Spreading Festive Cheer And Driving Sales With In-Store Digital Signage Technologies: Spectrio

October 9, 2024 by Dave Haynes

SPONSORED CONTENT 

By Ron Levac, Spectrio

The holiday season is a critical time for retailers – with the period between October and the end of December often called the golden quarter for sales. A successful holiday season can make a retailer’s year, while a poor one can lead to losses, cash flow problems, and excess inventory.

Spectrio’s digital signage, audio and scent marketing solutions are powerful solutions to help retailers both streamline store operations during their busiest sales period, while also transform their spaces into festive wonderlands.

Creating Immersive Holiday Experiences

Imagine walking into a store filled with the aromas of gingerbread and pine cones, while classic Christmas and holiday season tunes are playing softly in the background.

Real estate agents have long used candles and the aromas of fresh-out-of-the-oven baked bread or cookies to make their properties for sale inviting to visitors. Spectrio’s scent marketing tools can realize that effect in stores – coupling that with the company’s overhead music solutions.

Retailers can choose from curated playlists featuring licensed festive music, and they can even create their own brand-aligned holiday scents.

In-store screens managed by cloud software can run holiday-themed content that sets a tone and mood for stores, with managed LCD and LED displays around stores supporting and amplifying seasonal decorations, and also helping drive promotions specific to the season. That can be anything from gift-buying suggestions to Black Friday promotions and manager’s specials local to that store.

Streamlining For Holiday Efficiency

Increased store traffic can force short-term changes from normal operations, and technology can effectively help manage this influx and optimize their operations:

• Real-Time Updates: Easily update signage content to reflect stock availability, flash sales, or queue information, keeping customers informed and minimizing wait times;
• Easy Scheduling: Retailers can schedule holiday-specific content and adjust store hours in advance, ensuring a consistent message across all channels;
• Remote Management: Retailers can control and update content across multiple store locations from a central dashboard, saving time and effort. Local managers can also be provided access to the solution in their store, with oversight possible from head office.

Driving Sales

Screens in stores – at entry points, on end-caps and nested with products offer a prime opportunity to influence buying decisions at what has been coined by retail marketing experts as the moment of truth – when shoppers are in the aisles and making final decisions about what to buy.

Consumers can be influenced by everything from pricing to product differentiation, while retailers may be driven by other factors like overstocks  or depleted inventory.

Screens allow retailers to be nimble about in-store marketing, and even automate what’s promoted based on sales and inventory data.

But screens also help drive sales by driving experience – with creative and technologies making people want to spend a little more time browsing and enjoying the programmed and designed atmosphere.

Data-Driven Insights Drive Improvements

Spectrio’s analytics tools provide valuable data on customer engagement and campaign performance in retail during the holiday season. This allows businesses to:

• Track Foot Traffic and Dwell Time: Understand customer flow patterns to optimize store layout and product placement;
• Measure Campaign Effectiveness: Analyze which promotions or displays resonate most with customers.  This empowers retailers to refine their marketing strategies and understand how digital signage content is driving awareness and sales;
• Make Informed Decisions: Leverage shopper insights to optimize pricing, inventory, and staffing for greater efficiency and profitability. For instance, anonymous analytics from sensors can reveal trends in shopper movement throughout the store, highlighting the busiest sections and peak times. This data can guide staffing adjustments and identify where promotions will have the most impact.

The Holidays Beyond Retail

The holiday season is, of course, about more than just shopping, and the same technologies that can drive experiences and operations in stores can also be applied to other environments.

Healthcare operators – from clinics to medical campuses – can create a welcoming environment for patients using holiday scents, music, and updated signage. Messaging can be everything from holiday operating hours, and health advice related to festive season traditions like food, drink and crowds, and also to the time of year (more time indoors spikes cold and flu case counts).

Financial services companies can use technology to drive the atmosphere in their branches, promote special offers and both guide and engage waiting customers.

Workplaces, particularly those that have hybrid work arrangements, can use displays to reinforce the seasonal mood when staff are on-premise. Networked  screens on site are particularly valuable for ensuring important communications are seen, given that roughly four of five emails, on average, even get opened, never mind read.

In education, K-12 schools can use their screens and related technologies to create a festive atmosphere, while higher education institutions with numerous schools, sprawling campuses and thousands of individual course schedules can effectively drive important messaging on screens that can’t help but be seen in the hallways and lobbies of various buildings.

One Solution For Simplicity

While there are numerous software options on the market for driving basic digital signage messaging to screens, very few offer integrated, multi-sensor solutions that fall under one management platform and provider.

While it’s certainly feasible to piece together a solution that works across various platforms, Spectrio offers a unified system that not only enhances the user experience but also provides tools to measure its impact.

Spectrio is one of the leading customer engagement technology providers globlly. Known for cultivating unique brand experiences powered by professionally-produced content and marketing technology, Spectrio’s solutions create a holistic customer journey with Digital Signage, Interactive Kiosks, On-Hold Marketing, On-Premise Messaging and Music, Wi-Fi Marketing, and Scent Marketing. Spectrio serves more than 100,000 client locations, ranging from local businesses to global brands.

Spectrio owns and publishes Sixteen:Nine.