Location-based Marketing Case Study
Visualizing information that could not be understood from listing advertisements and membership card information alone → Highlighting the company’s issues and clarifying the next step (VALIC Co., Ltd.)
In this issue, we interviewed Mr. Nakamura and Ms. Yamada of VALIC Co., Ltd. as an example of successful implementation of location-based solutions.
VALIC Co., Ltd. is a company that operates the karaoke chain “Cote d’Azur,” which operates stores mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Mr. Nakamura belongs to the sales promotion department and is in charge of attracting customers using the website, LINE, and mail magazines.
Ms. Yamada is in charge of supporting Mr. Nakamura’s sales promotion work, planning campaigns for “Kids Membership”, and developing applications.
The two of them have the following problems
-We don’t know the contribution of listing ads to store visits.
-Even if a large number of people visit the store, only one person can be identified by the membership card.
In order to improve this situation, they introduced Cinarra’s Real People and Vital Sight. In order to improve the current situation, we implemented Cinarra’s Real People and Vital Sight to understand the status of customer visits and find a more advanced marketing problem.
Worries before implementation:.
We were concerned that we would not be able to see the results of our listings ads, and that we would only be able to get partial information by using GPS…
First of all, could you tell us about the issues that Mr. Nakamura and Ms. Yamada were facing in their work?
“We have a mail magazine and a LINE service, so we have a lot of contacts with customers who come to our store after reading them. However, one of the issues we faced was that we had no contact with customers who had not used the store or had not registered for the LINE or mail magazines.
I’ve been running listing ads for nearly 10 years, but I was very anxious and dissatisfied with the fact that I didn’t even know if customers were really visiting the store via listing ads.
For location-based advertising, I’ve actually introduced a GPS-based solution. However, I was dissatisfied with the fact that GPS could only capture limited information, such as the fact that store visit measurement was a little vague and that only the information of users who downloaded affiliated apps could be obtained. (Mr. Nakamura)
Even if a large number of customers come to the store, only one person’s information can be obtained …
In this industry, even if more than one person visits a store, only one person’s membership card is used. For example, if five people are having a drink and they all come to Côte d’Azur afterwards, we only have the customer data for the one person who pays at the store. We didn’t know what kind of customer the other four were.” (Ms. Yamada)
How did you decide to implement the solution?
Why did you decide to implement Cinarra’s solution when you both have such challenges?
The main reason is that we wanted to attract more customers. We know from our own experience that many people go to karaoke just for the fun of it. They look for karaoke places that are close to their current location. For this reason, I was very attracted to Cinarra’s distribution service that uses location information to attract people who are close to the store.
Also, the ability to analyze information on users who don’t check in at the reception desk or don’t have a membership card was very appealing, so we decided to use Cinarra and work with them. (Ms. Yamada)
Changes after introduction
Thank you, what kind of results did you get as a result of the introduction? Please tell me specifically.
Outcome 1: I can now see what I couldn’t see in the store base.
The VITALSIGHT report was very interesting. I think it’s a great achievement to be able to visualize information that was previously unclear, such as “what kind of website content people are visiting the store after viewing the website” and “measurement of users who clicked on the listing ad and visited Côte d’Azur without making a web CV (store reservation). We can see valuable data, such as the fact that people who viewed the website visited the store on the same day. (Mr. Nakamura)
Outcome 2: We discovered a new issue: weak branding.
About 20 to 30 percent of our customers visit our store after seeing our website. I was really impressed by the high percentage of customers who visit our store, but I also felt that our branding was weak because people who don’t know about Côte d’Azur don’t know about us.
I had a rough idea of what the problem was, but when I saw the numbers, I realized that this was the reality, which was a great achievement. (Ms. Yamada)
Outcome 3) We can now visualize data such as increase or decrease in customers other than whether they visited the store or not.
We can measure whether a customer has visited the store or not by other methods, but with Cinarra, we can get extra information about their behavior. For example, if there is Wi-Fi, we can get information on whether a customer is visiting another company or not, and as mentioned earlier, this is the first solution that allows us to see the percentage of customers who came to our store after viewing our website or listing ads, so that is very attractive. (Mr. Nakamura)
What is your reputation among other people in your company?
When we put out flyers and coupons, most of our customers bring the discount coupons with the higher discount rate. Therefore, the members of the sales department tend to want to increase the discount rate of the discount coupon.
Although the collection rate of flyers and coupons has increased as a result, there is currently a discussion within the company about whether discounts alone are not enough to improve business performance, and whether we should cool down a bit. With Cinarra, we can see whether the number of existing customers is increasing or not, and whether the number of new customers is increasing or not, so that’s the most attractive thing right now.” (Mr. Nakamura)
What do you expect from Cinarra’s solutions in the future?
We’re happy with the data we’ve been able to generate, but we’d like to see it become a weapon that can raise overall sales. At the moment, we have about five or six stores, and we’re about to start test operations.” (Mr. Nakamura)
There is a tendency for people to think that people in rural areas don’t search the Internet. For example, we have placed advertisements on other companies’ websites, but local stores receive fewer calls and reservations. That’s what I’m aware of, so I’m very interested to see if Cinarra’s solution will work in rural areas as well. (Ms. Yamada)
It’s not just a matter of using location information to run advertisements and then being done with it; you can do all sorts of analysis, so the things you want to do will continue to expand.
Thank you, and finally, do you have a message for those who are considering Cinarra’s solution?
“I am very grateful to be able to analyze everything from pre-delivery preparations to store visits in a single package.I think it’s because of Cinarra rather than location information, but you can also compare the differences between customers who are coming and those who aren’t.
If we only look at the customers who are coming, we will always wonder what the difference is between them and other customers in the society, or what the difference is between them and the customers who don’t come, but if we want to do this, Cinarra can do it. （Mr. Nakamura.)
At first, I thought it would end with, “Oh, that’s great, we can advertise using location information, and we have customers”, but a lot more came out. “So what kind of people are these people?” “Where do they live?” and so on. You can even analyze it further. I think that is the most attractive point.
“I think that the appeal of this location information is that it can be expanded further by visualizing a lot of information rather than the small things that are captured at the beginning, so I definitely recommend it.” (Ms. Yamada)
