• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, October 15, 2014

Though it’s still early in the beacon aspects of the mobile commerce revolution, some of the early results are starting to look impressive.

The novelty factor may be part of the reason for high consumer  interaction rates after being beaconed for the first time. High click rates also may be driven by the value of the particular deals being offered during an introductory phase.

No matter the reason, consumers are interacting when beaconed.

Shopping app Shopkick, one of the early shopping apps introduced well before today’s beacons, pioneered its own sound-emitting beacon-type technology that would alert a smartphone when entering a store such as Target, Macy’s or Best Buy and shoppers receive points or kicks as they enter and roam the store.

One measure for Shopkick, which was recently purchased by SK Planet in South Korea (Shopkick Bought for $200 Million), has been how much revenue it generated for the retailers using it.

Shopkick just reported that it has driven $500 million to its retailers in the last 12 months, totaling more than $1 billion since launching in 2010. The company says it has driven more than 50 million walk-ins to stores and 100 million product scans leading to millions of transactions.

“Shopkick users spend 50 to 100 percent more than others,” CEO Cyriac Roeding told me recently.

The shopping app company now has its owns traditional beacons called shopBeacons and recently won a commitment from Macy’s to install them in all its stores nationwide, as I wrote about here last month (4,000 Beacons Coming to Macy’s Stores).

Shopkicks says it now has more than 7,500 shopBeacons live in 3,000 stores, including more than 100 locations at American Eagle Outfitters, which has tested the beacon impact on shopper behavior over the last several months.

In the initial test at American Eagle, some customers entering the store received a shopBeacon message offering them a small incentive for visiting the fitting rooms. The percentage of those who visited a fitting room to try on clothes was more than double those who didn’t receive the beaconed message, according to Shopkick.

Results from other beacon implementations also show promising results.

For example, in a nationwide beacon deployment by Hillshire using the InMarket beacon platform, the brand’s agency BPN measured the beacon activity against key brand metrics. BPN found that the beaconing led to a 36% increase in brand awareness and a lift in overall sales (Hillshire Taps Beacons: 20X Purchase Intent Increase).

The Regent Street beacon implementation in London also is showing results, with post-beaconing click through rates of 6%. In that beacon deployment, running on the Autograph beacon platform, 80% of the 135 stores on the street have implemented beacon offers.

Marriott, which has beacons in three properties running on the beacon platform of Boston-based Swirl, I’m told that more than three quarters of those receiving beaconed messages interact with them.

The beacon implementation at the recent U.S. Open, by beacon maker Gimbal and messaging service Urban Airship, had more than a 30% click through rate to Ticketmaster, Urban Airship told me.

Beaconing is still very young, but it's growing fast.

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Check out the MediaPost conference on beacons, being held Nov. 3 in New York (IoT: Beacons).