install battery-powered sensors in your store. Then, encourage your customers to download an app that emits their location from within 300 feet. This will allow you to send customers discounts on items they’re heading toward or already looking at.

5. Loyalty Programs: Track What Customers Buy

A loyalty program is a must-have for retailers in 2024. You can use a loyalty NFC-enabled card for your customers to tap when they pay for their items. These cards integrate into your point of sale and track how often the same customer visits your store and what type of items they buy.

6. Using Customer Contact Details

You can also track customer contact information with email newsletters and automated notifications. You can use this to create a sense of buying urgency by including current promotions in your customer communications.

Alternative Strategies

Social media analytics, automated email tools, and website metrics are alternative strategies to explore. Email tools track opens and click-throughs, while social media tools allow you to understand your customers’ online buying behavior. Website metrics will show you which part of your website and which products are most popular with online visitors. You can even use a CRM software solution to track email opens and store the data you’ve collected.

Moral Concerns of Customer Tracking

Naturally, in-store customer tracking doesn’t come without concerns. Some of these are ethical or moral concerns about customer data privacy. You must receive explicit permission from all customers before using their personal information. You must also inform all your customers about the strategies you use to collect this information. Customers must know who will get their data and who will use it.

Moreover, you must ensure you protect all customer data using encryption data and firewalls. This will help protect the data in case of a cyber breach. Be transparent with all your data collection efforts. And your customers must have access to modify or delete their information whenever they want to.

Podium Can Help You Track and Reach More Customers

Podium is in the business of helping retailers grow their business. With Podium’s innovative texting and review solution, you can attract more customers, which will help your sales team save more time. And the texting part makes every customer experience a more personalized one.

If you want to outrank your competition when it comes to online and in-store traffic, Podium is the solution for you. Start delivering a great customer experience right now, by getting a Podium demo here.

Speed to lead wins; Podium’s AI Employee boosts lead conversion by 45%. Podium’s conversational AI is outcome-driven – it doesn’t just respond to inbound leads it guides conversations toward a specific goal, such as a sale or booking. Unlike other AI systems that focus on providing correct responses, Podium aims to drive specific customer actions to grow your business.