8 Captive WiFi Portal Opportunities Most Venues Fail to Capitalise On
Are you missing these opportunities to keep your customers coming back to your café, bar or restaurant by leveraging the power of a tech enabled Captive WiFi Portal?
“If you had one shot, one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip?”
This lyric from Eminem’s hit Lose Yourself has been quoted by many people, from politicians to teachers, to motivate their audience to capture the moment and it’s absolutely pertinent when it comes to your venue.
How many customers visit your café, bar or restaurant once and never return?
Regardless of the type of venue, finding a way to capture your customers details so you can encourage them to come back, is essential to make your venue a success. You have one shot to do this on their first visit; check out the 9 Opportunities below to maximise your Captive WiFi Portal and keep your customers coming back time and again (#6 will really surprise you!)
Whether its accessing e-mails on their laptop or posting updates to Instagram, your customers expect WiFi in your venue that’s fast and easy to access. This provides opportunities for you to capture their attention, create a great customer experience and personalise future marketing efforts.
Missed Opportunity #1 – Allowing password free access to WiFi in your venue
Many venues are still hiding access to their WiFi behind a password. This results in slower access, failed access or the need for your staff to spend time helping a customer who’s struggling to get online. These are all barriers that create frustration and may stop that customer coming back in the future.
Missed Opportunity #2 – Not asking for customer contact details in return for free WiFi access
At the other end of the spectrum from password restricted WiFi access, is completely open WiFi access that requires no information whatsoever to login. Whilst we don’t recommend requiring passwords to access your venue WiFi, if you’re not requesting a customer name, contact number and/or e-mail in return for free access to your WiFi, you’re missing the opportunity to contact and encourage that customer to come back to your venue in the future.
Missed Opportunity #3 – Ensuring your venue WiFi is fast enough for the volume of customers you have
Let’s take the example of a café that gets a lot of business people using the venue to work from; they open their laptop and access the WiFi, but the quality is so weak they can’t download their e-mails.
Despite the great coffee and service, that customer is left frustrated with a bad experience. If you are going to provide free WiFi, make sure it’s fast and suitable for the volume of traffic you expect.
Missed Opportunity #4 – Capturing customer details but failing to use this to bring customers back through proactive and agile marketing
If you are capturing customer information through your Captive WiFi Portal Software, you are already one step ahead of many of your competitors. But, if you are not using that information for proactive and agile marketing campaigns, you’re not making the most of your data and those customers may end up going to a different venue. To automate and maximise this opportunity, make sure your Captive WiFi Portal Software has an integrated CRM and marketing automation tools built in, allowing you to create and automate personalised marketing campaigns quickly.
Missed Opportunity #5 – Automation of customer data capture and subsequent personalised marketing
Many venues still rely on their staff to capture customer information, but when it gets busy, this is often overlooked. Even if they do capture it, someone still has to enter this info into your marketing automation platform, which can delay any useful marketing campaigns. You can automate the capture of your customer data using Captive WiFi Portal Software and create personalised campaigns that reach customers immediately based on their profile, frequency of visit or demographic.
Missed Opportunity #6 – Using professional Captive WiFi Portal Software to protect your customer data
As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
It can be tempting to utilise Captive WiFi Portal Software, that is completely free of charge for your venue to use, to provide your customers with the access they crave. But, when the software is free, have you considered how the vendor makes their money?
As with any APP that is free, the customer data is usually the most valuable commodity.
Unfortunately, when Captive WiFi Portal Software is free, the customer data you capture may be shared with a third party, or worse, it may be sold to your competitors. Make sure you work with a reputable vendor to avoid this.
Missed Opportunity #7 – Integrating automated marketing tools into your Captive WiFi Portal Software
Many venues rely on two separate systems, one to capture customer data and another to automate marketing campaigns to their target customers. This slows down your marketing, creates more work with the transfer of data from one system to the other and reduces your chances of bringing customers back more frequently.
To avoid this, make sure your Captive WiFi Portal Software includes an integrated CRM with marketing automation tools, so you can remain agile with your marketing campaigns.
Missed Opportunity #8 – Cross selling your other venues to existing customers
If you have several venues in your portfolio, either of the same brand or different concepts, when you capture customer data through your Captive WiFi Portal, you should be using this to promote the other venues in your portfolio. One way to do this is by providing a time-based voucher, encouraging that customer to visit your other venue within two weeks to avail a 20% discount for example. This is a great way to offer your customer variety and maximise the traffic you have through all of your venues.
If you are missing some or all of these opportunities to capture and keep your customers coming back, speak to one of our advisors and we’ll be happy to advise you.
