"We're in the area" — How Location-Based Campaigns Find Customers You Didn't Know Were Nearby

A friend of mine runs a land surveying business in Transylvania. Two guys, a truck, and a lot of driving to remote locations. The work itself pays well, but getting there is expensive — fuel, time, wear on the vehicle. So whenever they're heading to a village for one job, they want to know: does anyone else in that area need something done?

For years, the answer was "let me scroll through my phone and try to remember." Sometimes they'd realize after the fact that a client 3 km away had been asking for a quote for weeks. They just didn't connect the dots.

That's the problem location-based campaigns solve. Not in a creepy, track-everyone-all-the-time way. In a practical, "we're already going to be there, let's tell people" way.

How it actually works

The idea is simple. Your CRM already has contacts with addresses — cities, villages, maybe even street-level detail. When those addresses get saved, the system quietly looks up the GPS coordinates in the background. Your contacts don't need to do anything. You don't need to do anything. It just happens.

Then, when you're planning a field visit or heading to a specific area, you create a campaign and instead of picking contacts by tags or companies, you pick them by location. You set a center point — either your current GPS position, a city name you type in, or a spot you click on a map — and a radius. Say, 15 km. The system shows you exactly how many of your contacts fall within that circle. You write your message, hit send, and everyone in range gets an email or SMS.

That's it. No integration with third-party mapping services you need to pay for. No complicated setup. You pick a spot, set a distance, and send.

Three ways to set the target

When you're setting up a location campaign, you get three options for choosing where to target:

Use my location — if you're already in the field, the app uses your phone's GPS. Great for "I'm here right now, who's nearby?" moments. You open the CRM, hit the location button, and it centers the campaign on wherever you are.

Search for a place — type a city or village name. If you're planning tomorrow's route from the office, you search for "Cristuru Secuiesc" and it drops the pin there. You can see the results on the list and pick the right one.

Pick on the map — sometimes you just want to tap a spot on the map. Maybe you're targeting an industrial zone outside town that doesn't have a proper name in search. Click the map, set the radius, done.

All three methods show you a live preview: "23 contacts within 10 km." You can adjust the radius with a slider — from 1 km for a dense urban area to 50 km for rural regions — and watch the count update in real time.

Use cases that actually make sense

Location campaigns aren't just for field salespeople, though that's the most obvious one. Here are scenarios where this feature genuinely saves time and creates opportunities.

Surveying and field services

This is the one that started it all. Land surveyors, soil testers, pest control, chimney sweeps, well drillers — anyone who drives to a location and brings equipment. The cost of being in an area is already paid once you're there. The marginal cost of one more job nearby is almost zero. A quick "We'll be working in the Feliceni area next Tuesday. Need anything done?" email to contacts within 15 km can easily fill gaps in the schedule.

Agricultural services

A company that does drone spraying, soil analysis, or equipment rental can notify nearby farmers: "Our spraying drone is in Covasna county this week. Slots available Thursday-Friday." Instead of farmers having to reach out and hope the timing works, you come to them with a ready-made schedule.

Real estate

A property goes on the market in a specific neighborhood. Rather than blasting your entire contact list, you send a targeted email to contacts who've expressed interest in that area. "New listing in Sfântu Gheorghe — 3 bed, garden, 120k." Fewer emails, but the ones you send are actually relevant.

Events and workshops

Hosting a workshop or open house? Target people who can actually attend. "Free tax planning workshop next Thursday at our Târgu Mureș office" — sent only to contacts within 30 km who might reasonably drive there. No point emailing someone 200 km away about a 2-hour evening event.

Service maintenance rounds

HVAC technicians, elevator maintenance, fire extinguisher inspections — businesses that do periodic service rounds can group clients geographically. "We're doing annual boiler inspections in the Odorhei area next week. Reply to book your slot." This turns a one-appointment trip into a full day of work.

Regional promotions

A distributor launching in a new city can target only contacts in that region. A restaurant opening a second location can reach people nearby. A construction supplier can announce that deliveries are now available in a new area. Location makes the message relevant instead of generic.

Door-to-door and direct sales

Before heading out for a day of door-knocking, pull up everyone in the target neighborhood. After the day, add new contacts with their addresses — they'll automatically get coordinates and be available for the next round. Over time, you build a heat map of your territory.

How contacts get their coordinates

You might be wondering: do my contacts need GPS? Do they need to share their location? No. When you add or update a contact and include their city (and optionally country), the CRM looks up the coordinates automatically. It uses OpenStreetMap data — free, open, and privacy-friendly. No tracking, no surveillance. Just a one-time lookup of "Brașov" → "45.65°N, 25.59°E."

If a contact doesn't have a city but belongs to a company that does, the company's coordinates are used as a fallback. Contacts with no location data at all are simply excluded from location campaigns. Nobody gets a message they shouldn't.

Email or SMS — your choice

Location campaigns work with both email and SMS. Email is great for longer messages — detailed offers, event invitations, seasonal promotions. SMS is better for time-sensitive things: "We're in your area today, call us if you need anything" hits differently at 8 AM than an email someone might read at 6 PM.

For SMS, contacts need to have opted in and have a mobile number on file. For email, they need an email address and newsletter opt-in. The system handles this automatically — you'll only see the count of contacts who can actually receive your message.

Tips from the field

A few things we've learned from businesses using this feature:

Start with a small radius and expand. 10 km is a good default. If you only get 3 contacts, bump it to 20. You can always widen the circle — you can't un-send a message.

Mention the location in your message. "We'll be in the Harghita area" is much more compelling than a generic "Our services are available." People respond to proximity. It feels personal, like you're talking to them specifically.

Timing matters for SMS. Send it the morning of or the day before. Not a week out — by then they've forgotten. Not at 10 PM — that's rude. Between 8 and 10 AM on a workday works well.

Combine with tags for precision. Location gets you the geography. Tags get you the segment. "All contacts within 20 km of Miercurea Ciuc who are tagged 'needs-inspection'" — that's a laser-focused campaign.

Fill in the city field. The system can only geocode what it knows. If half your contacts have blank city fields, you're missing half your potential audience. A one-time cleanup to fill in cities pays for itself quickly.

The bigger picture

Most CRMs don't do this. They'll let you filter by tags, by company, by custom fields. But geography? That's still something people do manually — scrolling through contacts, checking addresses, building lists by hand.

For any business where "being nearby" is part of the value proposition, location-based campaigns turn your contact list into a geographic asset. Every address you collect becomes a future opportunity, automatically indexed on a map, ready to reach the moment you're in the area.

The surveyor friends I mentioned? They filled two extra jobs in their first week using this. That covered their fuel costs for the month. Not bad for a feature that takes about 30 seconds to use.