17/02/2017
Libraries Demonstrate How Data Can Supercharge Low-budget Marketing
Libraries may still be analog institutions, but their creative staffs are finding ways to leverage both data and their traditional expertise—information sharing—to adapt their marketing for modern communities
"Spoiler Alert! Dumbledore dies on page 596.”
This message, which appeared on a billboard in Arkansas, wasn’t really a surprise (the Harry Potter books and movies had been out for years), but the messenger provided the shock value: It was an advertisement for the local public library.
Once upon a time, libraries never had to market themselves. If you wanted to know something, they were the only game in town. They had a monopoly on knowledge that lasted for centuries or longer; however, it was a trust busted by the advent of Google, Amazon and numerous other internet resources. Suddenly this well-known entity was tasked with doing something that was once entirely unnecessary: It had to vie for our attention.
“Libraries realized they had to transition the way they were functioning in their communities because the world was changing around them,” says Ben Bizzle, CEO of Library Market, a solutions firm for libraries. “It’s impressive to see an industry this large, that has been what it’s been for so long, embrace that and make that transition.”
Librarians themselves have two enormously important marketing skills working to their advantage: They’re data-driven and creative. But there are obstacles that limit them, be it time, money or professional expertise. Plus their audience is no longer on site. The old ways of marketing the library, such as a pamphlet located at the check-out desk or a bookmark slipped inside a paperback, won’t reach the desired customer anymore.
When Google and Amazon Inc. debuted in the mid-1990s, it was time for the library to move out from behind the desk and into people’s lives. If libraries were going to spend their funding on collections, events and other resources, the audience needed to know they existed.
“As funding has become tighter, people have realized that it’s really important to have good usage data and users who feel like the library is meeting their needs,” says Mary Mackay, marketing director at the American Library Association. “It’s no longer just a question of libraries pushing out information about the programs they’re offering, it’s more [about] community engagement.”
COMMUNITY STATISTICS
A public library’s audience is its community, and that community can vary widely. Mary Beth Mulholland, director of marketing at the Chicago Public Library, can attest to just how varied and dynamic that group can be. Her library system has about 80 locations, one in every Chicago neighborhood, and each neighborhood’s needs can be completely different. In addition, each patron within those neighborhoods requires different outreach.
CPL was looking to launch a campaign for its digital skill-building program for those with limited or no technological skills. The library typically aims to incorporate a digital element in its marketing efforts, such as social media or e-newsletters; however, those lacking digital skills weren’t likely to see such ads.
“We backpedaled from that and couldn’t do any digital advertising,” Mulholland says. “We focused that campaign around the [Chicago Transit Authority] and print advertisement, which we hadn’t done in a really long time.”
Some of the most objective data sets libraries have at their disposal are basic demographics, which can be free and easy to access. Kathy Dempsey, conference chair for the Library Marketing and Communications Conference and founder of Libraries Are Essential says she often advises libraries to use U.S. Census data.
“Everything is free at census.gov,” Dempsey says. “A very simple start that a library can do is look at their population area, get all the addresses within it and check their patron database against those addresses to see what percentage of people in their service area actually do have library cards.”
Public libraries are often under city or county management, and those associations have a slew of geographic and demographic data that’s free for the libraries to access. While the specifics of what cardholders check out remains private, libraries can track how much patrons check out and what type of media they access. A March 2016 report funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services used 2014 patron and checkout data to group top library users by lifestyle, interest, preference and behavior. The report, “Core Customer Intelligence: Public Library Reach, Relevance, and Resilience,” pulled this market segmentation data from 10 public library systems across the U.S.—a tactic often used by major corporations. One of the study’s unexpected results, according to Library Journal, was the number of single-adult households that are core customers, which included both middle-class and so-called struggling households. The study also found Latino households to be one of the fastest-growing population groups among library users.
Should a library’s budget allow, there are also products that provide a snapshot of specific communities. Analytics On Demand (AOD), a data solution from Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is intended to help libraries quickly and easily learn more about their users and communities. The platform allows libraries to upload their existing data—such as number of checkouts per household—and combine it with some other information from the U.S. Census Bureau and Experian, which specializes in consumer and business credit reporting and marketing services. The user chooses the geographic area to view, which can be narrowed by zip code, city or even driving distance from the library.
“What we wanted to do was take a look at the data any given library has access to,” says David Ziembiec, western region district manager at Gale and co-founder of AOD. “Once we were able to find that out, we then asked the question: How can we turn that data into an actionable insight? It’s really no different than how a business would do this.”
Ziembiec says the Patron Profiles app is the cornerstone app on the service with 99% of AOD customers using it. The app provides libraries with a report that details where their patrons live, average household incomes and other details, such as Mosaic groups, a segmentation created by Experian that describes lifestyle information. With this report, marketers can anticipate the behavior, attitudes and preferences of various customers.
Sacramento Public Library was an early adopter of AOD. Amy Calhoun, communications and virtual services manager at SPL, says one of the most notable improvements in the library’s marketing efforts since using AOD has been the open rate of its e-mails. Anyone who opens a library card or opts into the e-mail list receives newsletters from the library. When the library sent out e-mails to this general list detailing summer reading programs or other services, the open rate was about 12%.
SPL then decided to use the Mosaic profiles from the Patron Profiles app to sort its e-mail addresses. To promote tech classes or the library’s e-book collection, SPL only e-mailed those considered tech-savvy or early adopters. The result was an open rate of 30% to 40%.
“We’ve learned that, rather than just going by zip code or even blasting the whole list, we want people to find the e-mail relevant and open it,” Calhoun says. “Even if it’s a segmented list, the higher open rate is important to us. Not only is it serving us better, but it’s serving them better. They’re finding the e-mail more relevant.”
