Article

How digital signage software can deliver personalized experiences

The modern customer can pull up information instantly on their phones, and retailers and other businesses have struggled to compete for customer's attention. Digital signage software vendors are helping address this problem by delivering personalized experiences.

March 5, 2019 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator

The modern customer can pull up information instantly on their phones, and retailers and other businesses have struggled to compete for customer's attention. Digital signage software vendors are helping address this problem by delivering personalized experiences.

Why so personal?

Many end users today aren't just looking for digital signage that can showcase simple advertising messages. They also need systems that can push out a variety of information to various types of customers and employees, and in order to do that, they need personalized content.

"Our company uses digital signage to communicate everything from benefit information and payroll notices, to employee events and recognition," Ashlee Franken, marketing coordinator for SC2 Supply Chain Services and Solutions, said in an email.

Franken said the company's top priority was to find a reliable digital signage solution that could, "update at a moment’s notice, offered complete support, and would allow us creative control over both the messages and the format."

In order to meet this demand for more creative control, vendors have to be at the top of their game.

How are vendors meeting this demand?

One way vendors are delivering personalized experiences is by developing a better CMS that can handle different types of content, such as highly interactive content integrated with different data sources. Vendors are also integrating data-triggered content into their CMS to directly respond to customers.

"The newest innovation is data-triggered content, where the information changes on screen based on conditional logic set up alongside data feeds. This sounds complex, but it's basically just an 'if this, show this’ scenario the user sets up in the software one time, and then it runs all on its own," Debbie Dewitt, marketing communications manager, Visix, said in an email. "The software can make decisions on what to show on screen based on numbers, words, times or other data elements you've mapped to."

One a simpler level, many end users are beginning to integrate social media feeds, which can help engage directly with customers. Santa Clara University, for example, uses live social media feeds with its network of 80-displays to better interact with students.

"We can also now securely use outside URLs, and integrate live feeds from our different social media networks through the external Tagboard service," Nicole Morales, director of digital media technologies, school of engineering, Santa Clara University, said in an email.

Vendors, however, are constantly advancing toward even better experiences for end users through new tools.

What's on the horizon?

End users in the future aren't just going to use basic digital signage tools. They are going to increasingly look for more advanced tools such as facial recognition, widgets, reporting, analysis and other features to reach customers. Digital signage software will have to catch up to these demands.

"Software will have to move away from 'show this to everyone' toward 'show this to this individual,' based on configured parameters. People are always going to want to put up a video or message once in a while, but the bulk of their time will be spent on configuration versus content design," Dewitt said.

Dewitt also identified the major trend for the next two years will be an expansion in the "number and type of data sources and triggers that clients can use, and to streamline and optimize the software features to make it as simple as possible for users to automate data and interactivity."

For end users, the important takeaway is that the key to successful digital signage is relevant content — and every part of a digital signage solution should support that endeavor.

 As long as they keep that fact in mind, they will be able to benefit from all the developments in digital signage, without falling victim to "bells and whistles."

Image via Istock.com

About Bradley Cooper

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Bradley Cooper is the editor of ATM Marketplace and Food Truck Operator. He was previously the editor of Digital Signage Today. His background is in information technology, advertising, and writing.

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