Have you ever thought of using WiFi to engage customers and increase brand awareness? WiFi marketing has become a popular buzz word and is growing amongst small businesses as they connect the power of secure WiFi networks to engage with their customers. Harry Brelsford of The CannaTech Group sits down with John Gunn to discuss the competitive advantages of harnessing the power of WiFi to reach your customers.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey, welcome back to the Canna tech, podcast boy, John, my head is about to say Canada Tech Expo. But that’s the show we just completed over two weeks ago on my head. And I’m sitting down here in a heat dome in Austin, Texas. But how are you doing? John’s?
John Gunn
Doing fantastic things have been really interesting for us in the last few months looking forward to talking to you about them.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, well, let’s just jump right into it, you thought you had two or three things going on? Points of Interest, I’ll take it.
John Gunn
So everybody kind of knows me for the best practices plus existing technology equals sometimes a smarter way to go than reinventing the wheel, right? That’s my jam. So I’ve joined a new group called Adentro. Adentro is ostensibly a restaurant technology business in the beginning. But essentially what they did was about a decade ago, they started selling Wi Fi hotspots, and collecting first party data for a CRM, and it works in retail. We’ve got it in restaurants, stadiums, malls. It’s it’s it’s a ubiquitous kind of businesses to give free Wi Fi and say, Hey, we have free Wi Fi, right? We’ve all we’ve all used that, right? We all wonder what happens to that data. Well, what happens when it’s done properly is its its privacy compliant first party data. And then you can use it to send messages to your own constituency, which are your customers, right. And so it helps you build a CRM of all of your best customers, I do it with my my, I have a text messaging version of that, with my current dispensary today, for instance, and so I know this stuff actually works. So a dentro has 10,000 existing locations, and we build up an audience of 60 million end users that have opted in. And it turned out to be a smart bet when GDPR came in, and CCPA compliance came in, we were already compliant. And so we are a global organization now growing it. And we’ve been extending our reach into a lot of different industries. So there’s a really fantastic play within the cannabis industry, one of the biggest problems we have is acquiring new customers. And second one is keeping good customers, because there’s somebody always after their dollars, right, and they’re always they’re always posting them. So what we’re suggesting is that you monetize your own audience, by giving away free Wi Fi, but having them give you an email address for it, what that does is allow you to engage them. And you can do it in an automated fashion. This is like one time one and done. It’s like $199 a month for a single location. And we get discounts of course for everybody. But so basically, what happens, somebody walks in and gives them free Wi Fi and they can get to the menu and the things that they’ve got while it while they’re waiting in line, and be able to do set up their online order whatever they’re doing, and then have a talk with Batista, and finish the conversation. But then when they leave the first time they do it, they get an automated email message says, Hey, thanks for being a new customer. Here’s a goodie, okay, it measures and uses AI behaviorally, to understand what they’re doing. Third, visit fourth visit 10th Visit get a free ice cream, you know that kind of stuff? And oh, we haven’t seen you in two months, where have you been? And so you can automate those messages. And more importantly, and this is the secret sauce that the IoT piece that you know, that I love is being able to track things is that when somebody opens an email, we know that they open an email, you know that they open an email number one, and that’s just you know, clicks and views that you’re used to. But what we do that’s more important is we measure a walkthrough. And so when somebody shows up, you can tie your advertising that you spent to send them an email and prove that they showed up. And nobody’s been able to do that in the past. And then more importantly, beyond that, when you’re looking for a new audience, we can tie that to our 60 million users and find out who has an affinity audiences within the matches your best customer, because we know all the kinds of places that they like in real life, we can help you drive new business and prove that your advertisement on Facebook or Instagram actually worked. Now that’s really neat stuff.
Harry Brelsford
All right, point number two, I think you had two or three points to circulate. The RSP. Number two
John Gunn
is I’m rejoining the RSPA and will be on the Strategic Technology Solutions committee, as it was before, right magazine articles and sending, you know emails for and part of the education team. And so what I’ve done in the past was educate MSPs and ISPs on how to do business and I’m really excited to be rejoining the team. With any luck. I’ll be at retail now as well coming up on July 24 in Florida, and look forward to meeting everybody there. And I think that’s it for today.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, all right. Well, hope to see you in Orlando, Florida as I talk to you off the screen. And I can go on and on about events in general today. Events events are goofy. I just leave it at that and my IT career. Maybe not so much in the cannabis sector but You know, events are funny because we’re just starting to get back into them. And the airfares are super high and blah, blah, blah. But I will tell you this, from my perspective, the RSPA, retail now, over the last 12 months has had the highest ROI for me and what I do, right. And so shout out to them. And I’m John, I’m also being very selective. I’m turning down events from my past life, you know, I got caught up in this mentality as an analyst. And, you know, the sponsor would pay your airfare and hotel and you say nice things about their event, their sponsors. And I now now John, it comes down to time management, I gotta manage my time.
John Gunn
Well, I mean, I’m in the same boat. And I’ve gone to a few shows, and I’m being a little bit more selective now. But I will tell you what, getting out there and shaking hands and talking to people again, that’s where business happens. So I’m grateful that we’ve gotten to the place where it’s a little bit safer to be able to do so. And I’m doing them where it makes business sense. So like I said, I look forward to seeing you live in person again, because it’s been a little bit.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, it has man. All right. We’ll talk to you next quarter, if not sooner.
John Gunn
Thank you. Take care. See you soon. Bye, everybody.
