Digital Signage then, Digital Experience now

The management of content within the different formats associated with digital signage was the start of a radical transformation in how brands and consumers communicate and interact. As things stand today, the diversification of the touchpoints used by brands to interact with the consumers in an omnichannel environment requires a different strategy, more integrated and advanced. It’s time to move to a Digital Experience Platform.

Regardless of the sector in which an organization operates, managing the multichannel customer journey from one touchpoint to another is increasingly challenging. The target is studying and providing customers with relevant and smooth ways to communicate and engage. What is the issue? The additional growth of digital solutions adopted by companies over the years, to manage Communication and Advertising. Understanding their technological evolution helps to better contextualize both choices and development prospects, given that not everyone remembers that digital advertising began with digital signage.

Digital Signage 1.0

First generation digital signage, also known as DOOH (Digital Out of Home), has been the beginning of digital advertising – technically speaking. These displays, employed as digital posters, use moving graphics and one or more digital images displayed on a screen to convey various information on events, product launches or public announcements. Unlike traditional posters, digital posters can use animations and transitions to emphasize messages, update content and give detailed information in a more dynamic and catchy way. When the screen also integrates audio, a synchronization with the video enhances its ability to attract and influence. All this by enabling a visual design which minimizes cognitive overload, making the communication more impactful and suggestive. Digital posters are inexpensive and easy to use, and they used to be managed locally. Now they have evolved, embracing the Software as a Service strategies for the management of both infrastructure and the digital content.

Digital Signage 2.0

The development of LCD technologies and audio/video management systems, together with the progressive diversification of installation formats in terms of dimension, geometry, composition and costs, has led brands to massively adopt digital signage. As a result, there has been a change in how they design, program and distribute installations and digital content. This is especially true for brands with diversified distribution chains, who started designing their Digital Media Player and Digital Content Management (DCM), and integrating the Product Data Management (PDM) to support communication in showrooms and e-commerce websites. Cutting content to adopt a wider multimedia plan has led to a more strategic operation: planning of schedules, focusing on the target audience and adapting to their different times, seasons, currencies, events and initiatives taking place. 

The system intelligence associated with Digital Signage Content Management has been further enriched thanks to the use of the first sensors. The camera, integrated into the installations in a minimally invasive way, gave marketing the possibility to collect insights and study the audience by age, sex, ethnicity and time spent on a specific part of the screen. This allowed a data driven customer centricity where information collected in real time has allowed companies to better manage their communication campaigns associated with the different installations of their digital screens and the content offered. 

Digital Signage 3.0

The evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), together with the increasingly sophisticated and advanced sensors and actuators, has enhanced the opportunities associated with digital signage solutions and customer experience management. Examples include installations in-store or near the points of sale are advanced devices which are connected and communicate with each other. Intelligent fitting rooms, magic mirror and smart showcases, as well as interactive display cases and totems, smart tables or smart shelves talk to the customers and to their phones or tablets, increasing the engagement. Interactive touchpoints are often connected with social media and e-commerce websites, making Digital Signage 3.0 a solution at the very top of the engagement economy. Technologies are integrated in the displays, and displays are embedded in structures that combine Design and UX. This way, they broadcast a coordinated brand image offering methods of navigation, sharing, gamification, purchase and payment aimed at maximizing both the engagement and the consultation, pickup and delivery keys. By integrating RFID readers into installations, retailers may add RFID tags to each product’s label which allows the customer to interact and communicate with the smart installations. The customer feels assured they are buying an original, traceable and unique product. Additionally, smart totems and magic mirrors are also able to interact with consumers’ devices. Organizing this kind of technological and operational diversification requires brands to create, program and coordinate touchpoints and, above all, content. All this considering how the data flows need to be traced and appropriately collected and analyzed before being organized, is necessary in order to allow the implementation of hyper-personalisation strategies associated with precision marketing.

Digital Signage 4.0

Today, engaging consumers and putting them at the center of a multi-channel communication and sales strategy means rethinking the technologies used thus far. From a cross-channel perspective, this can be achieved by simplifying and rationalizing IT governance on one hand, and the design and delivery strategy of content and campaigns on the other, from a cross-channel perspective. In addition to the management of touchpoints, the coordination actions of engagement require the creation of a series of initiatives in an omnichannel mode – from surveys to “member gets member” initiatives, from collecting digital points to reading the receipt, from competition to rewarding features. Engagement and retention strategies are diversified and strengthened thanks to the digital world if there is a strategic connection and coordination behind them. This is a major cultural and functional change of pace for the companies. Right now, marketing is like a juggler who tries to manage the plurality of touchpoints coexisting in a poorly integrated way, facing a plurality of partners – from creative agencies to system integrators. The lack of integration between installations, tools, technologies, applications and systems generates data on the interactions and on the consumers, which are often redundant and isolated. This is why brands are increasingly looking to MarTech platforms, which are new generation systems capable of guaranteeing a single centralized control room to orchestrate the quantity of layered and overlapping touchpoints, as well as coordinating the associated communication with different interactive models enabled by constantly evolving technologies. 

A state-of-the-art MarTech platform 

What is needed today is a Digital Experience Platform able to manage the entire information infrastructure and ensure that, at the same time, an engagement is adaptive, synchronized, contextual, relevant and safe within all touchpoints. Thanks to its wide experience gained on technologies associated with engagement and digital signage, M-Cube takes care of design, programming and customisation by developing a Digital Experience Platform. It simplifies governance by maximizing all business and management objectives. M-cube offers brands a valuable control room which allows them to manage multiple applications through a single level of interaction, combining engagement, loyalty, profiling, rewarding and targeting modules. This is done through API (Application Programming Interface) which complements the platform with third-party applications, implementing ERP, CRM, BI and so on. 

The engagement economy one click away

Retailers are able to undertake engagement strategies in a simple and intuitive way by combining communication, gamification and an advanced use of consumer data. Through the integration of mobile technologies, digital signage, IoT, social management, and digital marketing the platform is able to build an omnichannel relationship with consumers over time. Through the use of a web-based dashboard companies will be able to manage incoming and outgoing information in an advanced and responsive way. No matter what device or channel is used, digital messages are set up according to the proper profiling methods, which will allow you to analyze the feedback for every micro-moment of the customer journey in real time. Brands are able to perfect information and services for customers in the short, medium and long term, turning their satisfaction into loyalty and retention.