Drive Visits with Parking:

Up To 30% of Drivers Walk Into Store with

Proximity Parking Advertisement!

Contents

Improving the Customer Retail Experience With the Power of Proximity

About HotSpot

Behind the Beacon: What Makes Proximity Possible

Why Proximity?

The HotSpot Difference

How Can Retailers Help Solve Customers Parking Problems?

The Results

10

About Kontakt.io

15

Kontakt.io is more than just beacons. We are beacons & beyond.

17

Improving the Customer Retail Experience With

the Power of Proximity
The power of proximity is something that a lot of marketers talk about, but getting good numbers
about ROI can be challenging. Thats why Kontakt.io has partnered up with a number of great
companies to help bring their success stories to you and inspire you to try new things with beacons
and proximity technology.
HotSpot is a Canadian mobile parking payment solution and proximity marketing company. You
may ask, what does parking have to do with proximity marketing? The answer may surprise you.
By taking advantage of the fact that people who are parking invariably are looking for
interesting offers near where theyve stopped, HotSpot parking has created a whole new way
for retail establishments to find new customers where they are most likely to come and visit:
when theyve parked nearby. By looking at parking as more than just an end-point for revenue
generation and more as something that can be used to start a conversion process of discovery
and delight, HotSpot parking has ended up creating a startlingly effective channel for driving
foot traffic into stores and businesses.

30% of HotSpot users who park near a HotSpot-enabled location visit it

There are many perks provided by HotSpot that businesses may offer to their customers. Free
parking during shopping in a store, extra validation, protection from getting tickets and more
all help drive visits. No wonder that 30% of drivers decide to go in store that offers HotSpot
parking perks. More than that, though, HotSpot shoppers stay longer than regular customers.

Visits driven by HotSpot last 13% longer than others

By making parking experience easier and hassle-free, HotSpot makes users spend more time
in stores enjoying their shopping. They dont have to worry about running out of parking time,
which directly translates into spending more time thinking about buying and less time thinking
about did I feed the meter? That gives local businesses a huge opportunity to close sales and
gain new customers. Since HotSpot provides them with in-depth data about their visitors, they
may adjust their approach to a given customers needs and make his or her shopping experience
unforgettable.

So how did HotSpot achieve that kind of performance? Lets start by

looking at who they are and why they got started.
3

How Does HotSpot Change a Business-Consumer

Relationship by Merging Parking With Retail?
Handy mobile payments

Discover places nearby

Pay for parking with a smartphone

and top up your time anytime,
anywhere. Dont worry about
getting parking tickets and just
enjoy your shopping!

Since you dont have to watch the

time, why not to wander around
and see nearby? HotSpot will
notify you about close venues
that you can visit on your way.

Enjoy your shopping as

never before
Experience VIP service wherever
you go. Never get a parking ticket
because your meter ran out and
even get free parking just for
staying longer in your favorite
shops!

About HotSpot
HotSpot, founded in 2013, is a Canadian mobile parking payment solution
for downtown and business districts. HotSpot does far more than let users
pay for parking by using their smartphones. HotSpots helps users avoid
parking tickets, gives retailers a way to engage their customers by personal
approach and VIP service, and even turns parking into a loyalty driver.
At the same time a simplified revenue stream liberates cities from
collecting coins.
Powered by Kontakt.io beacons both in parking lots to determine where HotSpot customers
have parked as well as in stores to see when and where a customer enters after he or she parks,
HotSpot enables businesses to drive customer visits, minimize the need for customers to worry
about parking, and serve them a great, worry-free in-store experience. The power of proximity,
connected with an innovative idea resulted in an extraordinary win-win-win solution, that
benefits cities, businesses, and customers at the same time.
With Kontakt.io, we were able to implement a solution for businesses that want to provide an
uninterrupted experience when customers enter their store. Without beacons, theres no way wed
have the accurate proximity data to identify conclusively that customers were engaging in store
activity without killing our HotSpot users phones.
Phillip Curley CEO at HotSpot

Founder

Phillip Curley - CEO and Founder

A graduate of the University of New Brunswick,
Phillip is involved in many initiatives and
projects concerning engineering, technology,
and start-up development. He launched
HotSpot as a student, thanks to The Technology
Management and Entrepreneurship program at
UNB. Today, Philip is focused on developing his
business and connecting more cities to HotSpot
network.

