Guide ID helps Museums and Galleries increase revenues and visitor numbers with; “Map My Visit”

Over the last 6 months we have been noticing a change in strategy. Instead of waiting for more budget or bidding for funding, museums are looking for new ways of increasing revenues and getting more visitors themselves. Besides this we see a change in thinking, most sites are no longer afraid to think outside the “tradition heritage box”. They are more open to new and innovative ideas, just like “Map My visit”. Which is the latest addition to the Podcatcher platform by Guide ID.

When somebody says “Innovative idea” people often directly think that it therefore must be complicated. At Guide ID we pride ourselves on always keeping things simple but flexible for our clients and even more important, for their visitors. When it comes to “Map My Visit” it is no different. We keep all the clever and complicated stuff in the background. People who know the Podcatcher Platform and the Podcatcher devices will know how easy and simple it is to use, but how much it offers.

Guide ID has always been a development based company, meaning that we are continuously developing new tools for our clients. Anything that we developed is based on client and visitor feedback. All of our current features, including “Map My Visit” are based on feedback from clients such as; Royal Dutch Palace, The Walker Art Gallery, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Hermitage Amsterdam, English Heritage, Bristol Museums, Jewish Historical Museum, KPM Berlin, Cadw, Auto World Brussels, Royal Museums Greenwich and many more across Europe.

During the last 24 months we have already taken the platform from a simple audio guide system to a complete interpretation platform which now includes interactive tours, children’s quizzes with scoring, research tools, live evaluation analytics, Apps and marketing tools. But every time we heard “we just do not have the budget” we felt that we needed to develop a new tool to help museums and galleries with these budget issues. This is how we came up with “Map My Visit”.

“Map My visit” works in combination with the Podcatcher platform to build an email database, track what visitors listen to during a tour, what their favourite objects are and also communicate with them after their visit. The main idea is that eventually we can offer our services for audio guides, research, marketing and “Map My visit” for free and that the visitors pays for all these services via other revenues streams that we will help create.

The way it works is that visitors will activate their tour with their email address. The system will then track, as it already does, what they listen too. We have added an extra button on the device with which they can tag their favourite objects during the tour. This data is not only available to the museum online, but it is also sent to the visitors email. When they get home they can see what they listened to, what they missed and what their favourite objects are. Museums can then offer them the missed content or extra content after their visit.

This is the opportunity for museums to offer visitors the possibility to purchase an item that has a link to the object or artwork. For example, this could be a catalogue, book, print, reproduction, merchandise, clothing or tickets to another exhibition/event. These are often items that visitors do not want to purchase during a visit as they have to then carry it around with them. Now they can purchase these items at a later time and it extends there visit to their home. Which will also create a direct connection with the museum or gallery.

The third element within “Map My Visit” is email collection. If a visitors agrees to leave their email and to share what they are interested in, we will automatically develop a large email database across Europe of which we know what subjects are of interest to the visitor. Therefor we can help museums and galleries to do very precise and targeted mailings for attracting more visitors.

We are currently launching “Map my visit” at our first site and are looking for others sites that are interested in piloting the system. So if you are interested, please contact Mitchell Brown at Guide ID, for more detailed presentation, please visit our website where you can download it.

On the 9th April 2014 we are organising a seminar at The National Maritime Museum. During this seminar our European Director will be presenting “Map My Visit” and there will be other speakers as well. If you would like more information or want to register then please click here.