We know that Apple is constantly developing their services and bringing out new technologies and applications. The latest release is destined to make a huge impact on retail. iBeacon is a new application which is sourced by bluetooth and works off your location services and it will change shopping forever.

Lets set the scene… you are out shopping, and you have a well known retailers app on your iPhone, as soon as you come within a close proximity of the store you will receive a notification of the latest sales, promotions or other general information that might be of interest.

Or a museum could use iBeacon to give more information to visitors. There will be beacons placed near some of the exhibitions which will work out your position, you will then receive information to your phone about the exhibit you are closest to.

Although this could be good for shoppers and retail marketers, it could also have its downsides. Customers may get annoyed with the constant notifications they are receiving from the different retail shops, and this could result in the customer deleting the App to stop the notifications. 

Nowadays, with the impact of mobile internet and WIFI, not many people use Bluetooth as it drains your phone battery, and if you aren’t aware that you need this switched on you won’t be able to receive the notifications.

So how does iBeacon benefit SMS marketing?

• Businesses can always contact their customers through SMS, no matter where they are. For a customer to receive an iBeacon notification they have to be near the shop and they also have to have their app.  

• With the launch of iBeacon, more and more people will rely on their mobile phones for the best deals, so it makes sense to market to your customers and prospects through their mobile phone via text messages

• It will become normal to receive notifications from companies so SMS won’t be seen as intrusive

• For retail shops, iBeacon will be very expensive to implement into their business as you need the technology and an app, so SMS is the perfect alternative, being cheaper yet much more effective as 97.5% of all text messages are opened with the first 5 seconds of them being received.