Looking for some digital signage content ideas? You may never have thought about loyalty programs other than when you swipe your discount card at the supermarket or check into your favorite hotel chain, but don’t count it out for your own digital signs.
- Do you know how many people read your digital signage messages each day?
- Are you their preferred source for information?
- How are you measuring the success of your communications?
Loyalty programs are a creative way to answer these questions.
Loyalty programs are traditionally structured as marketing efforts that reward, and therefore encourage, loyal buying behavior. Why not use this proven technique to encourage loyal viewing behavior?
Instigating a loyalty program will allow you to both learn about and reward your audience:
Educational
- Allows you to build a viewer contact list
- Enables collection of basic audience demographics
- Monitors trends and preferences
- Reveals which communications are working and which need adjustment
Inspirational
- Let’s viewers know that you care about their opinions
- Encourages audience participation and feedback
- Rewards viewers for loyalty to your communications
- Continues to build relationships and open communication channels
To build a communications loyalty program, you will first need to determine your goals. Outline a clear set of objectives, including:
- Who is your target audience?
- What do you want to learn about them?
- What do you want to learn from them?
- How you will communicate to your audience (digital signage only, targeted messaging, etc.)?
- How you will collect feedback?
- How will you reward your audience?
- How you will promote the loyalty program?
- How you will measure the success of the loyalty program?
One simple method is to invite viewers to register for your loyalty program and then integrate contests and rewards for those members in your digital signage messages. Including action items, such as “The first Rewards Club member to call extension 230 will win a Starbucks gift card,” will give you a vehicle to measure viewing patterns and participation statistics.
Because this is the only place where participants can gain those rewards, they will become more loyal to your communications portal. Also, because winners are restricted to loyalty program members, other viewers will be encouraged to sign up.
As in all communication strategies, it is essential that you consider your audience carefully and tailor the program and rewards to their tastes. If your rewards are not enticing, you will not likely see the results you need.