By Steven Baxter, Mandoe Media founder and CEO >>

BOXING DAY remains one of the most critical sales events for retailers, offering a prime opportunity to recapture revenue after the holiday season. And it’s a huge time for in-store retailers, as hordes of consumers make their way to their local shopping centres to snap up the very best deals.

However, as the cost-of-living crisis continues to impact consumer spending, retailers need to rethink traditional strategies and implement innovative solutions to maximise sales. With a recent Shopify Australian Retail Report revealing that 43% of consumers prefer shopping in-store compared to the 31% who favour online shopping, retailers are turning to innovative solutions to make the most of the post-Christmas sales rush.

One of the most underutilised of these new technological advances is digital displays. No longer a luxury reserved for big-box retailers, recent advances have made digital screens a more accessible asset for businesses of all sizes, allowing SMEs to compete on a level playing field with the world’s biggest retailers. 

Here are five reasons why incorporating digital signage into your Boxing Day sales strategy is essential for in-store success.

Attract more eyeballs

The Boxing Day sales landscape is highly competitive, with retailers vying for consumer attention through promotions, banners, and advertisements. Digital signage provides a dynamic and visually engaging solution to help your store stand out from the crowd.

Unlike static signs, digital displays capture attention with motion, bright visuals, and real-time updates. Whether highlighting flash sales, promoting trending items, or creating a countdown for limited-time offers, digital signage creates an urgent, visually impactful experience. This immediacy encourages action, converting browsers into buyers.

For instance, during peak shopping hours, digital signage can adapt instantly to showcase restocked items or promote new discounts. This flexibility ensures your messaging stays relevant throughout the day—a capability static signage simply can’t match.

Digital signage also allows retailers to segment their content, ensuring different promotions can target specific customer groups, such as families, young adults, or high-spending shoppers. This ensures a tailored experience for every customer demographic.

Increase your average transaction value

Digital signage does more than simply draw customers into your store, it also plays a pivotal role in increasing the average value of each sale. Strategically placed screens can suggest complementary products, showcase bundled deals, or highlight premium items, subtly nudging customers toward higher-value purchases.

For example, placing a digital screen near checkout areas could promote last-minute add-ons such as ‘Buy one, get one 50% off’ offers or exclusive Boxing Day bundles. This strategy encourages impulse buys and maximises each customer’s visit.

Research shows digital signage can increase daily sales by as much as 30%, making it an invaluable tool for retailers aiming to boost Boxing Day revenue.

Reduce waste and boost efficiency

Creating traditional posters, signs, and printed displays has long been a time-intensive and costly process, often requiring designers and printers to bring your vision to life. Digital signage, however, provides a sustainable alternative that is not only cost-effective but also highly adaptable and user-friendly.

With digital signage, there’s no need to produce new printed signs for every promotion. This technology allows you to craft new signage effortlessly and even leverage data from previous sales periods to optimise future campaigns. What’s more, AI content creation platforms now make it easy to design professional, engaging digital displays in minutes – eliminating the need to hire graphic designers. This flexibility not only reduces the cost of running a promotion but also allows your brand to adapt more seamlessly to customer demand and market trends.

Strengthen your customer experience

As consumers increasingly prioritise the in-store experience over online shopping—a trend highlighted in the recent Shopify Australian Retail Report—retailers must find ways to engage customers in physical spaces. Digital signage transforms the in-store environment by creating a dynamic, interactive shopping journey.

For instance, digital displays can guide customers through the store, highlight key deals, or provide engaging content like videos or animations. The result is a more immersive experience that keeps shoppers engaged and encourages them to explore more areas of the store. Interactive digital kiosks take this engagement further by enabling customers to browse product ranges, check availability, or customise their purchases directly in-store.

Another great use of digital displays could be to provide your customers with real-time updates on stock levels or exclusive offers that could help manage customer expectations and reduce frustration, ensuring a smoother shopping experience during busy periods.

Future-proof your retail strategy

While Boxing Day sales are a short-term opportunity, digital signage offers long-term benefits that extend beyond a single event. By analysing data on what content resonates most with customers while they’re in-store, retailers can refine their messaging and improve future campaigns.

