As the parking industry continues to transform and become more heavily dependent upon technology, one topic that will be essential for successful operations is data analytics. Analytics help owners and operators not only understand, but also anticipate their customers’ needs. It’s also extremely beneficial for customers as it helps to enhance their parking journey and create a seamless and convenient overall experience.

The idea of “clustering” is to apply unsupervised algorithms to automatically segment your customers in to “clusters” based on their attributes. There are two main types of clustering algorithms:

• Partition Clusters (for example k-Means clustering): Useful when you have some level of customer history and description fields based on which to cluster (ex.: vehicle type, address, credit rating, gender, age, and other descriptive demographics)
• Density Clusters: Useful when you don’t have much descriptive data about the customer, but rather transactional information (number of times parked per month, location parked historically, amount spent per stay, and other transactional statistics).

Note that these clustering techniques can also be applied to other data besides just customers. For example, if you have numerous facilities in your portfolio with similar revenue patterns.

Once you have identified the customer clusters using the unsupervised algorithms, you can then look at various metrics by customer cluster to identify targeted actions that can be taken for each customer cluster to maximize the metrics of interest. For example, you might be focusing on Revenue per Space or Time per Stay metrics in order to optimize revenue.  Combining these with the customer clustering you may then design a targeted strategy by cluster.

Revenue per Space

Revenue per space is an analysis of the average price paid per available space and provides you with valuable insight into how much revenue a space in your facility generates from transient parking. It can be viewed in a time series to identify trends useful to anticipating parking patterns and applying appropriate rates.  This statistic may be further sliced by time periods (time of day, day of week, month, etc.), geography (region, facility, etc.), or other methods.

However, a particularly interesting way to look at this number is by customer cluster.  You could then design your marketing programs by customer cluster.  For example, your clustering may include a cluster of off-peak parkers and a cluster of peak hour parkers;  you can then revenue the revenue per space generated for each cluster and design targeted marketing campaigns for these clusters separately to maximize revenue per space by cluster.

Time per Stay

Time per stay analysis focuses on how long transient customers tend to park rather than the amount they spend, and is therefore more useful when seeking to maximize transient occupancy. This is also extremely helpful in pinpointing opportunities to feature marketing or discount promotions that may encourage people to extend their time.  Or you may be seeking to optimize how many spaces are dedicated to transient usage in order to maximize the spaces available for reserved parking or monthly parking.  Again, you may slice and dice this statistic by geography, time period, or other method.  When we apply our customer clustering to time per stay, we may find clusters, for example, of short stay parkers vs. long stay parkers and target our marketing programs appropriately to each group.

In Summary

Unsupervised clustering techniques can provide a powerful tool when used in combination with important operational metrics. This strategy allows you to pinpoint your marketing or other efforts in a way that leverages your understanding of your customers. From the customers’ standpoint, they will benefit from more specific marketing efforts targeted directly to their needs and habits, rather than generic information that does not meet their needs. As parking technology continues to evolve, the ability for operators to customize these efforts will be a valuable tool for creating a loyal, returning customer base.

Throughout our recent series of blogs, we’ve outlined the new parking landscape for numerous sectors including airports, municipalities, and higher education, including the new opportunities and strategies available to create a more convenient and pleasant parking experience for the unique customer base for each of these organizations. Parking operators face a unique challenge since they serve multiple user groups under one umbrella. Operators support colleges and universities, airports, municipal customers, as well as others including healthcare institutions, residential, office, and much more.

Like many others, operators have faced numerous challenges over the past year. Yet, there are many opportunities, as well as new strategies and solutions available to emerge toward this “new normal” with the tools and resources to create a pleasant customer journey, as well as generate revenues. Further, there is an opportunity to attract and market to a new crowd of customers who previously public transit, but for the foreseeable future may feel more comfortable driving in their own cars. Operators have an opportunity here to target and attract this new population through creative marketing and advertising efforts, integration of touchless parking solutions, and more.

Many operators were already leading the way in integrating touchless parking solutions, but the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this transition. Touchless Parking solutions offer a completely seamless parking experience, enabling the user to perform all the necessary tasks from arrival, to parking, payment, and through departure all through their mobile device. Moving forward, patrons will likely be more attracted to parking facilities that meet their needs in this area.

Another aspect of the parking operator experience is that marketing has become a much more sophisticated situation. Operators can utilize customer analytics to understand customer behavior, and customer segmentation, and develop marketing campaigns to meet these individual needs. Innovative promotional campaign solutions allow operators to tailor and launch targeted promotions rapidly, provide comprehensive campaign analytics, and gain a greater ROI.

Parking operators often allocate the inventory of their parking spaces to the aggregators, to resell via their mobile app. Aggregators offer special rates and bring in parking customers besides the operator’s typical daily or monthly customers. However, one way for operators to regain control over their parking assets is through Inventory Management. Operators can get real-time control of how much inventory they want to sell, through which channel, at what time, and at what price. With these solutions, operators gain better negotiating power, as well as make the channel sales flow more dynamic, thus making the relationship more profitable for themselves and the channel partners

Finally, monthly parking may look a little different moving forward as people gradually return to the workplace in varying degrees. Monthly parkers are the most loyal and profitable base, and it is important to effectively support them. It’s important to create the most convenient experience possible for them by allowing them to set up automatic payments, purchase monthly permits online, utilize a “get my car” feature, and more.

ParkEngage works with parking operators to provide them with the tools and resources to effectively serve their wide range of customers. Contact us to schedule a demo and learn how we can help you enhance your operation, and enable you to provide personalized, quality service to your users.