NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Minodes and Favendo, two of Europe’s biggest proximity players, have joined the Unacast PROX network, the number one platform connecting beacons and other proximity sensors to online marketing platforms, at scale, globally. They are Unacast’s first German partners, deepening the company’s penetration into Continental Europe.
Minodes and Favendo are among the fastest growing businesses in Europe and have strong international client bases. They recently opened offices in New York, having won the German government’s Accelerator award, and will now work closely with Unacast to offer a combined solution on a global basis to their clients.
Minodes is the leading European retail analytics provider, having over 50 retailers contracted and deployments across 12 countries. Minodes integrates and analyzes data from a network of sources, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and video, and provides retailers with precise, detailed and relevant insights into their visitors‘ shopping behavior along the offline customer journey. Their clients include Europe’s and India’s largest shopping mall operators, global automotive OEMs, and leading supermarket chains in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
A full-service beacon company, Favendo offers hardware, software development, e-commerce, analytics and mobile advertising and specializes in indoor-positioning and navigation. With large deployments across retail, tourism, events, transport and logistics, Favendo has an especially strong foothold in shopping malls in Germany, France and the UK, as well as airports and hospitals in Germany and the US.
Leveraging the synergies between Minodes’ significant offline data intelligence, Unacast’s growing retargeting network and Favendo’s beacon management platform will enable retailers to holistically personalize the customer journey. The combined solution bridges the gap between offline and online and allows clients the opportunity of continued engagement with customers. Through Unacast’s platform, retailers can put behavioral data recorded via proximity sensors and beacons to use, retarget their own visitors and customers online, encourage ongoing dialogue and bring customers back to the store with more relevant, engaging and efficient communication.
This partnership will also allow retailers to monetize their data, generating new and robust revenue streams and a faster ROI on beacon deployments. As the market matures, they may share anonymous subsets of data to the Unacast PROX network, getting subsets in return, meaning they can understand customers' movements not only inside their own store or venue, but also in other physical locations, creating a far more complete picture.
Thomas Walle, CEO and co-founder of Unacast said: "The partnership with German Favendo and Minodes marks Unacast’s entry into the DACH area where both players established themselves with large scale deployments. As Favendo, Minodes and Unacast are all expanding their operations to the US, the partnership means that we will be adding retargeting to campaigns in two of the world’s biggest markets simultaneously."
Tim Wegner CEO and Founder of Minodes added: "Engaging consumers online based on their offline shopping behavior is key for creating true omnichannel experiences. This is the right time to enter into a symbiosis with Unacast to create innovative retargeting solutions, as we have already successfully captured over 50 million unique data profiles of brick-and-mortar shoppers with MiNODES' Wi-Fi technology. New York City is the perfect marketing ecosystem for launching our joint solution."
Richard Lemke, CEO of Favendo said: "The market for beacons and related technologies is developing rapidly. Unacast is uniting the industry behind a single purpose: to deliver its potential to retailers, brands and consumers. As one of the most important players in Europe, Favendo is delighted to join the Unacast PROX Network alongside 41 of our peers in spearheading its progression. We can see clear opportunities for our clients and we’re looking forward to developing our first use cases together in Q1 of 2016.”
The Unacast network is the largest network of proximity companies in the world and includes over 1 million deployed beacons globally, cementing its number one status as the backend of all proximity data. The full list of official Unacast PROX Network partners is: Estimote, Sensoro, Urban Airship, Signal360, Mowingo, Tamoco, Total Communicator Solutions, Mobstac, Bluesense Networks, ZOS Communication, Pointr, BeaconsInSpace, Dot3, Sweetspot, FreshBeacons, Ebizu, ShopJoy, Fluxloop, Emplate, Nimble Devices, Abhrio, Oyalo, GEOConnect, Beekn4U, BubbleMee, We Are Nexen, Lightcurb, Smart Fission, Favendo, Minodes, inBeacon, Beaconinside, Knoq, Airspace, Reveal Mobile, Digital2Go, Beaconix, XtremePush, iProximity and AiSpot.
The agreement between these PSPs (proximity solution providers) and media platform Unacast rapidly brings the world closer to a truly connected future in which people, places and objects are seamlessly joined up online and offline. The ability to connect what customers do offline in the real world to what they do online – combining their physical and digital selves – means greater convenience, faster shopping, immersive experiences, more relevant communication, tailored products and offers. Customers increasingly expect real time customized services and personalized interactions based on their interests through their smartphones, but the logical progression to convergence between physical and digital hasn’t been possible at scale until now.
