The worlds of retail and ecommerce can be challenging spaces, but offer opportunities for the brands able to adapt their technologies to the ever-shifting consumer landscape. For each new type of technology, there are solutions with far too much friction in the customer journey. Mobile ads, for example, often come in the form of randomly timed text messages or mobile notifications, and fall short of their mission in persuading consumers to purchase.
Batu Sat, PhD is the Co-Founder & CEO of Mall IQ, a San Francisco Founder Institute portfolio company that has successfully found a way to turn those untargeted ads into insightful campaigns that increase sales revenues for physical retailers. Mall IQ delivers personalized engagement to create a great experience for purchasers too, both online and in the physical world. Founder & CEO Batu Sat explains,
As Mall IQ, we empower retailers and their partners through physical retargeting without the need for additional hardware. We allow apps to understand their customer behaviors offline, and generate campaigns that are likely to convert to sales. We deliver the messages at the right time and location and help measure the effectiveness of the campaign for continuous improvement.
Mall IQ Delivers On Both Retailer Analytics & Consumer Experience
Mall IQ offers an SDK that can easily be integrated with existing apps, and gives banking, loyalty, retailers, and ecommerce brands each insights and analytics from their own customers.
Mall IQ is already making waves. So far, they have several large malls and retailers as satisfied customers, and have increased their conversion rates between 300-700%. The collective apps have 950k daily active users, with 5.7M accumulated store visits. Because of the great traction, the founders were able to close a seed round of $300k, which included support from 500 Startups.
For brands, the data and insights provided are a no-brainer—but consumers benefit as well. CEO Sat says,
Retailers are bombarding customers with untargeted ads. If they continue to do that, customers will stop responding altogether.
With Mall IQ’s solution, brands can instead develop campaigns targeted based on location, buyer persona, or even link back to an ecommerce solution. This comes at a time when the retail world is struggling more than ever, with brands like Sears and Toys R Us filing for bankruptcy. At the same time, it’s important to remember US Department of Commerce data shows 89% of US consumer purchases are still done in physical stores—retail isn’t dead yet. CEO Sat continues,
Retailers with an online presence are taking a page from the eCommerce playbook: they measure their customer’s online behavior and use retargeting in the digital world, which is a well-understood and effective online tool. However when it comes to customers’ in-store behavior, brands are relatively blind. Some retailers measure behavior inside their stores using door counters or more sophisticated in-store hardware, but they are still blind to what their customers do outside of their specific stores.
For retailers, Mall IQ goes well beyond the basics, allowing a brand to know who is walking into their store, and prompting them with the right message at the right time. Is the consumer someone who shops for luxury brands? There is a good chance they will be interested in knowing the latest or higher-end products. What about budget shoppers? These consumers can be presented with a special discount. It’s similar to how some airlines give Apple Macbook users a premium price versus Windows, due to the perceived value of the system they are using. But what truly makes the Mall IQ solution unique is that it doesn’t need GPS or other location-tracking devices, many of which don’t work particularly well indoors, or within small geographic blocks. CEO Sat says,
Typically GPS does not work indoors properly, and it can’t differentiate between stores. That’s where our technology comes in. We can achieve 200x better resolution in close spaces. And, we can achieve this without installing additional hardware, but rather machine learning to calibrate any kind of signals received, and improve the accuracy as people use our services.
With a physical retail solution that provides so much targeted value for brick-and-mortar stores and other shopping destinations, watch Mall IQ’s growth in a shifting retail marketplace.
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.85BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
