Can Digital Signage Save Your University Money?

The answer is yes.

Centralizing communications saves both time and money because it provides a more efficient and effective way to inform, alert and engage your students, faculty, staff and visitors.

Save on Printing

Students on campuses are calling for greener solutions to address global climate change. Saving paper and waste just makes sense – not only in terms of the environment but for your bottom line too.

Getting your messages out using digital signs doesn’t use any paper like bulletin boards, posters, banners, newsletters do. You save money on paper, ink cartridges for campus printers (not to mention the cost of the printers themselves), professional printing fees and waste collection.

You may think that digital signage is too expensive compared to print, but that’s not accurate. It not only helps your campus to be greener, it’s also cheaper over time and more effective than print for large audiences. In fact, the larger your audience, the more cost effective it is.

You only have to buy your digital signage system once. On the other hand, printing is an ongoing expense, and those fees are likely to increase each year.
Essentially, digital signage can reach an unlimited audience versus a set print run. You can send a message to hundreds of screens across campus, but it’s expensive to print 100 posters.
Bright screens draw attention. You can have motion and audio, unlike print. Engagement is the goal, and messages moving across a big screen are more likely to be noticed than an event flyer on a bulletin board.
You can instantly correct and retire message on your digital signs right from your desktop. It’s slow and expensive to print corrections, recycle paper and take down outdated notices.

Think about all of the places you’re using print – event posters, queuing ticket systems, bookstore ads, food court menus, campus shuttle schedules, meeting room calendars – and imagine screens instead.

Save on Utilities

If you’re thinking that all of those screens will use a lot of electricity, you’re not wrong. Displays that are left on do consume power, and it’s impractical to physically turn them all on and off every day.

Luckily, many digital signage systems have device control built in, so it can be done remotely from your desktop. You can shut down all of your hardware and screens from your desk. And an added bonus is that your displays will last longer if you don’t burn them out as fast by leaving them on all the time.

You can also use your digital signage to educate viewers to alter their behavior. Offer energy saving tips on screens, and show current consumption rates of energy and water by tying into your building management systems. If people see how much is being used, they’ll hopefully cut down. That can equal big savings on monthly utilities.

Save on Labor

Consolidating your campus communications with a digital signage system can save your staff a lot of time, which equals money.

Speaking to the subjects we’ve already covered, you can save a lot of man-hours that are spent posting and removing printed notices by choosing pixels over print. Labor costs go down since people schedule messages to digital signs from their desks, and messages automatically drop off when they’re done. Also, a central device control solution eliminates the need to walk around to turn screens on and off.

Trey Hicks is Chief Sales Officer at Visix, Inc., headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Trey is responsible for company sales globally, and manages the Visix sales team and reseller partner relationships. He substantially contributes to Visix marketing, product management and planning through industry and technology research, as well as customer feedback. Trey has been with the company since 1994.

You can also save money by replacing or supplementing information desks with touchscreens. Offer your students and visitors a one-stop, self-service source for wayfinding maps and directories, event schedules, computer lab availability, daily menus, real-time shuttle maps – anything your info desk or other staff would normally have to explain.

Lastly, by using pre-approved digital signage templates, people creating content for your signs can design messages quickly and easily. This saves a lot of design time and ensures that your screens always look their best since you can control the brand standards. You can let as many people contribute as you like because digital signage software has approval processes built in.

Increase Revenues

In addition to savings, you can use your digital signage as a revenue source to offset costs.

Campus retailers like bookstores, cafés and athletics groups can use your screens to advertise products and offer daily specials to increase traffic and purchases. Using some basic ROI tools, like coupon codes or QR tags in messages, you can quickly track which ads are performing the best.

Events are the mainstay of campus life, and advertising what’s happening on your displays can increase ticket sales and participation for all of your events – sports, theatre, lectures, fundraisers – anything and everything that needs an audience.

You can also open up your digital signs to paid advertising, whether it’s an on-campus program for student groups and departments, or local businesses who want to get in front of your audience. In some cases, you can even get funding to purchase your system through grants or philanthropy.

The bottom line is, with a good communications plan and a good digital signage system, you can reach more people at a lower cost per person for both cost savings and increased engagement.

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