Moreover, digital signage is scalable, making it an ideal solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking to grow. Retailers can start with a few strategically placed screens and expand their network as needed, creating a cost-effective, future-proof investment.

Another long-term advantage is the ability to integrate digital signage with other marketing technologies, such as QR codes or social media feeds, creating a seamless omni-channel experience for shoppers that can grow and evolve alongside other technologies.

This Boxing Day, don’t continue to follow traditional sales strategies that are better left in the early 2000s. Digital signage is standing out from the crowd for its ability to engage customers, drive foot traffic, and boost revenue.

As shoppers flood back to brick-and-mortar stores, now is the time to invest in this future-proofed technology that will deliver measurable results long after the Boxing Day sales have ended.

www.mandoemedia.com

About the author

Steven Baxter is an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Mandoe Media, a global leader in digital signage software technology.

Prior to founding Mandoe Media, Mr Baxter  co-founded Venue Media, a digital signage company backed by Lachlan Murdoch. After successfully selling the business to an outdoor media company in 2010, he began working on the innovative technology solutions that would come to define Mandoe Media’s market-leading presence.

Driven by the desire to fill a gap in the market, Steven Baxter set out to create a digital signage service that was user-friendly, accessible to businesses of all sizes and empowered users to create visually stunning, engaging content with ease. Today, Mandoe Media serves 10,000 customers worldwide and stands as a market leader in digital signage innovation.

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SNOWFLAKE, the artificial intelligence (AI) data cloud company, has announced that OzTAM, Australia’s official source of television audience measurement, will leverage the Snowflake Data Clean Rooms platform for its VOZ Streaming data enablement solution.

VOZ Streaming is Australia’s first solution for multi-broadcaster programmatic broadcast video on demand (BVOD) trading. VOS Streaming aims to make advertising in the BVOD era more personalised than ever before, combining anonymised viewer data from the major commercial networks’ BVOD offerings (7plus, 9Now, 10 play and SBS On Demand) into one common OzTAM dataset within a cross-cloud environment.

Data clean rooms allow organisations to unlock the value of sensitive data by anonymising, processing, and securely storing personally identifiable information (PII) which enables joint data analytics, machine learning, and AI.

In Australia, this means helping organisations maintain compliance with the Privacy Act, which aims to protect the data of Australians while providing transparency as to how that data is collected, stored and used. Snowflake’s Data Clean Rooms is a controlled environment that allows multiple companies to securely collaborate on sensitive or regulated data, while preserving the privacy of the enterprise data. 

Data clean rooms message better – anonymously

Snowflake was selected by OzTAM to hash and anonymise the data of users from each participating BVOD provider within the VOZ Streaming data enablement service. From there, advertisers can target precise personas – specific demographics based on age, gender, and viewing behaviours – to more accurately place advertisements in front of viewers regardless of the BVOD channel they are watching, when they are watching it, or the device they are using.

“A data clean room was essential to protect the privacy of viewers, help the networks ensure data security and enable a brand safe, privacy preserving environment for advertisers,” OzTAM CEO Karen Halligan said.

“Snowflake Data Clean Rooms’ easy integration with our groundbreaking premium data enablement service for BVOD programmatic ad trading is another milestone in the progression of VOZ,” Ms Halligan said.

“Data governance was non-negotiable, and following a thorough tender process, Snowflake demonstrated the best approach.”

More accurate and collaborative advertising model

VOZ Streaming leverages the same programmatic auction model in which advertisers bid on advertising spots through a third party. However, for the first time in Australia, advertisers can now precisely target BVOD viewers across different broadcasters.

Snowflake Data Clean Rooms will allow for personal data to be shared across broadcasters and between agencies without sharing names, ages, email addresses, or any other PII. The clean room provider has full control over the environment, while approved partners can get a feed with anonymised data.

“OzTAM’s VOZ Streaming service will help broadcasters and advertisers unlock the full potential of streaming via BVOD, enabling advertisers to engage with the right audience at the exact time they’re viewing,” Snowflake vice president for Australia and New Zealand, Theo Hourmouzis said.

