Users of the Epicurious application from Condé Nast will soon be able to receive in-store push notifications, with the media brand claiming to be the first to leverage beacon technology to enhance the shopping experience.

Users of the Epicurious app will be able to receive push notifications when they walk into a participating retail location, including recipe suggestions and ingredients that can be added to user?s shopping list. Epicurious advertisers will also be able to serve in-store app users with ads.

?We are this trusted brand that has years of equity, and we are able to now to deliver a recipe at the point of someone walking into a store and create a moment where we can make an otherwise pedestrian experience more inspirational and drive them to actually purchase,? said Carolyn Kremins, senior vice president and general manager at Epicurious, New York. ?That gives our brand plus our partners an opportunity to deliver a better custom experience in-store.

?I think of it as content in context,? she said. ?We are already being used as a shopping tool in-store and this technology allows us to continue to deliver a better experience through content at that moment of purchase.?

Content in context
Epicurious has partnered with inMarket to reach consumers via its Mobile to Mortar beacon network inside grocery and big box retail stores across several cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. As a result of the deal, users of Epicurious? Recipes & Shopping List app will be able to opt-in to receive reminders when they shop in participating retail locations.

The strategy makes sense for Epicurious? Recipes & Shopping List app, which has been downloaded 10 million times, because users are already engaging with the app while inside a store to complete their shopping.

As consumers walk into a store, they might see a notification from Epicurious with a suggested dinner recipe. When users tap on the notification, they can see the recipe itself and add the ingredients to their shopping list, with the ingredients organized by grocery aisle.

Epicurious will also be able to serve up an interstitial ad in between the user tapping on the notification and the actual recipe. It could also serve a coupon for an ingredient connected to the recipe.

Ultimately, Epicurious hopes to make the experience more personalized by serving recipe suggestions based on the types of recipes a user reviews most frequently.

Bluetooth technology
Marketing opportunities leveraging beacons, which use Bluetooth technology, are scaling up quickly, with inMarket recently announcing McCormick & Co.?s Zatarain?s as the first CPG brand to leverage the network to reach in-store shoppers (see story).

Beacons are capturing the attention of retailers, marketers and publishers because they can easily be installed without a lot of cost to enable hyper-local engagement with smartphone-wielding consumers walking around inside a store.

With this news, inMarket?s Mobile to Mortar network now has the potential to reach over 30 million shoppers who have at least one of several beacon-aware apps on their phones. The other apps include inMarket?s own

?One of the big messages with beacons is that it is not only about the beacon itself," said Todd Dipaola, CEO and co-founder ofinMarket, Los Angeles. "The beacon has to ultimately work with software in order for it to do anything. So as part of our platform, a key part of what we do is making apps better in the marketplace using our platform to improve the retail experience.

?We are now seeing publicly the first one of those partnerships which is with Epicurious and Condé Nast,? he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York