Start by identifying the data you already collect. When running an omni-channel campaign, you might have users confirming appointment times for a location earlier in the day and checking in upon arrival to gain a promised benefit. If you use an interactive display, there is already data on the stickiness of your user experiences, and which choices lead to greater degrees of conversion. If you operate in a retail environment, you certainly have transactional point-of-sale (POS) data. Viewing the data in this context will help you better understand your business, and doing this self assessment gives you an idea of what you have and what you might need.

In retail environments, some of the most valuable insights start with POS data. One of the most basic questions for digital signage-based campaigns is the length of the playlist. Depending on the length, you might have the time to tell the story of one complex product, or perhaps an entire portfolio of services. If your digital signage is designed to be seen by customers placing orders, your POS data can be leveraged to address playlist length and products to be featured.

One approach is to filter through your data, looking for periods that have little to no slack between transactions. These are considered constrained periods. Based on these periods of steady transactions, and how long a chain of contiguous orders occurs, you can calculate the average wait time in line for your customers. This is the dwell time you should think of when considering the maximum length of your playlist. There is no need to go beyond that, since your customer has already placed an order and further promotion would be moot.
 
Various industry studies also speak of the importance of making the length of individual message and call-to-action within your content playlist as concise as possible. There might only be a few seconds in which a person’s eyes are attracted to your content, trying to absorb the message, before potentially moving on to something else of interest.
 
The same approach can be applied to related questions in a high capacity food and beverage environment, where it is important to understand if newly refreshed digital signage content strategies are impacting your throughput. If they are, changes in your average transaction time (in seconds) can mean extra transactions gained or lost, and speak to the complexity of your message.  Perhaps your new messaging made for a smoother customer service transaction, eliminated confusion, or made next steps far clearer?  Or perhaps it did the exact opposite. Outcomes can also be enhanced by leveraging operational insights about kitchen efficiency and streamlining your digital menu to remove items that are more preparation intensive. Doing so will maximize fulfillment throughput during your busiest periods.

Depending on your location, various loyalty programs, or length of resort stay data, you also have some appreciation of how often your customer returns to the same counter and the same signage message. A better understanding of your audience’s visitation patterns help determine how often your messaging needs to change in order to be thought of as relevant and fresh. Messaging can be further refined via day-parting of your content to reach specific audiences. Day-parting your content gives you defined marketing campaign periods each day that can be tested individually, swapped out as needed, and measured for impact.

Lastly, a simple fact is that if you promote everything, you are promoting nothing. All of the above approaches can certainly provide you some tools that leverage your location’s data, but even if customer lines stretch out the door, it doesn’t mean you should try for an hour-long playlist of every product and service you are offering. Such a broad strategy generally isn’t what you think about in your marketing efforts, and your audience really doesn’t need detailed information on everything, despite your capability to provide it. Focusing on specific recommendations both increases the chances your customers will act on your message, and makes it easier for you to measure the impact of your messaging strategy.  The goal is for your content to deliver the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.

There is no silver bullet, but there is a great opportunity to discover further insights in your endless data.

Author Frank McGuinness, will be co-presenting Seminar 20 entitled, "How to Generate Data-Driven Content,” at Digital Signage Expo 2015. To learn more, visit www.dse2015.com.