“This complete reimagining of BVOD advertising is made possible through Snowflake Data Clean Rooms as they protect viewer privacy while enabling personalisation on a scale previously thought impossible.”

www.snowflake.com

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IT WAS AN AUSTRALIAN company that pioneered bathroom/toilet/convenience advertising around the world 40 years ago – and has continually developed its system to help save lives ever since.

Within the unique personal spaces of public bathrooms, Convenience Advertising has cleverly and sensitively brought vital public health information to people of all walks of life across the world, especially through critical health periods such as the HIV/AIDS crisis, waves of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), community drug problems and, most recently, COVID-19.

The Convenience Advertising method of tailoring messages with illustrative clarity – and sometimes humour – has proved time-and-time- again to drive spikes in calls to advertised health services that can – and do – help people to get the treatment they need.

Since 1984, Convenience Advertising has delivered billions of messages and more than 5,000 campaigns across 14 countries.

With a focus on high impact public health campaigns, the bathroom messages have saved countless lives, from Australia all the way to the US, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Russia, China, Thailand and Laos PDR. 

Getting messages on target during crises

In 1984, the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) epidemic was spreading globally, with people who contracted the deadly virus facing huge stigma. 

Public health advocate David Stanley, who was deeply involved in the international public health response to HIV, established Convenience Advertising to reach audiences at risk with lifesaving, preventive HIV messages. He remains an active director to this day.

“I had the idea of putting messages into bathrooms, in venues that could be considered a locus of risk, such as bars, clubs and pubs,” Mr Stanley said. “We trialled our first HIV campaign in Melbourne, and the results were astounding, with 13,000 calls to the HIV info helpline in the first two weeks alone.

“This told us the channel was very effective, that targeted out-of-home public health messaging worked. So, we took the idea national.

“Independent research commissioned by the Commonwealth Government in 1989, into the effectiveness of bathroom advertising, found the HIV campaigns delivered an average unprompted audience recall rate of 84 percent, with high reported usefulness, relevance and messages understood. 

“With these results, we then took bathroom advertising to 13 other countries,” Mr Stanley said.

Innovating the message by location

Convenience Advertising has since delivered thousands of international and Australian public health campaigns, from safe injecting in international hotspots, to the world’s first responsible service of cannabis program in the Netherlands (including 600 coffee shops) which received national media attention.

Then there came the HIV prevention focus in Thailand – which included free condoms for international visitors. Convenience Advertising also developed the now globally famous Australian First Nations HIV campaign, ‘Condoman’.

“It’s been a blessing to work with our partners, and most importantly, the affected communities, to deliver messages that we know have changed, and even saved lives,” Mr Stanley said. “The ability to narrowcast, to take messages directly to the target audience, at the locus of risk has been extremely effective.

“We’re able to reach people in a private space, with minimal distractions, where they have at least two minutes to understand and engage with the message, whether it be to visit a website, take a multilingual information card, and nowadays scan a QR code.

“This remains a powerful way to reach specific at-risk audiences,” he said.

Technology brings the message (out of) home

The last 40 years has seen huge innovation and change in the media landscape, through the way advertisers not only reach and engage with audiences, but how they track the level of engagement.

Convenience Advertising has harnessed this change, with the use of digital screens, QR codes and new and innovative technology, and remains one of Australia’s most effective out- of-home advertising channels.

“The value of bathroom advertising has increased over time, and will continue to do so,” Mr Stanley said.

“The smartphone, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, it’s a whole new dawn for prevention. The future of bathroom advertising is full of exciting possibilities.

“We’ve worked really hard to improve public health for 40 years, and we’ll continue to do so for as long as humans have the biological need to visit the bathroom,” Mr Stanley said.

Convenience Advertising now partners with more than 3,200 venues Australia-wide – including shopping centres, parent rooms, airports, universities and TAFEs, pubs, bars, and clubs.

The agency also works with all levels of government, and commercial and not-for-profit organisations across the country to deliver high impact awareness, behaviour change and product marketing campaigns.

www.conads.com.au

EDITOR’S NOTE

ANYONE founding a company, who wants innovation to be part of its DNA, should study David Stanley’s story and the trajectory of Convenience Advertising. Business Acumen editor Mike Sullivan’s long-form interview with David Stanley – replete with his hard-earned insightful observations and anecdotes of hard-won success – will be published on September 16.

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