by rblakerice | Aug 9, 2021 | Scent Marketing
You probably don’t notice the smell of your own home, your own laundry detergent, or even your pets. After all, you experience those scents every single day. But what happens when you don’t notice the smell of your own business or workplace? We’ve all experienced walking into a gym and smelling sweat or walking into an assisted living facility and smelling sanitizer and cleaning supplies. From retail stores to gyms to assisted living facilities, every business has a unique scent that customers notice when they walk in — but you might not even be noticing this smell. With the integration of a scent monitoring system, businesses can gain valuable insights into their olfactory environment, ensuring that their spaces consistently offer pleasant and inviting aromas to visitors.
What Is Olfactory Fatigue?
After smelling an odor for an extended period of time, our brains will become accustomed to the smell and we will no longer notice it. The term “olfactory fatigue” (or “nose blindness”) refers to this tendency to become accustomed to the smells around us. After noticing a new scent, our receptors register the scent as non-threatening, disregard it and look for new scents in as quickly as two breaths. Even the most delicious or foul-smelling odor will eventually fail to become noticeable if we are exposed to it for long enough.
Olfactory fatigue can have a significant negative impact on your business. While you and your employees may have become accustomed to the scent of your facility, customers have not, and they will still notice the scent immediately. Should you be concerned about the performance of your scent, it is important to consider olfactory fatigue before increasing the intensity of your scent. Managing your scent effectively and consistently is a great low-cost, high-impact solution to give your customers a great experience.
Scentbridge’s Solution
Scentbridge uses a guaranteed smart connection to monitor the scent in your facility. This patented IoT technology and Smart Scent Delivery System allows for constantly monitored performance and easy mobile app control via 4G wireless connection. In fact, Scentbridge’s revolutionary technology allows for 99.9% uptime, an unmatched industry standard. As a result, it is easy to prove that your scent distribution is working and making a difference in your business. This transparent, one-of-a-kind service proves that with Scentbridge, you can truly expect more from our services, and we will ensure that you are happy with the scent of your facility.
Scentbridge’s scent distribution platform offers several advantages to ensure your chosen scent performs optimally in your facility:
- Advanced scent monitoring technology allows us to monitor the scent in your facility, thereby ensuring that our systems are working properly.
- We also monitor your air handling systems to sense any changes or issues there.
- We can support A/B tests to gauge customer and employee feedback.
- We can also change the scent to refresh your senses.
Scent and Your Bottom Line
Scent has the power to evoke moods, feelings, and even memories within your customers. It can also leave a powerful brand impression. Getting it right is important, and you can Expect More with ScentBridge to help you get it done.
Our Smart Scent Delivery System ensures appropriate distribution throughout your facility. Our fragrances are designed to deliver precise impressions customizable to the promise of your brand. All of our fragrances are safe and sustainable, and we only work with fragrance suppliers that are part of the International Fragrance Association (IFRA). Contact us for assistance in selecting a fragrance that aligns with your brand.
Conclusion
Scent has a powerful influence on your business. While olfactory fatigue may occur for some of your employees, Scentbridge’s powerful monitoring platform tracks the effectiveness for complete visibility and compliance. Harnessing technology to create powerful and long-lasting scents is a low-cost way to gain customer satisfaction and improve your business.
To learn more about how Scentbridge can help you craft your scent solution, contact us.
by rblakerice | Jun 3, 2021 | Scent Marketing
Scent marketing is a powerful tool. A successful scent marketing strategy can sway consumers’ emotions, encouraging them to buy products or services, stay longer in stores, and keep coming back for more. With effective scent marketing technology, you can increase occupancy and enhance the experience in your senior living facility resulting in a healthier bottom-line.
As you know well, senior living facilities aren’t strictly businesses; they are care centers focused on providing residents with high-quality medical assistance, enriching their lives, and assuring families their loved ones receive care and security. The decision to choose the best senior living facility is more than what’s presented on the back of the brochure; It’s the FULL experience from the very first impression to the continuous “welcome back” with every visit. Knowing that scent is a major factor in the first impression experience, it has a large part to play in your prospects’ decision-making process.
