Free Wifi as a Permission Marketing Tool?

Posted on April 26, 2005 05:50 PM

I can understand why airports or large public places would have pay-per-use wifi (even though I think the good PR that they would get out of making it free would more than justify the expense); they're not really trying to "sell" anything. Bookstores, restaurants, and cafeterias though are another thing altogether.

Up in Canada we don't have (at least as far as I know) the Starbucks/McDonalds free wifi situation. Typically, the best that you'll get while sipping coffee or eating is the opportunity to use a paid service. This seems to me like a perfect opportunity to make use of permission marketing. Simply create some sort of user/customer club, or use the one that probably already exists, and then authenticate against that when people try to access the wifi. So it's free, with registration. You end up with a bunch information about customers, plus the ability to market to them, all for the price of a router and some bandwidth. Not to mention happy customers.

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