Behind the Beacon: What Makes Proximity Possible

The technology that powers this parking experience revolution is fundamentally pretty simple,
and its been shaking up the marketing world for the last year: a beacon. If youre not familiar
with the technology, its worth your while to read below on what beacons are and how they work
so that you can understand whats powering HotSpots incredible platform.

About beacons
A beacon is a small Bluetooth radio transmitter. Its like a lighthouse: it constantly transmits a
single signal that devices can see. Instead of broadcasting visible light though, it broadcasts
a very short-range radio signal thats made up of a combination of letters and numbers
transmitted on a regular intervallike 1/10th of a second. A Bluetooth-equipped device like a
smartphone can see a beacon once it is in rangejust like sailboats looking for a lighthouse to
know where they are.
Depending on both devices proximity, a smartphone can perform different actions, depending
on information stored in a beacons signal. So it can update an indoor map with your location,
open a lock, or even change the music in your house as you walk from room to room. Beacons
are a key technology in connecting the power of the Internet to our everyday life.

Why Proximity?
Proximity data is valuable because it gives brands, venues and even entire cities a whole new
way of knowing the context that a user is interacting with his or her mobile device. The market
has just emerged but is growing extremely fast. According to BI Intelligence, there will be
about 4.5 million active beacons by the end of 2018, with 3.5 million of these in use by retailers.
Airspace Network reports that UK brands value proximity marketing so much that 79% of them
are considering investing in it in the next 6 months. Nearly four in five respondents are currently
investing in or trying it. For the vast majority of brands, the ability to gather rich data about
their customers is a key driver for such actions.
Apart from data-based opportunities, there are two other reasons for such an immense interest
in beacons: affordability and flexibility. Beacons are relatively low-cost and easy to implement
compared to other Internet of Things solutions. Becoming a part of the IoT is more and more
crucial for brands to provide value to their customers. Ronald L. Bowers, senior vice president for
business development with retail consultant Frank Mayer & Associates, said in an interview for
NRF:
The Internet of Things would not be as relevant or important to retail were it not for the fact that
the consumer requires this type of an experience.
6

It isnt surprising that buyers are hungry for an intelligent Internet of Things. Thanks to
proximity and connected devices, a customer can locate a product immediately, receive service
automatically, and pay instantly.
The market, following the need, is gathering more and more smart objects connected to
the Internet. Gartner estimates that in 2020, 25 billion IoT-connected objects will be in use,
generating more than $300 billion revenue.

The HotSpot Difference

HotSpot changes what a business customer expects by tailoring their experience with whiteglove treatment from before they even get into the business all they way until they drive away.
Creating a tailored customer experience is increasingly expected from businesses, but the fact
that HotSpot engages customers outside the traditional business boundaries elicits customer
delight, increasing satisfaction and time in store. As Carl Sewell notes in Customers for Life,
finding new customers costs 500% - 900% more than selling to current ones, and delighting
current customers is one of the definitive ways to keep customers coming back. Lets explain by
example:
Alice has a meeting at a nearby cafe. Shes just arrived and finally found a free parking
spot after driving around in circles. She digs into her purse, finds some coins to pay
for her parking, and puts them in the meter hoping that one hour will be enough.
She enters a cafe, orders her favourite latte, and the meeting starts. In the middle
of conversation, Alice excuses herself for a moment and rushes out to top up her
parking. She comes back, sweating, and finishes the appointment. Leaving the cafe,
she notices a fantastic display of shoes in a new stores shop window. She takes a
quick glance at her watch 10 minutes left and she decides to go in.
After trying on 5 pairs, Alice realizes that she ran out of parking 5 minutes ago.
She puts her own shoes on in a hurry and runs out, abandoning the shop and her
purchase
Too late she can see a parking ticket before she reaches her car. Frustrated and
angry, leaves the parking lot and realizes that instead of buying shoes, she must pay
for her new ticket.
What happened here? Such a small thing as parking upset Alice and cost the shop a
customer.

