Users of TouchTunes are able to control music played at local bars through its mobile app in which users pay for credit. The music player is helping draw in local business through beacon technology by inciting users to come in and redeem free credits.

“Mixing deals relevant to users’ preferences with location-based messages helps to personalize the app experience, making it a high-impact way to engage users,” said Josh Todd, chief marketing officer at Localytics. “People actually want apps to use geo-fencing when interacting with them; in a recent study we conducted, we found that 36 percent of respondents want apps to know their location and factor it into the content displayed in the app or marketing messages sent.”

Tuning up mobile
TouchTunes users walking the streets of cities throughout the US such as Philadelphia and New York are seeing notifications pop up on their phones for free credits at nearby locations. While the app has long leveraged location technology to power jukeboxes through user’s phones who are already at restaurants and bars, passersby are also being targeting in an attempt to bring them into bars.

The notifications are helpful to both local bars and TouchTunes itself. The partnership draws in customers for the bars and drives sales for music credits for the jukebox.

These messages make the user experience much more personalized, and acts almost as a friend recommending a bar. Patrons enjoy being able to control the music at their place of hangout, especially through their devices and these notifications can catch their eye to let them know TouchTunes is located at this particular bar.

Recently the digital jukebox partnered in a beacon-power campaign during the festival Voodoo, bringing promotional offers to those in surrounding areas without tickets for users to win a chance to attend.

Beacons and marketers
TouchTunes leverages developer Gimbal’s beacon technology and recently RetailMeNot extended its partnership with the mobile techn company to continue its rollout of beacon-powered deals after a series of successful pilots with national retail stores, proving that coupon providers on mobile must leverage location-based and targeted offers to evolve with consumers’ demands (see more).

Similarly, mobile application Shopkick doubled its users in the past year to a whopping 15 million, partially due to the shopping companion’s wide-scale deployment of beacons in major retail stores, which focus on offering consumers rewards rather than banal product information (see more).

“By targeting specific users at the right time and place with an offer those users are likely interested in receiving, people receive value from the message, are more apt to act upon it and use the app,” Mr. Todd said. “That is why marketers should try to use all of the data they have available about their app users to ensure that they are sending their consumers relevant messages and creating personalized experiences for them.”

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Commerce Daily