The Power of Scent on Your Bottom Line
Following a time where senior living properties have declined in occupancy due to COVID-19, it’s imperative to provide a clean, welcoming environment to incoming senior occupants and their families. As a result of the pandemic, many families have also realized that it is better for their loved one to be engaged in a quality community than to be home alone. Your team already strives to make seniors feel comfortable and welcomed in your facility by providing top-notch care, rooms that are pleasing to everyone, and community activities. Investing in scent marketing for your senior care facility is a cost-effective, high-impact way to create a fond, memorable experience for new seniors and their loved ones who visit.
Keep Control of the Experience by Controlling the Scent
A clean environment is more important now than ever. However, the antiseptic smell of cleaners and sanitizers tend to give spaces like lobbies and entry areas a cold, institutional feel which can negatively impact the all-important first impression resulting in a lost client.
It sounds simple, but the most important piece of your scent marketing strategy is that you have scent devices with high uptime. Without a working scent system in place, other non-pleasing odors can linger throughout your facility. At ScentBridge, our scent services guarantee a 99% uptime.
Improve Length of Stay for Residents and their Connection to Visitors
Pleasant scents in the air can alleviate stress, soothe disruptive emotions, and enhance your residents’ comfort. Your residents’ visitors can benefit, too. If your facility has a pleasing aroma that improves their spirits, they may increase their visit frequency and length, further boosting residents’ well-being. And as you know well, there’s a critical link between your residents’ emotions and physical health.
Decrease Senior Isolation to Increase Community Activity
Isolation is a big problem in senior living facilities. When isolation rates increase, participation in community activities decreases. You can help residents feel happier between family visits, delicious meals, and community activities by providing a scent that smells familiar and evokes memories. According to Harvard Professor Venkatesh Murthy, “smell and memory seem to be so closely linked because of the brain’s anatomy.” Certain scents can trigger pleasant memories—and help them feel less alone.
Boost Staff Spirits
Your senior living facility’s scent can even affect your staff. A good-smelling workplace can be pleasant to work in, contributing to better spirits all around. Certain scents can boost alertness, increase focus, or even increase performance. In fact, a study found that those who work with computers made 54% fewer typing errors when their workplace was scented with lemon, 33% fewer errors with jasmine, and 20% fewer mistakes with lavender.
3 Steps to Implementing a Scent Marketing Strategy for Senior Living
Successfully executing a scent marketing strategy can be challenging, especially if you don’t have the right technology. Let’s explore the three steps to implementing a successful strategy in your senior living facility.
Step 1: Select a Scent System with Powerful Controls
Simple scented candles, aerosols, or diffusers aren’t going to cut it. Some scent services function adequately but won’t alert you when they are unplugged or malfunction due to equipment failure or human error. Instead of these options, choose an app-controlled scent delivery system that provides high-quality fragrance and fail-proof features. Your system should rely on IoT technology within multiple smart diffusers. They should monitor scent levels, manage fragrance refills, and provide proactive maintenance alerts. In short, use technology to monitor and ensure you are getting what you pay for.
Step 2: Identify a Scent that Matches Your Goals
Next, choose a scent that matches your senior living facility’s overall goals. Consider using familiar fragrances, like apple and cinnamon, to make your facility smell like a home where there’s always fresh pie cooking in the oven. You may want to use tropical scents, like citrus and coconut, to make your facility smell like a luxurious, five-star spa. You may want to use a natural scent, like magnolia or sea spray, to make your facility smell like the great outdoors.
Step 3: Monitor Results and Make Changes
Your scent delivery system should empower you to check metrics like scent intensity, coverage, and air turnover. Track those metrics alongside key performance indicators (KPIs) like Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey results and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey results. Then, you can measure fragrance performance and make subsequent adjustments to improve your scent delivery.
Conclusion: A Successful Scent Marketing Strategy for Senior Living
A successful scent marketing strategy can have many benefits for your senior living facility. It can enhance the environment, improve your residents’ well-being, decrease seniors’ social isolation, and boost staff performance. The right technology and deployment can help you drastically improve your senior living facility overall, improve the lives of your residents, and give comfort to visiting family members reminding them of why they chose your facility in the first place.
by rblakerice | Apr 29, 2021 | Scent Marketing
Now that your properties are opening for business again, it’s time to rethink the overall occupant experience. Enter commercial scent.
