Highly qualified customers who “come to you” are a Marketer’s dream. No matter the particular bent of the Marketer, her ultimate goal is the betterment of the company via the coupled channels of customer loyalty, sales, and brand excitement. Each of these three things arises from the same foundation: highly qualified customers who interact with and consummate deals with your company.

So what makes a customer qualified?

The answer can be complex in some sectors but in the Retail area, it’s pretty clear: They are the ones who walk into your store!

Research indicates the power of the retail experience: 90% of dollars spent on retail are spent in store. Upwards of 70% of purchasing decisions are made in store. But Retail Marketers spend only 6% of their budgets in store. And while ratio-parity may not be the goal, the chasm between 90% and 6% is far too wide.

Enter companies like Novitaz, whose aim is to address this disparity by creating a joint value proposition for retailers, brands, and consumers.

I spoke with Jayant Ramchandani, Founder and COO of Novitaz, recently and asked him some basic questions:

Romi: What is Novitaz?

Jayant: Novitaz is a company/technology that enables Digital In-Store Marketing and Loyalty for Retailers and Brands

Romi: Why is it a breakthrough?

Jayant: 90% of Retail Spend ($4.5 Trillion in the US) happens in the physical retail store and more than 70% of purchase decisions are made at the shelf. And yet only 6% of marketing dollars are spent in-store. Novitaz is the first company which enables Digital In-Store marketing — this Novitaz has the potential of becoming the dominant marketing channel for retailers and brands. Novitaz does this by capturing customer in-store presence and in-store browsing and correlating this with transaction information.

Romi: Why is the solution great for brands, retailers, and consumers?

Jayant: For Brands: It is often said that 50% of marketing works, the problem is that we do not know which 50%. Novitaz is the first company which allows a brand company to communicate directly with consumers in the physical store and at the shelf. And Novitaz captures brand-response whether a purchase is made or not. With Novitaz’s technology a brand company will know precisely the interest level of various customer segments across geographies in its product offerings. Novitaz also captures an important metric called lost-sales – which is a measure of interest in a product without purchase. This gives the brand company important information regarding product pricing.

For Retailers: Because Novitaz enables in-store marketing – the only time when a retailer and a brand have the mindshare of its customers – the redemption of offers through Novitaz’s in-store marketing channel will be an order of magnitude higher than all other channels. This will increase same-store sales – the most important yardstick of retail performance. Further by capturing in-store presence and in-store browsing Novitaz delivers unprecedented customer insights to a retailer. Examples include what a customer is interested in buying which creates new opportunities not merely cross-selling opportunities. These customer insights complete the 360 degree customer view across all touch points and results in enhanced loyalty.

For Consumers: In today’s world of information overload and spam, “relevance” has lost its meaning. An offer is only relevant to a customer if she is interested in it and if she is in a position to do something with. Novitaz does both. Because Novitaz captures customer in-store behavior it completes the customer 360 degree view, its Ad Platform only delivers relevant offers. It does this when the customer enters a retail store and directly on the customers mobile phone. The customer can conveniently redeem this at the Point of Sale. No more coupon clipping and no more spam offers in the email.

Romi: What does Novitaz bring to location that the Internet players like Foursquare and Yelp don’t?

Jayant: Foursquare is a location-based social media play. Its value proposition is telling friends where you are. This is an important aspect of social networking. Foursquare does this by expecting the user to check-in on their mobile phone when they enter a location. Yelp provides customer reviews of local businesses—this includes merchants and several other businesses such as doctors, dentists, and many other service providers.

What Novitaz does which is different from Foursquare and Yelp is that it completes the last mile or rather the most important last few yards of location in the context of offline retailing. Novitaz’s focus is physical retailing and is the only company which detects customer in-store presence without expecting the customer to check in – this is the vital last few yards of location. Note, the customer opts-in to be identified and does so because of the consumers benefits mentioned above. Because Novitaz completes the last mile of location and because of its focus of retailing it enables digital in-store marketing – neither Foursquare nor Yelp does this.

Romi: How should a CMO think about a Novitaz solution?

Jayant: As the most effective marketing channel which can significantly enhance same-store sales and customer loyalty.

Romi: What is “Passing the Portal” location?

Jayant: “Passing the Portal” location is a very apt description of the last mile of location. One could also call this micro-LBS to contrast this with the many GPS-based location based services. Most location-based services are vicinity-based. They know that you are in the vicinity of a physical location. So you could be driving by a mall or walking past and vicinity-based location services could spam you with offers from all these retailers when your intent may not be to shop.

With “Passing the Portal” location, Novitaz knows when you enter a retail establishment as opposed to being in the vicinity of one. And because of this Novitaz can enable relevant marketing – the value of any marketing channel is proportional to its relevance.

Are you convinced? Let us know at Research Access.

[Disclosure: Romi is an Advisor to Novitaz and holds a small amount of equity in the company]