Locaid Geofence™ Now Allows Mobile Marketers to Deliver Location-Based Messages and Services via a Single API

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, June 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Locaid, the world's largest Location-as-a-Service company, today announced commercial availability of Locaid Geofence™, a new API that allows developers to combine real-time customer location data with real-world geographic areas. Using Locaid's Location-as-a-Service, developers can now create a virtual location perimeter of any size around any physical locations – such as retail stores, arenas, airports, schools or residences – and create alerts whenever approved devices enter or leave the defined areas.

Locaid Geofence™ has been in beta production for six months with several deployments by global brands and leading mobile agencies already complete. Locaid announced commercial availability today at the 2012 Mobile Marketing Association Annual Conference in New York.

"Location-based services and geofences have been available for years, but today Locaid launches the mobile industry's first cloud-based API that combines location data with location perimeters, to locate and alert any device without any application download or software purchase," said Carolyn Hodge, chief marketing officer, Locaid. "Locaid Geofence™ is also secured beneath Locaid's privacy-protected gateway, creating a single-source for cross-carrier location, privacy tools and physical world geofences. Location-as-a-Service is now more valuable to mobile developers than ever."

Locaid customers that currently utilize location and geofence technologies operate in many industries beyond mobile marketing, including financial services, mobile gaming, hospitality, fleet and workforce management, child location services, M2M and telematics.  Locaid also provides location services to many leading SMS providers, marketing agencies and mobile campaign platforms including Hipcricket, Vibes, iLoop, Gloto and TCS.

"When you know where your customers are, you can improve your marketing ROI," said Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer at Hipcricket. "Locaid has been a valuable partner in select programs that that use location services to connect brands and consumers in relevant and personalized ways."

"'Location, location, location' has always been the real estate industry's motto, but today, it's especially important for brand marketers to connect with their customers whenever and wherever they are," said Brittany Clotfelter, vp business development and strategic partnerships at Vibes, a Locaid customer. "Using innovative solutions such as Locaid, Vibes is able to help its clients engage with their consumers based on their precise location and deliver a far more relevant and timely experience that helps to move that consumer along the customer journey from awareness and sales all the way through loyalty."

"Locaid Geofence does not replace the valuable campaign services that mobile agencies provide today," added Naomi Morita, head of development at Locaid. "The Locaid Geofence API is an enhancement for any mobile campaign platform for any mobile agency or brand. We see customers utilizing the best services for location, messaging and campaign management in high growth areas such as retail advertising, providing maps and videos at conferences and trade shows, and providing venue information at major sporting events and concerts."

How Locaid Geofence™ Is Used

The Top 10 current use cases for Locaid Geofence already deployed are as follows:

1. Mobile Marketing: A multi-national retailer uses Locaid to draw perimeters around 100s of stores to send opt-in SMS promotions when VIP customers enter a store vicinity
2. Mobile Gaming: The leading smartphone gaming platforms such as American Wagering (Leroy's) and Cantor Fitzgerald (cantor Gaming) in Nevada use Locaid to ascertain that a customer placing a wager on a smartphone is within the Nevada state border
3. Mobile Agencies: The leading mobile marketing agencies such as Hipcricket and Vibes use Locaid location with their proprietary campaign management platforms to deliver locally-relevant messages
4. Logistics and Shipping: A Fortune 500 logistics company used Locaid to track shipments around the world
5. Job Alerts: A leading employment services notifies job candidates when opportunities are posted in their desired work locations
6. Analytics:  A leading market research company uses Locaid location to run permission-based consumer shopping and behavior panels and surveys
7. Truancy and Education:  A California public school district obtains parent and student permission to locate student mobile devices to confirm the level of truancy during school hours for federal reporting purposes
8. Telematics/Machine-to-Machine: A global brand uses Locaid to track the physical location of expensive machines around the world
9. Fleet Management: Several large asset tracking and shipment companies use Locaid to confirm arrivals on job site, track trucks and freight, and monitor contractor and employee presence on job sites
10. Family Safety: The leading family safety app Life360 uses Locaid location to help 16 million subscribers locate and alert family members

About Locaid Geofence™

Locaid Geofence™ allows developers to draw any area on a map – a circle, a polygon – a state border – and create a "trigger" event when a mobile device enters or exits the virtual area.  The trigger can be a marketing offer, an alert or alarm, a log file or an event record.  Locaid Geofence™ allows developers to build any fence for any trigger event for any mobile device, for any business need.

Once a Locaid Geofence is created, a geographic rules-based application alert or notification can be triggered whenever a registered opt-in device location is fixed inside or outside a geographic area.  Application developers can configure user push alerts, SMS messages, in-app notifications or non-mobile messages.  Enterprise use cases include automatically triggering timesheets, offers and promotions, service calls, asset pickups, fraud alerts, or truancy notifications. Click here for a demo: (http://geofencedemo.loc-aid.com)

About Locaid

Locaid is the world's largest Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) company. We operate a location privacy platform that allows mobile developers to locate over 350 million devices for enterprise authentication, fraud management, consumer location services and opt-in mobile marketing. Locaid locates smartphones, feature phones, tablets and any mobile device on leading wireless carriers, including America Movil, AT&T, Rogers, Sprint, T-Mobile, TELUS, and Verizon Wireless. Locaid also helps shape and enforce location privacy policies via leadership roles on governing associations, including the CTIA, MMA and IAPP. The largest financial institutions, mobile marketers, M2M platforms and mobile service providers get network location from Locaid. Location Matters.™  You can locate us at http://www.loc-aid.com.

CONTACT:

Lora Friedrichsen or Ryan Smith
Global Results Comms (GRC)
[email protected] |
+1 949 608 0276

SOURCE Locaid