So how does HotSpot change that?

HotSpot alleviates every pain point discussed here. For starters, Alice wouldnt have to find loose
change, she could just pay with her mobile phone. There would be no need to run out of her
meeting to top up parking, because with HotSpot, she could either pay for it herself or the cafe
could even pay it for her if she decided to stay longer for a dessert or coffee. She wouldnt need
to worry about parking when she left her meeting, because her phone would warn her before
she ran out of time.
The shop assistant couldve made Alices experience even more convenient and enjoyable by
calling her name, identifying shoes that she had saved as favorites in her phone, and even
topping up her parking time when noticed that Alice had forgotten to do so. This not only keeps
Alice a happy customer, but she will remember how the merchants she shopped at helped make
it possible and she will likely return to shop again.

How Can Retailers Help Solve Customers Parking

Problems?
Anyone whos familiar with real estate knows that location is everything. Location and
affordability of parking is a big factor in the success of a business. According to a survey
conducted by Uttlesford District Councils Scrutiny Committee, estimating the time needed for
parking is a constant problem. 47.1% of respondents usually park for one to two hours but 52.6%
admit theyd rather have a pay on exit ticketing system. There may be several reasons for such
an
approach:
People dont want to be dependent on their parking time.
They dont want parking tickets
They only want to pay for the actual time theyve parked.
Their worries about parking adds stress and inconvenience to their retail experience.
The same report states that 81.3% of respondents use parking lots for shopping trips, and 63%
of them would prefer that they were cashless. Your customers likely feel the same frustrations.

The Customer Experience

As mentioned before, worrying about parking doesnt lead to an engaging and fruitful customer
experience. And this is what makes HotSpot uniqueunderstanding how parking influences
shoppers behaviour and their eventual purchases.
According to The American Customer Satisfaction Index, customer satisfaction is a key indicator
of company financial performance and any changes in customer satisfaction affect the general
8

willingness of customers to buy.

77.0

National Customer Satisfaction Index

Baseline 1994 to Q4 2014

76.0

(0-100 Scale)

75.0
74.0
73.0
72.0

Q4 2014

Q4 2013

Q4 2012

Q4 2011

Q4 2010

Q4 2009

Q4 2008

Q4 2007

Q4 2006

Q4 2005

Q4 2004

Q4 2003

Q4 2002

Q4 2001

Q4 1999

Q4 1998

Q4 1997

Q4 1996

Q4 1995

Baseline

70.0

Q4 2000

71.0

Source: http://www.theacsi.org/national-economic-indicator/us-overall-customer-satisfaction

The Accenture report states that 40% of customers think that retailers should improve their
experience. But how?

Two words: mobile and personalization.

A study from Google conducted with Ipsos Media CT and Sterling Brands shows that 42% of
users conduct research online while in stores. Retailers cant ignore their online channels but
should instead use them actively to assist their shoppers in-store experience, and provide
detailed information about products, and present personalized offers. The last one is crucial:
85% of interviewed shoppers would be more likely to shop in stores that offer personalized
coupons and exclusive offers provided in-store.

Deploying With HotSpot:

HotSpot Parking is a pretty complicated business idea: serving a central coordinator between
the needs of three different and powerful groups of people, they thrive because they exist to
solve a complicated problem well, and because they dont have to worry about the software or
hardware side of their proximity business thanks to Kontakt.io. Balancing the needs of the city,
the retailers, and their customers, they launched initially with some simple goals, overcame
some challenging hurdles, and have grown to be the largest application of their kind in Canada.

