Upsight unveils GeoTrigger for mobile marketers to tap location data in marketing campaigns

Upsight is launching a new tool to enable mobile marketers to reach consumers when they are near a location where there’s a promotional opportunity.

With the Upsight GeoTrigger platform, marketers can target people passing by a location, like a store that is having a sale on your favorite chocolates, just at the right time.

There are other ways to do that. But Upsight hopes to add relevant info about people, so that companies can target their location-aware marketing campaigns at exactly the right people passing by.

“The product has use cases for games, but as we see mobile integrated into broader campaigns, we see the need to make mobile into a cross-channel marketing opportunity,” said Brian Howell, chief marketing officer at Upsight in San Francisco, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“We can filter the users more precisely, like all the users who enjoy buying red shirts,” said Catherine Mylinh, general manager of new markets at Upsight, in an interview. “A marketer can follow up with a push message that is relevant. We don’t want users to feel they are getting spammed.”

Above: Upsight Geotrigger

Image Credit: Upsight

Upsight wants to make geolocation data more actionable. The first generation of this technology let marketers send out coupons to everyone passing by a particular location, particularly if their Bluetooth reception was on.

But if people opt in, then Upsight can target the people who have particular tastes with the right pitches. That results in pinpointing potential customers with more effective marketing campaigns.

Upsight is able to collect geolocation data on users in its core analytics program now, so long as a potential customer gives permission for their location information to be used. If you do give permission, marketers get your location data almost immediately.

While this kind of location-based marketing campaign is far afield from Upsight’s core business — pitching mobile gamers with marketing messages — it will help consumers with the core problem of discovering the kind of products and services that they really want in a world where there are too many choices, the company says.

With GeoTrigger, marketers can learn more about where their customers are in the real world and what they might want. They can, for instance, find out where customers are when they are most engaged with an app.

“It works with both gamers and nongamers,” Howell said.

Forrester Research found that 42 percent of mobile app users expect their apps to be designed for their convenience. They also expect their apps to take advantage of mobile-specific features like location. With the right mobile marketing campaigns, Upsight believes that it can make the lives of customers easier.

“With more than 7 million users, Grindr manages one of the largest location-based social networks in the world,” said Matt Norris, Head of Product at Grindr, in a statement. “We are using Upsight’s GeoTrigger to optimize our monetization efforts, connecting our users with relevant, hyper-local content from businesses in their own communities.”

Upsight creates custom heat maps to identify where users are interacting with an app at the most important moments during app usage. GeoTrigger can also be used to create custom “geofences,” or precise boundaries that trigger marketing campaigns.

“With the unprecedented consumer adoption of smartphones, mobile-focused businesses are inundated with volumes of user data,” said Andy Yang, CEO of Upsight. “Upsight GeoTrigger makes geolocation data actionable, adding another targeting parameter to help mobile marketers deploy differentiated user experiences that can improve customer loyalty and revenue at the street level.”

GeoTrigger is available now in beta testing for iOS and Android developers. The company will show off the produc at VentureBeat’s MobileBeat 2014 conference in San Francisco on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Upsight, formerly known as Kontagent and PlayHaven (the two companies merged last year), now has 25,400 apps, 700 million monthly active users, and 1.2 billion mobile devices. Rivals include Urban Airship and Adobe.