CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SIM Partners (www.simpartners.com) announced today that Shoe Carnival has implemented its local marketing automation platform, Velocity, to scale local search marketing in an effort to drive incremental in-store traffic and sales, as well as improve the overall customer experience.
Shoe Carnival, one of the nation’s leading retailers for women's, men's and children's shoes, has more than 400 retail stores across the U.S. Utilizing SIM Partners’ local marketing automation technology, Velocity, Shoe Carnival is now able to easily cleanse and distribute its store location data to ensure visibility and accuracy across listings in local and mobile search results, online directories, maps, and more. Through Velocity’s location publishing capabilities, Shoe Carnival’s search and mobile optimized store location pages feature unique content for each store, as well as a responsive store locator.
To turn “near me” searches into store purchases, Velocity Wallet offers are being tested in key locations by leveraging a consumer’s mobile wallet. Once downloaded to a consumer’s mobile device, mobile wallet offers can be redeemed in-store as well as used for location-based GPS and beacon notifications. Efforts across the program will be measured at the individual store, regional, and national levels with Velocity’s robust reporting and insights capabilities.
“Ensuring the very best experience across the entire buyer journey is a top priority for Shoe Carnival, and that journey often begins with a local “near me” search – whether it be via a search engine, a map search, or another discovery outlet,” said Todd Beurman, SVP of Marketing, Shoe Carnival. “With Velocity, we will be able to scale our local marketing efforts to ensure visibility and relevance across the entire local marketing ecosystem, so that our customers – no matter where they are – have the best possible shopping experience.”
According to recently released Google data, “words like ‘near me,’ ‘closest,’ and ‘nearby’ are increasingly common across the billions of queries” on the search platform each month. In fact, Google search interest in “near me” queries has increased 34 times since 2011, and nearly doubled in the last year.
“With nearly 80 percent of local shopping searches converting via mobile, now is the time for retailers to take advantage of local and location-based marketing opportunities,” said Jon Schepke, CEO, SIM Partners. “With Velocity, Shoe Carnival is making their local store data actionable and their local store content scalable to drive contextually relevant customer experiences, based on location at the time of the search, which in turn will drive in-store traffic and online sales.”
About SIM Partners
SIM Partners’ local marketing automation technology, Velocity, maximizes digital marketing results for enterprise brands at a local level. By making location data actionable and local content scalable, Velocity drives customer acquisition for national brands across thousands of physical locations. With Velocity, national brands can create location-based offers to turn “near me” mobile searches into offline conversions. Velocity includes a powerful local data management tool to drive listing visibility, a content management system that automates the creation of location-based content and experiences, and a robust insights platform to inform local content strategies. SIM Partners has offices in Chicago and San Francisco. To learn more, or request a demo, visit www.simpartners.com.
About Shoe Carnival
Shoe Carnival, Inc. is one of the nation’s largest family footwear retailers, offering a broad assortment of moderately priced dress, casual and athletic footwear for men, women and children with emphasis on national and regional name brands. As of December 1, 2014, the Company operates 404 stores in 33 states and Puerto Rico, and offers online shopping at www.shoecarnival.com. Headquartered in Evansville, IN, Shoe Carnival trades on the NASDAQ Stock Market LLC under the symbol SCVL. Shoe Carnival's press releases and annual report are available on the company's website at www.shoecarnival.com.
