As the customer data platform for brands leading the customer experience revolution, mParticle helps marketers unify data and simplify partner integrations. Together, Foursquare and mParticle enable data-driven product leaders, marketers, and analysts to understand foot traffic trends, enrich their customer database, and build more personalized experiences.
“We’re thrilled to have Foursquare as a Launch Partner for our Data Partners Program. mParticle customers now have seamless access to location insights from the market leader in location enrichment. Enhancing first-party customer profiles with real-world visitation data has never been easier.”
Patrick Crosby, Head of Partner Solutions at mParticle
With this partnership, mParticle customers can enrich their customer data with Foursquare’s high-quality, real-world visitation directly within the mParticle platform. Getting the most out of first-party customer data is key to unlocking ways to reach new audiences, deepen engagement and drive return on investment. Location data provides incredibly rich context to the myriad of data points collected today. The ability to understand the places where your customers go or have gone, how frequently, and whether they frequent competitive chains helps connect the dots between various pieces of data, and complete a unified view of your audience. This partnership gives data-driven brands more direct and flexible access to Foursquare’s location data, augmenting what you currently know about existing customers.
How it works
Foursquare first identifies a brand’s customers by receiving first-party, opt-in user IDs from them via mParticle’s API. Foursquare then pulls location data about this set to help organizations get a better understanding of consumer behaviors and preferences. Foursquare appends relevant location-based attributes to IDs, based on category visitation, chain visitation, demographics, and lifestyle, among others. Data enrichment may be delivered as frequently as daily into mParticle via API. The mParticle platform layers Foursquare data onto the persistent user profiles already existing within a brand’s audiences in mParticle, which can then be used to create and forward dynamic first-party audiences to 300+ of the leading analytics and activation platforms.
Location data is a valuable complement to the first-party data sets brands already have in mParticle; combined with web and/or mobile app browsing data, location data makes it easy to connect intent to outcomes. Location also provides competitive data based on real-world behaviors that aren’t otherwise available online. While brands may have purchase data, location data is more comprehensive, helping brands identify broader patterns and re-target users who visit but don’t necessarily purchase. In these ways, Foursquare’s data becomes a critical ingredient in both analytics and activation leveraging mParticle customer profiles.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the different use cases for location data within mParticle.
Reach The Right Customers
Savvy marketers know that segmentation is a critical component of any effective strategy. With location data, you can:
- Uncover previously unknown characteristics of your customer base using the places they go in the physical world
- Observe changes in customer type or store visitation trends as a result of marketing or product decisions
- Model churn risk, customer lifetime value, behavioral or demographic makeup, and more
- Answer very specific questions about your customers for marketing, product strategy, and partnerships
- Segment customers into more granular and specific groupings before engaging them
For example, a quick service restaurant like Chick-fil-A could identify customers who are at risk of churning by seeing when users start visiting Church’s Chicken, or starts visiting Chick-fil-A less frequently. Dell might shift its overall marketing and content strategy after discovering many more of their customers are college students than previously thought. A gas brand like Shell could identify a group of customers who frequently visit Shell stations, but are not yet part of their loyalty program, and are ripe for acquisition tactics. An auto brand like Tesla could track and understand if their top customer-type started shifting from “Gym Goer” “Business Travelers” to “Millennial” “Luxury Shoppers,” adjusting their marketing and product strategy to continue to engage their core demographic. Arby’s could determine if menu innovation drove increased foot traffic to its locations (and stole foot traffic from competitors’ locations).
Deliver The Right Message
Personalization is another key use case for data enrichment. Bringing location data in-house gives brands the power to further personalize their engagement with customers, across all channels (email marketing, social media advertising, website content, physical mailers, telemarketing, OOH, etc.), beyond what they know first-party from website clicks and product purchases.
Enriching customer data with location data enhances marketers’ ability to personalize content. Messaging tailored to customers’ patterns, preferences and passion points will drive relevancy and utlimately better business results. For example, a consumer packaged goods company like P&G could send a promotional email for “20% off Crest toothpaste at Target” to customers who frequently visit Target and “20% off Crest toothpaste at Costco” to customers who frequently visit Costco. An online delivery platform like Postmates could surface the right recommendations to new users before their algorithms have enough first-party data from clicks and purchases, based on whether their offline behaviors skew healthy or more indulgent. A direct-to-consumer brand like Allbirds could promote in-store pick-up to online shoppers who they know frequent zip codes that contain an Allbirds store, delivering more enticing and attractive offers. An ecommerce company like Wayfair could re-target users who they’ve seen visiting Home Depot and Lowe’s, or have been identified as a “New Home Owner.”
Maximize Impact
Publishers can leverage data enrichment to optimize advertising inventory. Publishers today are challenged to offer advertising inventory as valuable as Facebook, Google, Amazon due to those walled gardens’ powerful data and resulting targeting capabilities. Enriching existing first-party audience data with location data gives publishers and their advertising sales teams more data on users, allowing them to tell more compelling and relevant stories to advertisers about their user base, and make direct media buys more valuable by layering on their own targeting segments.
A publisher making advertising inventory more targeted helps them sell more ads and each ad for more money. Audio platforms like Spotify or Pandora could increase the value of inventory, enabling targeting of rock enthusiasts who are also gym goers. Digital publishers like Business Insider could approach Arby’s to win sponsorship or direct ad deals by demonstrating audience affinity, presenting data that shows a significant portion of their web users are frequent fast food visitors. Similarly, a publisher like The Atlantic or Bleacher Report could win advertising budgets away from Facebook by explaining that their inventory is just “as data-fueled and targetable.”
The Takeaway?
mParticle’s Data Partner Program gives data-driven brands more direct and flexible access to Foursquare’s location data, augmenting what you know about your customers and enabling you to deliver more personalized, engaging experiences. Learn more here.
For more information on Foursquare’s partnership with mParticle, contact us at hi@foursquare.com today. You can also check out our refresher on the differences between customer data platforms (CDPs), DMPs and CRM systems.
