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What can digital signage take away from Forrester's 'New Campaign Management Mandate' study?

June 30, 2011 by Bill Yackey — Manager, West IP Communications

Email marketing company ExactTarget worked with Forrester Consulting to develop a new report called "The New Campaign Management Mandate" that examines the challenges that interactive marketers face with managing digital campaigns. Forrester defines the term “interactive marketing” as “The use of addressable channels like email, search, display advertising, social media, mobile, or online video to sense and respond to customer need.” For this post, I’ll isolate the display advertising part of that definition and try to relate some of the firm’s findings to our digital signage industry.

The current state of Interactive Marketing Management

As it turns out, many of the challenges faced by the digital signage industry mirror those faced by marketers engaging in email, social media and mobile advertising.

Forrester observation #1 - Lack of accountability is a barrier to future investment.
Particularly in the digital signage advertising space, one of the biggest hurdles presented to growing adoption of display advertising is getting agencies to accept the medium into their media mixes along with TV, radio, Internet and other OOH media. One of the oft-quoted reasons as to why this isn’t happening at a faster rate is because digital signage lacks the accountability metrics to accurately measure it against those other media. While companies and associations are working to put this in place, accurate accountability metrics have yet to be universally accepted and rolled out.

Forrester observation #2 - Cross?channel customer insight is absent.
Digital signage is not a standalone marketing and advertising tool. The medium works best when it is integrated into an overall marketing plan with other media present. One of the best examples of this to date is the integration with mobile smartphones, which through the use of QR codes and SMS texting can create a conversation between the advertiser and the customer that extends beyond the time spent in front of the screen. Which leads to their next point… 

Forrester observation #3 - Emerging channels are underutilized for customer dialogue.
While this mobile/digital signage technology is present and available today, it isn’t yet widely used or recognized by consumers. Savvy mobile users and early adopters will notice that these two technologies can talk to one another, but the general public remains in the dark. One dialogue that digital signage is doing right is that with social media, particularly Twitter. Companies in this space have been good about building platforms to host Twitter conversations on digital screens, fostering the interaction between the consumer and the advertiser.  Even on screens as a large as those in Times Square, consumers have had the opportunity to personally interact with screens and the brands that advertise on them.

Key findings

Pulled from the Executive Summary of the report, here are Forrester’s key findings and where digital signage technology stands against each.

Forrester Key Finding #1 - The need for speed resonates loudly with interactive marketers.
The beauty of interactivity is the ability to get instant results, feedback and interaction with consumers. Where digital signage has a leg up on traditional media is its ability to provide these instant results to marketers. To use the mobile and social media interaction example, we are able to track the number of customer interactions with the screens by time, location and network. Although audience measurement technology hasn’t been widely adopted and is mainly used for pilot projects, it has the ability to accurately measure consumer views of the screen, even if no interaction is made.

Forrester Key Finding #2 - Integrated campaign management is a strategic imperative.
All of this information means nothing to marketers if it’s not easy to acquire and interpret.  Forrester says here that to get this information, there needs to be greater collaboration between interactive marketing teams. For digital signage, this translates to fostering a relationship between the IT and marketing teams, which often have to collaborate in order to make a digital signage solution effective.

Forrester Key Finding #3 - ROI continues to haunt interactive marketers.
This harkens back to Forrester Observation #1 and the issues with our current marketing situation, but adding channels means more measurement and developing new ways to integrate that measurement into the overall marketing mix. Compound that with the fact that that digital signage measurement isn’t universally accepted and means an additional challenge in the form of calculating ROI.
 
Forrester Key Finding #4 - Unidirectional, channel?focused messaging is passé.
This should perhaps be moved to the top since the report really drives home the notion that all interactive media should focus on the customer dialogue with the advertiser. Despite respondents claiming a focus on customer dialogue, the report found that most companies still silo a lot of their messaging within individual channels. Digital signage is one of those channels that lend itself to cross-channel communication when used properly.

Forrester Key Finding #5 - Cracking the fragmented data puzzle is half the battle.
As any analyst will tell you, the quality of the data depends on the means of data collection. Marketers are struggling to tie together metrics from disparate reporting systems in order to provide accurate reports on cross-channel advertising. As digital signage begins to be better integrated with other channels, look for back-end systems to emerge that will provide better insight into the combined efforts.

The solution - Forrester’s New Campaign Management Mandate

Forrester’s solution to the issues presented here is the New Campaign Media Mandate, a list of recommendations for interactive marketers to “prove results of campaigns, enable real?time customer responses, improve data quality, improve cross?channel customer insight, and right?time delivery of marketing messages.”

• Enure greater accountability.
• Enable real?time management.
• Enhance relevance and personalization.
• Improve data and process integration.
• Foster collaboration.

I’d encourage you also to read the details of each bullet point of the mandate, located on pages 9-13 of the report. The 18-page report can be downloaded here, registration–free. 

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