Enhancing Campus Communications at the University of Vermont

Introduction

The University of Vermont implemented digital signage from Poppulo in 2013, with the goal of improving the student experience within its student center. Due to the success of the initial implementation, the university’s digital signage grew to include other locations and departments. But as the school’s signage network grew, governance and management challenges started to crop up.

The Challenge

UVM needed a solution to streamline content management, improve adoption, and create efficiencies. In 2023, the campus transitioned to the Poppulo's cloud-based digital signage platform, unlocking new contribution and management capabilities.

However, those new capabilities came with some challenges. The platform had become more powerful and intuitive, but nobody on the university’s team was an expert on how best to utilize the new features. That, coupled with UVM’s new centralized signage approach led to questions about process, technical best-practices, and the ability to effectively scale digital signage to more departments.

Ultimately, UVM’s communications team realized it wasn’t yet appropriately positioned to take full advantage of the power provided by Poppulo’s platform. This realization was coupled with the fact that the team needed to ensure a cohesive digital signage strategy in a decentralized model, one that could effectively deliver a mix of dynamic and static content across multiple departments, while also enabling each department to manage content on their screens. To achieve this, UVM’s communication team faced a few hurdles:

• Decentralized management with no single owner of the entire platform
• Limited resources and time to dedicate to digital signage strategy, technology, and design
• A clear need to improve signage adoption across campus
• The need for a better technical understanding of the Poppulo Digital Signage capabilities and features

The Solution

The migration to Poppulo’s cloud-based platform was the first step on the journey from a decentralized structure to a centralized management structure that enabled global brand elements and content, and local unit-based contribution at the same time. To learn more about the new capabilities of the platform, the UVM team sought additional educational opportunities provided by Poppulo.

After attending a Poppulo webinar around best practices for digital signage in the higher education sector, UVM’s team spoke with Poppulo to learn more. This conversation led the campus communication team to partner closely with Poppulo's Customer Success team. These sessions helped the team with everything from governance best practices and technical capabilities to new content ideas and key integrations with UVM's emergency messaging provider.

It's been invaluable to have Poppulo’s ongoing support, and to be able to meet with a team that’s so excited about digital signage—people who just get it.” — Anne Marcoe, Project Management Office at UVM

Through regular meetings, the UVM team learned:

• How to utilize platform features like labels and scheduling to streamline content management and delivery across campus
• How to create templates and workflows to simplify content management while also ensuring brand consistency
• The benefits of exploring integrations with other campus systems like emergency messaging, events calendars, and news feeds
• Best practices for implementing a clear, scalable structure, allowing individual departments to manage their own content while also allowing for central communication avenues for campus-wide messaging needs

After learning how to better leverage the Poppulo Digital Signage platform, Cody Silfies, Creative Director at UVM, noted, "Poppulo makes the management of content for folks who are not technically inclined, super simple and super easy. We’re now able to execute our plan of onboarding new departments and enabling them to manage their own screens while maintaining a centralized management structure."

The Results:

The University of Vermont's partnership with Poppulo’s Customer Success Team has yielded significant improvements in campus-wide communication, streamlined content management, and increased adoption of digital signage across departments. By leveraging Poppulo's Digital Signage platform and working closely with the Customer Success team, UVM is well-positioned to expand its signage network, bringing all on-campus digital signage under one platform, enabling broad emergency messaging capabilities while empowering better student, staff, and faculty experiences by creating more personalized, department-specific content contribution. Among the many results UVM has experienced, three themes stand out: partnership, a future-proof strategy, and a better way to bring on new departments.

Partnership with Poppulo: A Game-Changer

The ongoing collaboration with Poppulo's Customer Success Team has been crucial to UVM's success with digital signage. Anne states, "I think the Poppulo team has been able to help us connect the dots faster, making us more successful than we would have been on our own because we don't always have the time to dedicate to self-education."

