For service providers, this proliferation has been a bitter-sweet experience. On one hand, WiFi provides a means to ease network congestion caused by heavy data users (or as it is commonly called, WiFi offload). On the other hand, it becomes difficult to attach a monetary value to this widely-available benefit. As a CSP, you have to not only maintain QoE for your users but also compete for market share against unsecured public WiFi and other low-cost service providers. To top it off, most people expect WiFi to be a free service. This leaves very few methods to monetize WiFi, making it difficult to incorporate into your business strategy.

To combat the monetization challenge, one of the most underrated but reliable solutions is the WiFi captive portal. The captive portal is the face of your brand, interacting with your customers before they authenticate and connect. It’s not just a tactical pit-stop in the WiFi service route, but also a window of opportunity. All you have to do is think of the possibilities beyond free WiFi.

Here are 6 ways to make the best use of a captive portal in a way that both captivates customers’ attention and achieves business excellence, at no cost to the end user.

How to Monetize Free WiFi with a Captive Portal

Fill out a survey

Surveys are a great way to collect user data, like email addresses, as well as a way to solicit feedback related to their experience with your brand. Through a captive portal, you can gather required data to drive email marketing campaigns and derive value from the survey results.

Verify SMS to connect

Asking for a user’s phone number gives you one more way to capitalize on your free WiFi hotspot access. You get verified phone numbers of prospects which can be fed into your marketing pipeline to develop them into customers.

Advertisements

Most users are willing to see an advertisement in exchange for free WiFi access. By putting advertisements in the form of banners and other static ads on the captive portal, the user must view these before they can gain access to WiFi. By showcasing your own brand’s ads, you can boost brand knowledge and support. Or, you can monetize by charging a per view fee for other companies’ advertisements.

Video Advertisements

Video advertisements take monetizing on ad revenue to another level, yielding a much higher per-view rate. Requiring users to watch a 20 second video ad, before they can access WiFi, stimulates user engagement and can generate higher ad revenue.

Capture data using social login

For almost all mobile apps, social sign-on is a norm these days. It has become a habit for the customer and you can exploit this to gain access to some useful data about the user. Later, you can use this data to run analytics and targeted campaigns targeting any particular segment.

Connect with an existing account

Whether you are an internet service provider or a mobile network operator running a WiFi network, you can allow your existing customers to log into your public WiFi hotspot network with the same credentials they use for their home broadband connection or mobile account. Easy WiFi access = happy customers = loyal customers!

The WiFi Captive Portal is not just powerful and appealing, it is also quite simple to create. Alepo WiFi Service Management Platform (SMP) can help you design a captive portal that works best for you with our modular, highly scalable platform, which has proven IOTs with many top vendors. The Alepo WiFi SMP is the best option to get your WiFi services up and running in minutes while adding value to your brand.

Learn more about the Alepo WiFi Service Management Platform