What is location intelligence, or LI for short? According to geomarketing firm Carto, it is the process of transforming location data into business outcomes. Today LI has become a very hot field, with projected revenues of over US $16 billion by 2021.

You probably use location intelligence in your business already, perhaps without even knowing it. If you sell to specific geographic markets, have seasonal variations in your sales patterns, or market to a targeted demographic, location data is probably part of your marketing mix. This is how we avoid pitching winter coats to people in Hawaii, or selling farming tools on Wall Street. But its applications now go far beyond marketing, into nearly every aspect of modern commerce.

How Location Intelligence works

Today’s LI works by marrying the benefits of geocoding and big data. It turns address data into exact latitude and longitude coordinates that frame information such as its census tract and usage, which in turn can be linked with associated data such as demographics, zoning, or spending patterns.

In much the same way that CRM provides you with a wealth of customer-based insight, LI can add the power of this accumulated location-based data to your business decisions. Here are some examples:

Compliance: Geospatial data can form an integral part of documenting compliance with regulations targeted at specific demographics or geographic areas. For example, the banking industry’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) require lenders to support the needs of lower and middle income borrowers as well as avoid discriminatory lending practices. And in another example, one of New York State’s largest cable providers was recently ordered to leave the state over charges of breaking commitments to roll out broadband services to rural areas.

Fraud prevention: Your bank receives a loan application from a new customer with a swanky business park address – which actually turns out to be an abandoned industrial area. Or the loan proceeds are being spent in areas of high drug trafficking or known financial crime. According to fintech expert Kenneth Goodwin, these are just two examples of how location intelligence can prevent or investigate financial fraud.

Targeted marketing: Once upon a time, companies decided where to place a billboard based on counting how many cars drove by. Today, according to ESRI’s Marianna Kantor, the out-of-home (OOH) advertising market – encompassing everything from news kiosks to municipal buses – can tap into a rich array of anonymized financial and demographic data, fed by everything from GPS data to smartphone use. At a broader level, location intelligence promises to vastly improve the granularity with which marketers can target their efforts using any channel.

Location-based offers: Suppose you walk into a ballpark, and a text message pops up on your phone offering discounts on a seat upgrade or in-game video highlights. This isn’t science fiction: it’s happening today with real-time applications such as Major League Baseball’s Ballpark smartphone app, which links ticket purchases and geospatial data to customize the live baseball experience. In the future, the potential to customize location-based customer experiences is nearly unlimited.

Putting Location Intelligence at your fingertips

Want to quickly add the power of location intelligence to your contact data processing? Service Objects offers capabilities such as Address Geocoding, which turns US or Canadian addresses into geolocation coordinates and associated data including census tract, county and block codes, and proximity to water, as well as our GeoPhone and GeoPhone Plus services that work from your telephone contact data. Use them as standalone services, or link them with other address-based data tools such as block-level demographics for a broader picture.

Any of these tools can be integrated directly into your marketing or CRM platform via a real-time API, or via a convenient batch interface for smaller applications. And you can try them out for free right now on our website, with no registration required.