Goals
Provide an easy and hands-free mobile parking payment solution
Get businesses involved in solving parking for customers
Create a tool to help businesses learn about their customers

Challenges
HotSpot doesnt install beacons directly.
HotSpot needs to provided added value for consumers that is superior to any other parking
system
HotSpot needs to be able to persuade businesses that this is

The Results
By any measure, HotSpot has been a successful launch. Theyve covered approximately 30% of
the car parks in 4 cities in Canada so far (St. John, Fredericton, Moncton, and Charlottetown), and
discussions with many other municipal governments are also in progress.
Theyve deployed nearly 500 beacons so far in scores of different garages and retail locations,
and theyve learned some lessons from the scale that theyre operating on, and some of these
lessons apply to any business that works with proximity.

Challenge 1: Beacon Installation

Hotspot needs to be able to scale. Requiring a hands-on installation process for the beacons
that they provide businesses to is not a scalable solution if they deploy nationwide
or internationally on a large scale.

10

Solution: Auto-configuration
HotSpot has created a fantastic user guide for beacon installation in general. Then they
extended this with a user-driven configuration tool for beacons. When a business owner
installs his or her beacons, a custom set-up process ensues. The owner is led through his or
her store and the surrounding space while the app checks to see if the beacons that have
been installed are visible. The app uses Kontakt.ios SDK to change the broadcast power and
interval of the beacon until the transmission range of the stores beacons are tailored to the
exact space that theyre deployed in.

Challenge 2: Added Value for Customers

Going beyond simple coupons is key to making a proximity marketing app sticky. What can
an app like HotSpot do to add value to the end consumers life?

Solution: Go beyond coupons

HotSpot has created a number of features that remain valuable to businesses of all kinds.
From extending parking stays for free to promoting corporate social responsibility through
decreasing drunk driving, HotSpot has created enough value that 30% of their users log in to
the app 3 or more times a week.

Challenge 3: Added Value for Businesses

Just having another way to present coupons to customerseven very relevant onesisnt all
that exciting for a business. How can HotSpot parking give businesses added value beyond
another marketing channel?

Solution: Rich data and analytics

In addition to providing a context-rich channel for marketing messaging, HotSpot parking
has built in an analytics channel which tells business owners how long their HotSpot parking
customers have been in the store, how much parking they covered, where in the store they
were, and more information depending on the beacon configurations. Having all of this data
at their fingertips as a value add to HotSpot parkings already excellent marketing tools
makes it an easy sell for many clients.

11

Users
30% of HotSpot users use the app at least 3 times per week, and 38% of users log in every
month. Further, 80% of people who downloaded the app have Bluetooth turned on so they are
ready to receive beacon-enabled notifications. Theres still room for improvement: many drivers
arent yet using HotSpot for a variety of reasons, but the team has found increasing adoption
numbers as time goes by and more merchants sign up. As HotSpot adds more businesses to its
roster and improves the data and services that it offers, it becomes an increasingly easy sale to
more clients, as network effects make HotSpot ever more useful.

HotSpot users

30%

38%

80%

active

log in
every month

have Bluetooth
turned on

(min. 3 engagements
per week)

12

Engagement
30% of HotSpot users who park nearby, walk into a store. On average, they spend 61 minutes in
the store, which is 7 minutes (thats 13%!) longer than average time spent in brick-and-mortar
stores, according to ICSC/Shopping Centers Today.
Since theres no need to worry about parking, visitors are more likely to shop longer. Personal
approach and VIP services enabled by in-depth statistics, enhance customers experience and
allow them to fully enjoy the time spent in store. Meanwhile, vendors are able to truly work on
providing valuable interactions with their customers, such as giving free parking or protecting
customers from getting tickets for 27% of visits driven by HotSpot.

Does it pay off?

Well, its been said already that delighting customers is crucial to keep them coming back.
Outstanding service is one thing but whats even better is the unexpected, great service provide
at the right place and time.
HotSpots clients seem to be aware of little perks and their impact on driving customers loyalty
since after giving this feature a try, they continue to provide value-added benefits to their
customers.

