A geotrigger is a ‘ping’ that a mobile device, with your app installed, sends when it enters a geofence. It works in the same way as a geofence, but does not send a push notification to the user.
Instead the information is used in a different way. For example app publishers may want to understand a user’s location history or to call custom code inside the app depending on the user’s location.
Geotriggers can also be used in conjunction with Beacons.

As app administrators thrive on data to improve their user experience and engagement, location based data is also an important component to understand their users’ behaviour in the real world. Businesses such as brick and mortar stores see location data as important for making important business decisions e.g. where should I open my next store. Geotriggers are an excellent way of collecting valuable location data easily and efficiently. Some example of how geotriggers have been used are:
Measure the Effectiveness Of Offline Advertising By setting geofences around an advertising campaign, such as a billboard, agencies can find out how effective print ads are by comparing the number of store visits from consumers who saw the ad versus consumers who were not exposed to the campaign.
Track Key Metrics By learning when users enter and exit a geofence, apps can discover how long consumers spend in a certain place such as a bar, when they visit and how often they return. Combining these metrics with online activity, purchase information and web browsing can help any business get a better overall sense of consumers purchasing habits online versus in person.
Make Smart Home Apps Smarter Smart home apps can use geotriggers to know when users (and their smartphones) leave their home. The app can then automatically switch to “nobody’s home” mode and save on energy.
Retargeting You can target people that have visited certain locations previously. By utilising your app user’s location history, app administrators can make their mobile targeting a lot more effective. For example, if an app user has visited a store twice, you can wait until the third visit before you give this person a coupon to try to close the sale. This way you are making your mobile marketing efforts more personalised, but spending your budget wisely and not just giving out coupons to everyone.
Understand Population Movements By creating multiple geofences throughout an area such a city, you can see over a period of time what people’s movement patterns are. You can easily learn things such as what times of day or days of the week people visit a location that you are interested in. By creating heatmaps you can also see the concentration of people at a particular location. This can be useful for improving distribution of your product or deciding where you open a new branch of your business.