Making It Rain For Brick-And-Mortars: Weather And Location Data Come Indoors

The influence of sun, rain, temperature, and other local conditions on shoppers’ behavior is fairly obvious, and marketing platform providers from IBM’s The Weather Company to xAd have touted their ability to spur store traffic based on what’s occurring meteorologically.

While those efforts to get people to the store clearly have advertisers’ interest, forecaster AccuWeather is working with proximity player Swirl to shape shoppers’ decisions once their in the aisles of a brick-and-mortar business.

This is AccuWeather’s second notable partnership with a location-based marketing player. Last summer, the weather forecaster signed up with attribution provider Placed on connecting online ads to offline visits.

As a specialist on indoor marketing, Swirl has been expanding its focus on the use of beacons to deliver messages to opt-in shoppers by rolling out its Mobile Presence Management and Marketing Platform to position its abilities around “personalization” as opposed to focusing on one tool. Aside from beacons, Swirl is also using signals from smart lighting and wifi.

For AccuWeather, as more data companies see the lucrative potential in extending their analytics to marketing solutions, the linkage with companies like Placed and Swirl makes clear competitive sense. Aligning with Swirl connects it to such store brands as Lord & Taylor, Urban Outfitters, Timberland, and others.

“Retailers and advertisers are constantly looking for ways to engage with consumers in the most meaningful, relevant ways,” said David Mitchell, Vice President of Digital Media, Emerging Platforms at AccuWeather. “In partnership with Swirl, AccuWeather has combined outdoor weather conditions and indoor location into a powerful new contextual layer for marketers. This new capability is poised to take right time and place marketing to the next level.”

“Weather plays a significant role in influencing consumer purchase decisions, and AccuWeather is at the forefront of delivering the most accurate weather information to consumers and businesses around the globe,” added Hilmi Ozguc, Founder and CEO at Swirl. “This partnership brings the power of weather targeting to indoor location in a seamless and automated way. Swirl platform customers now have direct access to localized weather data from one of the most respected names in the industry. We look forward to working with AccuWeather to enable retailers to deliver even greater levels of contextual relevance with their in-store mobile experiences.”