GeoIP Services Ensure Fomo’s Customers Don’t “Miss Out” on Sales

Every year, more than a billion consumers shop on e-commerce websites. And in 2016, a new startup called Fomo set out to help merchants reach that audience. To do that, Fomo first needed to find a service partner with expertise in geolocation. They chose MaxMind. “We’re a relatively new company, but our growth has been phenomenal since we added MaxMind’s GeoIP2 Precision services,” said Fomo’s co-founder Ryan Kulp.

Within five months of using GeoIP2 Precision services (Country and City) , Fomo has curated more than 100,000 unique browsing transactions for their e-commerce partners and helped their clients achieve double-digit growth in consumer adoptions. For example, Sphynx, a manufacturer of pocket-sized electric shavers, achieved a 49.6% increase in their transactional conversions after they enabled GeoIP2 Precision services through Fomo’s API. Another client, TidyMe, a large cleaning service in Australia, has seen its conversions increase by 12%. “Introducing MaxMind into our offering has been a game changer for us,” said Kulp. “Growth like that is not possible without a reliable geolocation provider like MaxMind.”

Snapshot

Fomo helps websites optimize their conversions through social proof marketing. Originally a plugin on Shopify called Notify , the company changed its name to Fomo (short for “fear of missing out”) and began establishing its own identity outside of the e-commerce giant. The Fomo plugin uses GeoIP2 Precision services to determine the geographic location of website users. The intent is to localize user interactions and transactional behaviors such as purchases, sign-ups and comments. That intelligence is displayed in real-time notifications that appear on websites (click here to see Fomo in action). It’s the online equivalent of a busy restaurant, showing prospective customers social proof that other people also visit and interact with a website.

Social proof is a relatively new branch of marketing that borrows from the psychological phenomenon known as Informational Social Influence. Social proof marketing advocates follow the principle that customers seek influence from their peers before making a decision. In fact, Fomo is aptly named. The concept of “missing out” is ingrained in those who are hooked on social media . “People feel comfortable buying from a website they know other people are buying from,” said Kulp. “With Fomo and MaxMind, people visiting e-commerce shops can see, for example, that John just purchased a shirt 2 minutes ago and where he is from. Showing those interactions creates urgency and increases on-page conversions.”

Challenge

Fomo’s business goal has always been to increase customer conversions. But, as Fomo began to work with large global clients, they found out quickly those companies wanted a method to localize their customer interactions. Kulp believes that Fomo’s notifications without a geolocation solution would be far less effective for social proof marketing. “GeoIP2 Precision services enable us to personalize those notifications for our clients so that users only see the interactions which their neighbors are making,” Kulp said.

So, what drove Fomo to choose MaxMind? “We wanted a geolocation service with a dedicated team behind it that is maintaining it, that is constantly improving it. We also wanted really fast query times and a high level of accuracy,” Kulp said. “We evaluated three to five different solutions and, with everything considered, it was a no-brainer to go with MaxMind.”

Future

Kulp believes Fomo’s growth is ultimately tied to new uses for geolocation intelligence, especially as social media continues to grow in popularity. “We expect the future of the web to be more localized, and MaxMind will play a major role in sites providing localized content,” Kulp said.

In the next few months, Kulp estimates that with GeoIP2 Precision services helping to fuel the company’s growth, Fomo will be processing tens of millions of localized, geocoded interactions for many e-commerce stores throughout the world. “We set out to solve a very specific problem for our clients, and are thrilled with the results we’ve seen since choosing MaxMind as our partner.”

To find out more about MaxMind’s GeoIP2 Precision services or to request a free trial, simply click here .