Wi-Fi Marketing

OUR WI-FI MARKETING IN A NUTSHELL

With Aptilo Guest Wi-Fi Cloud™ (GWC) you will not only get tools for Wi-Fi Marketing. Together with our consent and personal data management features, your Wi-Fi service will get privacy-protected Wi-Fi Marketing that is compliant with GDPR.

Wi-Fi services coupled with demographic data is a very attractive proposition for high-value targeted advertising.

Learn more details about the Aptilo GWC marketing features in the sections below.

BANNERS & POP-UP ADS
Marketing and messages to visitors when they login.
EVENT TRIGGERED MESSAGES
Send SMS or e-mail to visitors as they enter a zone at your venue.
GROUP MESSAGES
Send SMS or e-mail to a group of people.

Banners & Pop-up Ads Event-triggered messages Group messages

BANNERS AND POP-UP ADS

The Aptilo GWC base package features local banners (pictures) that can be uploaded to the Captive Portal.

The optional Wi-Fi Marketing package takes the ability to communicate with users to a whole new level by adding support for:

CENTRAL BANNER & POP-UP AD REPOSITORY
Centrally managed asset repository.
BANNER CAROUSELS
Multiple images rotated through a banner carousel at a certain time-interval.
POP-UP ADS
Pop-up ad as an overlay over the login area.
REDIRECT TO EXTERNAL PAGE
User can be redirected to an external page when clicking on a banner or pop-up ad.

Banners for Wi-Fi Marketing

There are two banner areas at the login page. One top banner above the login area and one bottom banner below. Any or both of these banner areas can be used for a single banner or a banner carousel.

Banner carousel

Banners included in a carousel will show up at a configurable time before rotating to the next. Banners with different action on click (see below) can be mixed in the same carousel.

Local picture or banner repository

It is possible to either upload a picture to the local Captive Portal or have it provisioned from the central banner asset repository. There are several advantages to using the central repository which will be explained below in the Central Banner Repository section. A banner picture defined in a carousel will also be available as a standalone banner in the central banner asset repository.

Action on click

When users click on a banner, they can either be redirected to a certain external web page URL or get a pop-up banner (max width 320 px). Note: When using a redirect URL and the user doesn’t yet have internet access (at login page), it is important that the URL is whitelisted in the gateway.

Pop-up Ads for Wi-Fi Marketing

Pop-up ads allow the site owner to present advertisements in the form of an image on the captive portal. The advertisement is drawn on top of the normal captive portal content, blocking access to the captive portal functionality until the advertisement is closed. The advertisement can either be closed automatically after a configurable time period, or the end-user can close it manually. The close button can be hidden from user. A pop-up ad can be placed on any or all of the following pages:

The login page
Welcome page
Top-up page

The “action on click” is the same as described above for banners: either the users are redirected to an external web page or they will get a pop-up banner.

Similar to banners, a pop-up ad can grab the image to be displayed from a locally uploaded picture or from the central banner asset repository with one important difference. If a banner carousel is selected as asset, there will be no banners rotating. Instead one banner will show, randomly selected among the banners defined in the carousel. This is an excellent way to show ads from multiple advertisers evenly over time.

Central banner repository

With centralized banners, banner content is defined in a central directory, which is then referred to by one or more captive portals. This has the following positive effects:

EASY TO UPDATE BANNERS ACROSS MANY PORTALS
Banners can be reused across multiple captive portal instances, making it easier to update the banners across a large set of captive portals. A change in the central banner will immediately be executed on all portals using that banner. This reduces time spent when updating banners.
POSSIBLE TO HAVE DEDICATED BANNER ADMINISTRATORS
Banner management can be outsourced to a separate administrator who is unable to touch the rest of the configuration. This reduces the risk that a banner administrator affects the service.

EVENT-TRIGGERED MESSAGES

The Wi-Fi Marketing package includes support for event-triggered messages. One of the many use cases is to send a message to a user when she/he has arrived at a location. A certain dwell time can be set to avoid trigger messages to users that are just passing by. This is especially useful when a user is automatically authenticated through a MAC-authentication or an EAP-based authentication. It is also possible to trigger a message when a user has signed up for the Wi-Fi service using the email/SMS one-time-password sign-up.

SET PER ZONE IN TREE, VALID FURTHER DOWN
Messages are set per location in the zone tree and are valid for all locations further down in the zone tree.
MESSAGE TO USER WHEN AN "EVENT" OCCURS
A message can be crafted by the marketing administrator and automatically triggered to be sent to the end-user when an “event” occurs. Events that currently can trigger a message:
- A user arrives at a location (zone). A Zone can be defined as any number of APs down to a single AP.
- User arrives at a location with a dwell time of more than x minutes.
- User have registered for a one-time-password.
MESSAGE DELIVERED VIA E-MAIL OR SMS
The message can be set to be sent to the user via SMS or e-mail. Messages will be automatically separated into several SMSs if the text goes over the max limit/SMS.
OPTIONAL TIME RANGE
It is possible to set a validity time for the event-triggered message so that this function is just active within this time interval.
MESSAGE FREQUENCY
It is also possible to set the frequency of how often a user should receive the message. It can be set to Once, Monthly, Weekly, Daily, Hourly and Every time.

Wi-Fi Marketing event-triggered messages

The Group Messaging function is a way to communicate with users who have been at a specific location at a certain time. This can (for example) be used to send an invite to take part in a user survey, an advertisement for future similar events, a special offer or an apology for temporarily poor service etc.

SET PER ZONE IN TREE, VALID FURTHER DOWN
Messages are set per location in the zone tree and are valid for all locations further down in the tree.
MESSAGE TO A GROUP OF USERS
A message, via SMS or email, can be crafted by the marketing administrator and automatically be sent to all end-users who have visited the specified zone (or anywhere in the tree below) sometime during a specific time period.

It is also possible to only include active users. Within the European Union, this option should always be used for GDPR compliance as only consenting users will be active.
MESSAGE VIA E-MAIL OR SMS
The message can be arranged to be sent to the user via e-mail or SMS. Long messages will be automatically separated into several SMSs if the text goes over the max limit/SMS.