This partnership has enabled UVM to overcome challenges and continually improve their digital signage strategy, setting the stage for a more connected and informed campus community. The university continues to work with Poppulo to explore new ways of leveraging digital signage to enhance the overall campus experience, ensuring that students, faculty, and staff stay informed and engaged. Cody highlights the value of this partnership by saying, "As a person who has to interface with a ton of third-party vendors, it's pretty common for most companies to expect you to pay for every interaction you have with them. So, for someone to just be dedicated to our success, without additional fees, has been mind-blowing. It’s clear Poppulo wants us to be successful, and invests their time and expertise to help us achieve that goal."

The Future of Digital Signage at UVM

UVM sees digital signage as a critical component of their future communication strategy. The foundational work that the UVM team has done sets the stage for the rapid growth of digital signage across the campus and in the community. By continuing to expand the network and bringing more campus departments onto the platform, UVM is creating a truly comprehensive communication system. And with initial plans to implement digital signage in more high-profile locations around the community, the university’s communications team will be able to further expand the reach and brand impact of UVM.

In addition to expanding the network, UVM’s campus communication team will have the ability to create more data-driven and personalized experiences. As an example, Cody envisions being able to empower the admissions department to create more personalized welcome content for potential students on campus visits, establishing a relationship with prospective students while on campus, and hopefully driving higher student enrollment.

We’re at a point where the admissions teams could upload a CSV of campus visitors that welcomes everyone by name, so the experience feels more personal and more individualized. That’s the type of thing that can help someone choose UVM over another school. And that’s just the start of how we can now start creating better experiences across the campus—not just for students, but for staff and faculty as well.” —Cody Silfies, Creative Director at UVM

Onboarding New Departments

UVM has developed a strategic approach to expanding its digital signage network across campus—one that enables content contribution without sacrificing centralized governance. Underpinned by a desire to have a campus-wide emergency messaging channel while simultaneously enabling more impactful content experiences, the campus communications team actively reaches out to departments not yet utilizing the system, showcasing the benefits and potential applications. New departments are often brought on board through small-scale pilot programs, allowing them to experience the benefits firsthand before full implementation.

While the initial onboarding process at UVM is quick and user-friendly, the Campus Communication team’s approach extends beyond mere technical setup. UVM has implemented a two-step strategy that combines practical training with strategic planning. The first step, led by Anne, covers the basics of using the platform, allowing users to quickly start managing their own content. This is followed by a strategic brainstorming session that focuses on content strategy and identifies opportunities for cross-campus collaboration and efficiency.

This approach has yielded significant benefits across the university. Through meetings with new units, shared requirements are identified. In one example these onboarding sessions uncovered that four newly onboarded units were each publishing “News” but that each of them was doing it differently. This led to the development of a “News” app that not only streamlined content creation but also fostered a more cohesive branded experience across campus. The process has also improved content distribution by identifying opportunities for content sharing, such as automatically displaying student life posters on student ID screens. Perhaps most importantly, these sessions have uncovered numerous ideas for structuring the network moving forward.

Once onboarded, content contributors are given a quick training, and due to how easy to use the platform is, can immediately begin managing their own content. Reflecting on the programmatic way new departments are added and trained, Anne notes, “It's a 20 minute walkthrough in the platform—almost as simple as ‘upload your content here and it will display,’ and people just get it. It’s been really great.” And that sentiment is shared by the departments that are being added to UVM’s centralized digital signage network. When asked about the onboarding process, Megan Thomas, Director of Outreach and Process at UVM libraries said, “As new adopters of the Poppulo system on our campus, we now have a built-in way to get walk-by messages in front of our library patrons daily. The system is easy-to-use and fun to experiment with in terms of the content we develop. We are able to receive emergency messaging from our central communications contacts and we just feel a bit more dialed into the central systems and processes.” And Ben Chiappinelli, Event and Media Technician at the Grossman School of Business, adds, “Poppulo has really impressed me with the ease of use and the robust set of options that it provides when it comes to creating and managing playlists. The interface is clean and a breeze to train other staff members on. I also appreciate the ability for Poppulo to handle a variety of media and file formats without compromising my creative use of their system. Overall, Poppulo has been a welcome (and needed) addition to the management of our digital signage.”