Scent is a powerful tool that you can use in your all commercial properties — office facilities, included. It can sway consumer emotions, boost brand awareness, and help you differentiate your space from competitors. Discover how to further utilize commercial scent for reopenings below.
Create a Positive Atmosphere
While some office workers have enjoyed working from home, others are ready to embrace a new hybrid work environment. As the workforce emerges post-pandemic, facility managers can use scent to welcome back office employees.
The power of scent is influential. Scent can evoke consumers’ emotions, feelings, and memories. Scent professionals have even been able to map scents to predictable results. For example, citrus has been linked with energy, lavender with reduced stress, peppermint with stimulation, and cinnamon with improved concentration.
For reopenings, create a positive atmosphere with a commercial scent of your choice. Consider choosing a scent that helps relax occupants; after all, some may feel worried about returning to public spaces. Above all, a positive atmosphere will :
- Improve the overall occupant experience
- Encourage longer office visits
- Boost the number of professional return visits
Scent is a simple yet effective way to create a positive atmosphere that entices workers to keep coming back as the reopening process begins.
Boost Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is critical in the commercial real estate industry. Commercial scent is a subtle way to boost brand awareness, especially since occupants have been away from your spaces for so long. With the help of a recognizable commercial scent, they’ll be able to recognize when they’re in one of your spaces, even if you have multiple properties.
Many top brands use a specific scent across all of their stores. These scents are immediately recognizable no matter which location residents encounter them in. Be sure to choose a scent that matches your brand guidelines and commercial purpose. For example, an office space should have a different scent from a retail facility.
In general, using scent throughout your properties will:
- Make consumers feel welcomed to a familiar space each time they return
- Empower your properties to stand out as uniformly pleasant environments
- Help achieve brand recognition throughout your properties
Boosting brand awareness with commercial scent is an effective way of improving occupant’s ability to recognize your properties no matter where they are.
Differentiate Your Space from Competitors
A lot of commercial spaces are opening at once, which means that consumers suddenly have a lot of options. You have to stand apart from the crowd if you want to attract them to your spaces. Commercial scent is a great tool for differentiating your brand and distinguishing your facility from competitors.
Overall, using a positive commercial scent will:
- Create an atmosphere that produces better experiences than those of your competitors
- Help your brand establish a clear branded scent
- Solidify a head-to-toe brand experience that differs from competitors
Ultimately, a commercial scent is a great way to give your space that extra differentiator, creating a unique experience that will boost your space’s popularity as employees get used to returning to the office.
Using Your Commercial Scent for Reopenings
Reopening your commercial facilities is a great opportunity to create a unique atmosphere that consumers love. Use scent to create a positive experience, boost brand awareness, and differentiate your brand from competitors during the reopening period.
Ready to get your scent strategy started? Get in touch with ScentBridge today!
by rblakerice | Apr 22, 2021 | Case Study, Scent Marketing, Technology
Overview
ScentBridge is the industry leader in intelligent scent systems backed by performance and service delivery. This first-of-its-kind technology has revolutionized the scent marketing industry with its mobile app-enabled access, consistent fragrance delivery, and measurable scent experiences.
Challenge
The COVID-19 pandemic required facility managers to reduce costs and increase efficiencies while still ensuring managers, workers, and other personnel health and safety. The closing and reopening of facilities forced business operations — including scent marketing— to become more flexible to adapt to unprecedented circumstances.
Approach
As COVID-19 forced many businesses to close, ScentBridge was able to remotely power down scent systems using their IoT smart scent solution and 4G cellular connectivity. Competitive systems that required on-site technician visits continued to operate and dispense fragrance into un-inhabited environments and continued to draw power during a time when every expense was critical for economic survival. Once COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, ScentBridge immediately reactivated systems remotely without needed to schedule on-site technicians to hinder the opening process for clients’ facility management teams.
“Facility Managers could quickly check scent off their list of protocols.”
