AirTight Launches Social Wi-Fi; Integration of Social Channels & Customized Captive Portals Merges Social & In-Store Engagement

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- AirTight^® Networks, the leader in secure retail Wi-Fi solutions, today announced the launch of AirTight Social Wi-Fi™, enabling retailers to integrate social media channels with AirTight's fully customizable guest Wi-Fi captive portals. Using AirTight Social Wi-Fi, retailers can engage with their customers to turn them into loyal promoters, encourage guests to opt into marketing programs and reach out to them via geographically specific marketing campaigns. AirTight Social Wi-Fi and the AirTight Retail Wi-Fi Analytics Engine (announced last week) combine to offer retailers an omni-channel platform. Both capabilities are part of its cloud-managed AirTight Wi-Fi™ solution for multi-unit retail. Retailers can leverage AirTight's Wi-Fi analytics to gain insight into consumer behavior.

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Using AirTight Social Wi-Fi, retailers can easily customize the Guest Wi-Fi captive portal with their brand and integrate social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, allowing guests to use their social channel of choice to log in and enjoy Guest Wi-Fi access. Retailers can readily implement various social payment workflows with AirTight Social Wi-Fi including:

• Sign up Guest Wi-Fi users as a Facebook fan or a Twitter follower;
• Let users spread a pre-crafted custom message via social media;
• Let users share special offers with their friends and drive higher sales;
• Encourage users to provide more details using Facebook Connect or other registration forums and opt-in to on-site and online (e.g., email) marketing programs.

"Mobility has got to be the most exciting retail transformation opportunity I've ever seen. Customers are leveraging mobility to improve their lives, to do things more efficiently, to be better informed," said Leslie Hand, Research Director for IDC Retail Insights. "Retailers globally are increasingly leveraging mobility for the same reasons. Mobility truly enables retailers to put the customer back in the center of everything they do."

"Retailers need to deliver a seamless and personalized consumer experience with omni-channel retailing to gain and sustain a competitive advantage and drive sales," said Kaustubh Phanse, Chief Evangelist and Principal Wireless Architect at AirTight. "Two technologies are poised to play a key role in this transition – social media and Wi-Fi. AirTight combines these two technologies to deliver a complete Wi-Fi solution for retailers ready to move to the store of the future."

AirTight Wi-Fi can be centrally managed using AirTight's HTML5 management console. Store operators can manage hundreds or even thousands of stores all from a single interface and deploy value-added services over AirTight Wi-Fi to improve store efficiency and enhance the customer experience by offering Guest Wi-Fi, line busting applications, mobile POS and in-store kiosks. Because AirTight Wi-Fi has the industry's top rated wireless IPS embedded in the access point, it offers retailers the added benefit of automated PCI wireless scanning and reporting from a centralized management console.

The analytics engine provides real-time and historical information such as:

• Number and types of Wi-Fi devices
• Number of Wi-Fi connections
• Dwell time
• In-store Wi-Fi activity

With AirTight's unique hierarchical location-based management, the analytics can be dissected in the context of a particular store, brand, or franchise, for group of stores, or across the entire deployment, and can be viewed for chosen times of the day or on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Wi-Fi analytics reports can be generated on demand or scheduled for automatic generation and archival or delivery by email.

Steve Rowen, noted retail analyst from Retail Systems Research will join AirTight on April 30^th at 11 A.M. Pacific for a Webinar, "Wi-Fi as a Competitive Retail Advantage"

Topics covered include:

• How the best retailers are treating store technologies differently than their competitors;
• Getting past the 'fear of showrooming';
• What role Wi-Fi plays in helping stores compete with channel-blind consumers; 
• How reliable in-store Wi-Fi can allow you to deploy applications to increase employee efficiency; and
• Using social Wi-Fi and guest analytics to increase customer loyalty.

For more information about the Webinar or to register, follow the link above. 

About AirTight Networks

AirTight Networks is a global provider of secure Wi-Fi solutions that combine its patented and industry-leading wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS) technology with the next generation cloud-managed, controller-less Wi-Fi architecture. This unified approach allows enterprises for the first time to benefit from Wi-Fi access while concurrently protecting their networks 24/7 from wireless threats at no additional cost. AirTight's customers include global enterprises across virtually all industries and range from those who overlay AirTight WIPS™ on top of other WLAN solutions, to those who leverage the AirTight Cloud Services™ to rollout and manage AirTight Wi-Fi™, WIPS, and regulatory compliance (e.g., PCI) across tens of thousands of locations from a single console. AirTight owns the seminal patents for wireless intrusion prevention technology with 29 U.S. and international patents granted, and more than 20 additional patents pending. For more information, please visit: www.airtightnetworks.com.

AirTight is a registered trademark of AirTight Networks, Inc. AirTight Networks, the AirTight Networks logo, AirTight Wi-Fi, and AirTight Social Wi-Fi are trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE AirTight Networks