The Hidden Gold Mine in Your Customer List
Every laundromat owner has a customer list. Maybe it's in your POS system. Maybe it's a loyalty program database. Maybe it's just a spreadsheet of phone numbers from your wash-dry-fold service.
That list is worth more than you think.
When Mark 24/7 Laundromats ran GPS-verified geofencing campaigns across their Florida and Alabama locations, they discovered something that should change how every laundromat operator thinks about marketing: first-party customer data delivered visits at $0.22 each—while third-party audience targeting cost $1.57 to $2.58 per visit.
That's not a marginal improvement. That's an 86% cost reduction using data you already own.
The Data: First-Party vs. Everything Else
Here's what we found when analyzing campaign performance across Mark 24/7's Pensacola market (6 locations, 3,192 total GPS-verified visits):
| Audience Segment | Cost Per Visit | vs. Average |
|---|---|---|
| First-Party Customer Data | $0.22 | -86% |
| Competitor Conquest | $1.89 | +20% |
| Dollar Store Shoppers | $1.45 | -8% |
| Convenience Store Visitors | $1.67 | +6% |
| Campaign Average | $1.57 | — |
The pattern held in their Alabama market (7 locations, 1,935 GPS-verified visits), where first-party data delivered $0.64 CPV against a $2.58 campaign average—still a 75% improvement.
| Audience Segment | Cost Per Visit | vs. Average |
|---|---|---|
| First-Party Customer Data | $0.64 | -75% |
| Competitor Conquest | $3.12 | +21% |
| Dollar Store Shoppers | $2.34 | -9% |
| Campaign Average | $2.58 | — |
Why First-Party Data Wins
The economics are straightforward:
1. You own this data—there's no licensing fee. Third-party audiences come with data costs baked in. Your customer list is free to activate.
2. The audience is pre-qualified. These people already chose your laundromat once. The conversion barrier is dramatically lower than convincing someone new.
3. Smaller, more precise audiences mean less waste. Instead of targeting 50,000 people who might need laundry service, you're targeting 2,000 who definitely do.
4. You're not competing in open exchanges. Third-party segments are available to every advertiser. Your customer list is exclusively yours.
How First-Party Geofencing Works
The process is simpler than most operators expect:
Step 1: Extract your customer data. Phone numbers, email addresses, or physical addresses from your POS, loyalty program, or service records.
Step 2: Match to mobile device IDs. Through privacy-compliant data partnerships, customer identifiers are matched to mobile advertising IDs.
Step 3: Serve targeted ads. Your customers see your ads on their mobile devices—apps, mobile web, connected TV.
Step 4: Verify visits with GPS. When a matched device enters your conversion zone (your laundromat), the visit is recorded with satellite-level accuracy.
The Multi-Location Advantage
For operators with multiple locations, first-party data creates a compounding advantage. (For more on tracking performance across locations, see our guide to multi-location attribution.)
- Customer data from all locations pools into one targeting asset
- Cross-location visits (customer A uses Location B) become trackable
- Marketing efficiency improves as the database grows
- New location launches can leverage existing customer relationships
Mark 24/7's 13 locations across Florida and Alabama created a first-party database large enough to drive meaningful visit volume at dramatically reduced costs.
Getting Started with First-Party Targeting
You don't need thousands of records to begin. Here's the minimum viable approach:
Minimum list size: 500 records (phone or email)
Expected match rate: 40-60% to mobile device IDs
Time to activate: 48-72 hours from data submission
Recommended budget: Allocate 20-30% of geofencing spend to first-party audiences
The 86% cost advantage means even a small first-party segment can dramatically improve your blended campaign efficiency.