Geofencing Marketing: Remind Customers When They Pass By
Every day customers walk past your shop without thinking of you – geofencing reminds them at exactly the right moment.
Geofencing marketing sounds complicated, but it's a simple idea: when a customer with your stamp card in their wallet walks past your shop, their phone shows a hint on the lock screen. No push notification, no advertising – just a reminder at exactly the right moment. Here's how it works, what it can and can't do, and which shops benefit most.
What geofencing means for a stamp card
A card in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet can store locations. Apple and Google built this feature for boarding passes at airports and tickets at events. For a stamp card, it works the same way: you add your shop's address, and the card stores the coordinates.
When the customer's phone is nearby, the wallet shows a hint on the lock screen. Typically it's your shop's name and a short text like "Coffee House is nearby". A tap opens the card. The customer sees their stamp balance and remembers they wanted a coffee.
What's important is what doesn't happen: no message is sent. The phone compares its location locally with the coordinates on the card. Neither you nor stampa learn where the customer is.
Quick self-test: Is geofencing right for you?
- Do many customers walk past your shop daily or weekly?
- Is your shop on a commute route, near a transit stop, or in a city center?
- Do customers often visit spontaneously, without planning ahead?
- Do you have multiple locations that customers might visit alternately?
If you answered yes to at least two questions, geofencing helps.
How it works technically
The process in three steps:
- Location on the card. When you set up your business, the address is converted to coordinates (geocoded). These coordinates appear on every card issued. Multiple locations are possible.
- Matching on the device. The customer's wallet checks in the background whether the phone is near a stored location. The radius is tight so the hint only appears right at your shop – not two streets away.
- Hint on the lock screen. If it matches, the wallet shows the hint. When the customer leaves the area, it disappears.
The hint is static and friendly – a short greeting with your shop's name so it works any day. It's deliberately not an offer or promotion, because it could appear every day. Promotions and special offers run separately through push notifications that you send intentionally. How these work together is explained in Lock Screen Marketing.
What geofencing is not
There are many claims around this topic that a wallet card doesn't and shouldn't deliver:
| Claim | Reality with wallet card |
|---|---|
| You see where your customers are | No. Matching happens on the device; no location data is transmitted. |
| You can target customers at competitors | No. Locations are only your shop, and the hint is a card suggestion, not advertising. |
| Every customer gets the hint guaranteed | No. Whether and when the wallet shows the hint is decided by the operating system, and customers can turn off the feature. |
| The hint is a push notification | No. Push notifications come from the server and need a reason. The hint is created locally from proximity to the location. |
| You need an app with location permission | No. Location logic is part of the wallet, which comes pre-installed on every smartphone. |
This honesty matters because geofencing works best when customers don't feel surveilled. A hint that only appears at your shop and disappears with a swipe feels like service.
Privacy and control
The customer stays in control. Location-based suggestions are a feature of Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. They can be turned off in device settings without removing the card. The card works as usual, just without the hint at your shop.
From your shop's perspective, privacy is straightforward because no personal location data is collected by you or stampa. Your shop's address is public anyway. Your shop's auto-generated privacy policy describes the wallet feature so customers can read what happens. For everything you need to know about your loyalty program, see GDPR and Loyalty Programs.
Who benefits most from geofencing
Geofencing works best when many customers are regularly near your shop without consciously thinking of you.
Shops on commute routes. Bakery at the train station, café at the bus stop, kiosk on the way to work. The customer passes every day, and the hint reminds them of their stamp balance.
City center locations with foot traffic. On a Saturday in the city, there are many options. The hint brings your shop into the moment when the decision is made.
Shops with frequent visit cycles. Café, bakery, fast food, tanning salon. The more often a visit is possible, the more the reminder helps.
Multiple locations. Customers with a card for one location get reminded at the other too.
Less useful is geofencing for shops customers visit deliberately and rarely – like repair shops or tattoo studios. Planned push notifications for seasons work much better there. And in residential areas where customers live next to your shop, the radius is intentionally tight so the hint doesn't appear constantly.
How it works in practice
A bakery at the train station has many commuters as customers. In the morning they buy a roll on the way to work; in the evening they go straight home. With geofencing, the stamp card appears on the lock screen when they arrive at the station in the evening. Many remember their stamp balance and grab something for the next morning. The bakery gains evening sales without active advertising.
Setting up geofencing in practice
At stampa, geofencing is included from the Growth plan. Setup involves two things:
- Add your address. Your shop's address is automatically pulled from your website during onboarding or entered by you and geocoded. You can add more locations.
- Update cards. Existing cards get the locations on their next update; new cards get them immediately.
That's all you need to do. The hint text is a short greeting with your shop's name so it works every day. Promotions, flash offers, and reminders to inactive customers continue to run through push notifications that you or automations trigger intentionally. How to write these messages is covered in Sending Push Notifications to Customers.
What you see in the dashboard
Geofencing doesn't create its own metrics because no event is reported to the server. What you see is the result: visits, stamps, and returning customers in the live dashboard. Whether the reminder at your shop actually brings more visits can't be measured in isolation. stampa measures your program's overall effect using a random control group (customers who don't get a card) and tells you honestly if the data isn't enough yet. Geofencing is one piece of it, not a magic lever.
What happens if you don't change anything
Without geofencing, your stamp card keeps running. Customers collect stamps, get push notifications, and redeem rewards. What's missing is the reminder at exactly the right moment. Customers who walk past your shop every day don't always think of you. They go to a competitor because they're top of mind. You lose visits without realizing it.
Conclusion
Geofencing for local shops isn't surveillance or an advertising cannon – it's a quiet hint on the lock screen when the customer is already walking past your shop. It works on the customer's device without transmitting location data and can be turned off anytime. For shops on commute routes and in city centers, it's a useful addition to your stamp card. You can start your card with stampa for free, up to 100 active customers and no credit card needed. Geofencing comes with Growth.