New York – May 4, 2017 – GroundTruth, the global leader in location intelligence that drives sales, is giving marketers the power to hyper-target and better understand consumers in real-time with its combination of highly accurate location data and newly launched solution, Weather Triggering.
Powered by WeatherBug’s largest network of 10,000+ weather stations, GroundTruth Weather Triggering allows marketers to gain a deeper understanding of consumers by predicting their state of mind based on real-time changes in weather conditions.
Last year, weather caused U.S. businesses to lose 50 billion dollars
Each year, retailers miss revenue opportunities due to their inability to harness real-time insights around changing weather patterns to adjust for inventory, resourcing, and staffing needs. These losses can be detrimental over the course of the year, and in 2016, severe weather accounted for more than a $50 billion loss to our economy.
WeatherBug and GroundTruth are addressing the growing need among businesses for smarter and more predictive insights around evolving weather patterns – well beyond the obvious impact of a beautiful sunny day or a Nor’easter on sales. Atypical levels of humidity, a slow advance of a big storm, and even UV rays can have a domino effect on businesses. Often times, the impact nonstandard weather conditions have on a business are recognized too late, and result in lost sales or a gross underestimation the demand of a product or service (i.e. hotel bookings peak around an airport during storm warnings).
“Anyone can sell an umbrella in the rain. But how will a week of high humidity or air pressure help or hurt foot traffic and sales? We bridge that gap for businesses by combining location and weather data insights to help brands anticipate and adjust to weather patterns that are less understood. We add predictability to unpredictable consumer behavior – which shifts as fast as the weather does – and so should marketing and resourcing,” said D Sharma, Founder and CEO, GroundTruth. “With an always-on solution like Weather Triggering, combined with our recent launch of always on performance product, Cost Per Visit, businesses can have an on-demand response shifting weather patterns, and therein better forecast foot traffic. This ultimately helps brands to maximize their existing marketing budgets and optimize resources or potential profit no matter what way the wind blows.”
With Weather Targeting, companies benefit from GroundTruth’s superior database of location and weather based behaviors built off seeing more people (600 million monthly users) at more places (100 million places of interest) throughout the month. The company’s scale is 10X larger than other pure-play location technology providers, resulting in more timely, relevant, and actionable insights businesses can leverage to adjust inventory, staffing needs, and operations accordingly.
Bad weather impacts foot traffic behavior more than good weather
Bad weather might mean stronger sales for some businesses. However, following a 2017 regional weather visitation analysis among retailers including Big Box, Casual Dining, Department/Clothing, Fast Casual, Grocery, Pharmacy, Quick Service Restaurant (QSR), Parks, Bars and Malls, GroundTruth insights revealed overall visits are 9% lower on bad weather days, whereas visits are only 6% higher on good weather days.
When the weather is good, merchants around public points of interest should anticipate more foot traffic. New York City parks saw a spike in foot traffic of 165% when the weather is nice, likely giving pushcart vendors and neighboring shops and cafes a solid boost in foot traffic. Department and Big Box stores also saw the biggest increase in foot traffic from good weather. While this might be an indication of how we prioritize chores on nice days, Grocery was the only category that did not see an increase on good weather days.
Since its acquisition of WeatherBug in Q4 2016, GroundTruth has continued to enhance its location data with the most robust and accurate weather data to develop product solutions like Weather Triggering.
Weather Triggering is currently only available in the U.S. and is based on five quantifiable parameters: temperature, wind, humidity, pressure and rain; 15 weather conditions; and 52 weather alerts.
For more information visit: www.go.groundtruth.com/weather-triggering.html