54

min
Americans

61

min
Hotspot
users
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Corporate Social Responsibility

What makes HotSpot unique, is the fact that they have involved downtown businesses in
discussions they hadnt participated before. Apart from parking issues, companies got a chance
to solve another real world problem: impaired driving.
A HotSpot Designated Driver feature raises awareness of drunk driving a problem that
according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving kills over 1,000 people annually in Canada. Every
vendor serving alcohol to its customers may ask them to take a cab and return to their cars
the next morning. HotSpot prevents patrons from receiving a parking ticket just because they
decided not to drive under the influence.
And the system works pretty well. In March 2015 alone, HotSpot provided free overnight parking
to 152 people who had parked their car and then entered a HotSpot bar, reducing drunk driving
and preventing an inestimable number of accidents.

152 Free Overnight

Bar Parks in March

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About Kontakt.io
Kontakt.ios platform puts the real world in contact with the Internet of Things by connecting
devices with proximity awareness to the cloud. Kontakt.io goes beyond beacons to do this,
and offers a full suite of innovative technology, ranging from Bluetooth Low Energy beacons
to a variety of other hardware and software technologies. Kontakt.io makes it simple for any
business or serious hobbyist to create the Bluetooth application or business of their dreams.
Kontakt.io helps their clients learn amazing things through analyzing the world around them.

HotSpot about Kontakt.io Beacons

Were going to try to be the biggest beacon deployment in the world, and if were going to hinge
our business on one product, we need it to be the best product in the world. We need a product
thats dependable, that works 100% of the time in the field, and is flexible enough to let us do
what we want. These need to be there to last, and stay out in active deployment for as long as the
business needs them to. Thats why we decided on Kontakt.ios hardware.
Phillip Curley, Founder & CEO at HotSpot

Smart Beacon
Beacons enable developers and organizations
of any size to create and deliver an astounding
range of experiences from creating new ways
to interact with technology, enhancing brand
experiences with contextual interaction, to
boosting business process efficiencies with
actionable data.
Whether you want to deliver messages based
on users location, provide them with relevant
product information, guide them through your
venue, gamify their shopping experience, or
enable mobile payments, SmartBeacons do
their job.

Order Your Smart Beacons

15

Cloud Beacon
Cloud Beacon gives you everything you expect
from SmartBeacon but is Wi-Fi-enabled to let
you manage and control your entire beacon
fleet anytime and anywhere in the world.
Unlike other beacons, it can either transmit
and receive data, enabling you to collect rich
information on who are your visitors, when
they visit, and how many times they visit your
venue.

Order Your Cloud Beacons

Tough Beacon
When you want to use your beacons in
outdoor, exposed situations, you need
something tougher than the usual beacon.
Something that can stand up to bumps and
knocks, rain and sun, and thats tough to
remove while as reliable as our regular Smart
Beacon. When you think outdoor proximity,
think Tough Beacon.

Order Your Tough Beacons

16

Kontakt.io is more than just beacons. We are beacons & beyond.

Were doing our best to transform a beacon industry into a proximity industry which doesnt
have to be limited to specific devices or use cases. Our goal is to provide comprehensive solution
that can be implemented in any business and any environment.
Were going beyond standard solutions and developing our hardware as well as API and SDK in
such a way that enables you to use our technology however you wish!
In order to change thinking about beacons as indoor solutions, weve designed Tough Beacon
that can be placed everywhere: outside or even on moving objects. To give you power to
manage your beacons and collect rich data, weve introduced Cloud Beacon which uses built-in
Wi-Fi to harvest information and control your entire fleet from anywhere in the world.
And these are just first steps into the great future of Internet of Things. Help us implement our
idea and start using high performance beacons (according to Aislelabs independent report) on
the globe!

Have any questions about beacons and retail? Want to learn how your business can use
microlocation to boost your advertising ROI sky high? Shoot us a question and well get back to
you within 48 hours!
kontakt@kontakt.io

VISIT OUR ONLINE STORE

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