Mobile has become a significant bridge between the online and in-store shopping experiences, but retailers still haven’t fully tapped into the technology’s location-based potential — particularly when it comes to delivering marketing campaigns that drive store traffic. However, by leveraging precise mobile targeting, Goodwill has delivered relevant advertising to thousands of in-market shoppers.
Using the location-based targeting capabilities from Teemo, Goodwill generated:
- An 11% lift in mobile-driven store traffic;
- A wider reach to 1.4 million new mobile devices; and
- A noticeable decrease in costs per visit.
By partnering with Teemo and the Ad Council, Goodwill sought to offer a location-based advertising solution to target shoppers and raise awareness around its “Bring Good Home” campaign. The campaign was designed to inform shoppers about how revenues from sales of donated goods create employment placement and job training as well as community services such as financial education, credentials and skills training.
Advertisement
The Goodwill team also wanted to find new ways to drive consumers into its stores that generated measurable outcomes, in order to justify the marketing dollars it was spending. Adam Stiska, Director of Marketing and Digital at Goodwill, highlighted Teemo’s granular analytics capabilities as a chief reason for choosing the platform, particularly since Goodwill has 3,300 locations across the U.S. and Canada — and many more potential consumers it could drive into the stores.
“We really wanted to see what specific stores, what specific regions were seeing the most value being driven by any of the work we were doing with Teemo,” said Stiska in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We were able to get a list of the top 10, we could look at it on a map and we could see the number of those visits, and get more information on who is being driven to those locations. That was tremendous for us, because before that we were using a lot of things like web site searches and landing page visits. That’s okay because that’s the intention. But here, we could see the amount of people, in aggregate, that were driven through the campaign into the stores.”
Geolocation Data From Other Retailers, Restaurants Helps Shape Relevant Ads
Usage of Teemo’s shopper data allowed Goodwill to measure brands with a strong affinity index, which allowed Goodwill and the Ad Council to match messages with likely shoppers. For example, Teemo could help tap geolocation data of shoppers from various retail stores, grocery stores and restaurants near a Goodwill store location, to see where else Goodwill customers were going and to send ads to the most relevant of these users to optimize traffic.
“Alignment on messaging was tricky at first, but getting buy-in from our members to make them aware of the work we were doing to get foot traffic in the door was something that everyone could get behind real quickly,” Stiska said. “Once they’re there, you have more of a captive audience and you’re able to help educate them, on everything from where the dollar goes that’s spent in-store to the importance of shopping thrift-hand as a way to be sustainable.”
Given that the location-based data has helped improve the Goodwill shopping experience, the retailer also is curious about how the platform can unlock new opportunities for donated goods. For example, “people may get a ping or message that encourages them to take the stuff they have and go donate it as well,” Stiska said.
‘Bring Good Home’ Campaign Highlights Need For Localized Support
The “Bring Good Home” PSAs, created pro bono by global advertising and marketing agency Digitas, showcase the variety of unique merchandise available at Goodwill stores, and celebrate Goodwill shoppers for supporting job skills training and development programs in their local areas through their purchases.
More than 87 cents of every dollar spent at Goodwill stores nationwide goes to job training and support services for careers in demand in their local area, including IT, hospitality, retail, manufacturing and health care, according to data from the nonprofit retailer.
“There’s 158 local Goodwill territories across the U.S. and Canada, and we want to do things that make sense across that network of Goodwills to support what they’re doing locally,” Stiska said. “If they’re running a local campaign, we want to have marketing and consumer engagement efforts that obviously lift that up. Any time we can drive people into their stores using the core Goodwill message about helping people in your community and changing lives, that’s something we’re always interested in.”
