|
Newsletter Archives
What's the Point?
Measuring Your Messaging Success
How many people viewed
your HR bulletin on Thursday? What time of day is best to target
students in the East Lounge? Who is your most loyal audience?
Although technology
allows us to track the frequency of published visual communications, it
is equally important to measure the success of those messages with the
viewer. Did they see a particular bulletin? Did they understand it? Will
they take action or have they already taken action?
A system for measuring
viewer attention is easily implemented with some basic call-to-action
strategy and tracking. In order to measure viewership, follow these
basic steps:
1.
Determine a clear,
quantifiable goal or question for study
2.
Formulate a bulletin
with clear, easy to follow call to action
3.
Set up a response
collector (email, Web form, etc.)
4.
Publish the bulletin
during your determined testing period
5.
Collect response data
6.
Measure against known
variables
Let’s use an example to
illustrate the process:
1.
Question:
What is the best time of day to reach out to students in the Activity
Center?
2.
Bulletin with call to action:
3.
Published:
To the
Activity Center playlist on an hourly basis over one day (during opening
hours).
4.
Response:
Web form
5.
Hourly
data:
-
8am –
9am: 2 responses
-
9am –
10am: 0 responses
-
10am – 11am:
1 response
-
11am – 12pm:
4 responses
-
12pm –
1pm: 9 responses
-
1pm –
2pm: 12 responses
-
2pm –
3pm: 8 responses
-
3pm –
4pm: 4 responses
-
5pm –
6pm: 3 responses
-
6pm –
7pm: 2 responses
-
7pm –
8pm: 0 responses
7.
Conclusion:
Bulletins published between 1pm and 2pm gained the most response.
Responses are more heavily clustered around mid-day (12pm – 3pm).
We would, of course, repeat our study to
discern patterns and trends. Perhaps a two-week study would allow us to
determine not only the best time of day, but which days are most
successful.
It is vital to consider
the environment of the display and the responding viewer when
formulating measurement tactics. In our example, were there an adequate
number of computers for students to access to respond to our bulletin?
If not, more students may be paying attention to
messages than we concluded.
One idea is to pair
displays with freestanding computer kiosks to give viewers an instant
opportunity for action. This is a great way to judge which displays have
the fastest response time, which can indicate popular traffic areas.
By using attractive
motivational bulletins in a structured experiment, you can measure your
messaging effectiveness and tailor your visual communications for
greater success.
Copyright 2006. Tech Electronics, Inc. (TEi). All rights reserved.
|