Results
ScentBridge’s smart scent delivery system provided their clients’ facility managers with immediate verification of powered down systems without causing the additional risk of infection from on-site technician visits. Facility managers could quickly check scent off their list of protocols as they were forced to close their doors to guests and promptly turn the system back on once they reopened.
Expect More from Your Smart Scent Delivery.
Stop paying for scent services that only work half of the time.
by rblakerice | Apr 15, 2021 | IOT, Technology
Internet of Things (IoT) technology continues to advance our everyday world. Facilities are seeing more advantages on a larger scale—without having to hire more staff members or overspend their budgets. In essence, these technological advancements are helping facilities and their management do more with less by providing these IoT benefits.
IoT Benefits for Facilities
#1: Get a Real-Time Picture of Performance
Tracking equipment performance is vital. It’s how you ensure your facilities are running smoothly. You have to quickly identify which equipment is wearing out or not working properly, and adjust it, replace it, or order maintenance. IoT devices monitor equipment in real-time, so you can always access an up-to-date picture of your equipment’s overall performance.
#2: Control IoT Tools from Afar
IoT tools can go beyond simple tracking. In many cases, you can also control your equipment from the comfort of your office. You can adjust items like thermostats, scent diffusers, and lighting after reviewing their current status. Adjusting your equipment from afar prevents you from having to travel to the equipment and manually manipulate it.
#3: Automate Simple Tasks
With help from advanced IoT software, you can automate simple tasks for your equipment. For example, you can set a heating system to turn on if your thermostat detects temperatures below a certain point. You can also automate scents to release at a given point of time each day, and stop producing scent if the air saturation reaches a certain level. You can even automate customer notifications like GreaseWatch does when restaurants’ grease traps need to be pumped out.
#4: Make Your Resources Go Farther
By knowing exactly how your equipment is performing, your team can perform maintenance and replace or refill equipment right when it needs it. You can also use the exact amount of labor and resources that your facilities need to meet your goals. Ultimately, IoT helps you more efficiently use your resources, helping them go farther than before.
#5: Work on the Go
You don’t need to be office-bound to access powerful IoT technology. Certain providers let you access your IoT platform on the go from a smartphone or tablet app, as well as from a desktop computer or laptop. With this level of access, you can track equipment performance and make changes while you’re working in the field.
#6: Increase Team Efficiency
IoT helps you pinpoint what needs doing, right when you need to be doing it. This in itself helps your team focus on priority projects, saving time you may have spent tracking equipment performance manually or performing unnecessary maintenance. In addition, IoT platforms centralize facility information in a single central hub. Team members can check the portal to access accurate information, ensuring they’re on the same page. Certain IoT platforms offer built-in collaboration tools, too, so teams can use the platform to organize projects and schedules.
#7: Reduce Costs
Accurate performance tracking, precise equipment controls, automated tasks, and precise resource use all help your business reduce facility costs. You won’t find yourself replacing equipment unnecessarily—or frequently paying high fees for emergency repairs because you missed warning signs. For example, GreaseWatch has set their IoT system to automatically dispatch a pumping truck when their IoT grease interceptor notes that it has reached capacity, saving restaurants and commercial kitchens from costly overflow situations.
#8: Enhance the Customer Experience
IoT technology helps you improve the customer experience, too. Your team can automate key communications, such as order or delivery updates, refill alerts, and billing notifications, so customers are never caught unawares. Plus, with your team’s accurate equipment tracking, customers will rarely have to experience lags in service or problems with your facility performance.
#9: Get Insights Into Business Operations
IoT platforms automatically gather critical data about your facilities. They can let you know how much of each resource you use, and even track revenue and costs side by side. Most IoT platforms will present this information in digestible graphs so your team can review and understand it quickly, gaining key insights with ease.
#10: Make Better Business Decisions
The better you understand your facility’s overall operations and performance, the more informed you and other business leaders will be when making critical business decisions. An IoT platform can provide data and insights that help you make well-informed decisions, potentially even boosting your company’s revenue.
Conclusion: IoT and Your Facilities
There’s no doubt that IoT is a powerful tool and a must-have for cutting-edge facility operations. Ultimately, IoT benefits from a powerful platform will skyrocket your facility management proficiency—and your business’s overall success—without requiring you to overwork your teams or overspend your budget.
