Angela Hursh is the Brand and Communication Director for the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. There, she leads the Library's strategic communications efforts, ensuring cohesive and impactful messaging across all platforms. This role is a homecoming of sorts: She spent nearly seven years as the Marketing Content Team Leader at the library, from 2013 to 2020. Between her two library stints, she worked for NoveList. She also has more than 20 years of experience as an Emmy-award-winning broadcast TV journalist. She is a 2023 Library Journal Mover & Shaker and a world class speaker.
The Library Marketing Show, Episode 132: It’s time to share the top headlines in social media, including updates for Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. We’ll discuss what these changes mean for library marketing.
Kudos in this episode go to the Clayton County Library System. Watch the video to see why they’re being recognized.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments.
And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
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The subject line of your library marketing email is your first chance to communicate the value of your email to the person receiving it. It may be your ONLY chance to get someone’s attention to engage with the promotional content you’ve worked so hard to create.
A good subject line will drive people to open the email, read what’s inside, and take action. That will lead to an increase in the use of your library. And that’s the whole point, right??
A bad subject line can lead your email to be marked as spam, which willaffect your sender reputation. In fact, according to the marketing agency Convince and Convert, 69 percent of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line.
That’s why I think your subject line might be the most important part of your library marketing email.
I want you to spend the most time thinking about that section. Be very intentional about what you say in the subject line.
There are five best practices to help you create engaging subject lines. Scroll down for some more free tools to help you to test your subject line before you hit “send”.
Tip #1: Use brackets or parentheses in your subject line.
You want your emails to stand out in the inbox. The easiest way is to use these two punctuation symbols as part of your email subject line.
Worldata is a company that analyzes email marketing campaigns and provides free industry metrics based on that data. Their data shows using either brackets or parentheses in your subject line boosts open rates by 31 percent.
That’s because these punctuation marks subconsciously draw the eye to whatever is within the brackets. And that small detail can be enough to entice them to open the email.
Some examples are:
“Welcome back to the library! (We missed you.)”
“Your Library Giving Day donation will be doubled with a matching gift. (Today only!)”
“Homework is hard. We can help. [FREE VIDEO].”
Tip #2: Try using all caps on important words in your subject line.
World Data says that including words in all caps in your subject line can increase your open rate by as much as 14 percent.
You should, however, make sure that you use this technique sparingly. Pick one important word to capitalize. It should be a word that you know will call attention to your email when someone is scrolling through their inbox.
Some examples are:
“Fans of James Patterson have the chance to talk to the author IN PERSON next Thursday.”
“Your resume needs some SERIOUS help. Let your library make it irresistible.”
“Being stuck inside on a rainy day with the kids is TORTURE. Get some museum passes from the library and go exploring!
Don’t capitalize your entire headline. You’ll risk making your email recipients feel like you’re yelling at them.
Tip #3: Don’t spell out numbers.
Yesware, a business communication company, analyzed 115 million emails and found that email open and reply rates are higher when a number is present in the subject line. (For example, “5” instead of “Five”.)
World Data’s surveys back up that claim. They found that putting a number in the subject line can increase your open rate by as much as 21 percent.
Numerals in your subject line will get your emails noticed. It also saves you in the character count.
For more of a boost, start your subject line with a number. (Example: “5 Great Ways to Get Free Homework Help from Your Library”). Doing that can increase open rates by as much as 18 percent, according to World Data.
Tip #4: Use the “F” word (I mean… Free!) and other power words.
World Data says spam filters no longer filter out emails with the word free in the subject line.
Their study shows that including the word in the subject line can increase open rates by 37 percent. Plus, there is data to suggest that “free” produces an emotional charge in us.
Speaking of emotion, there are lots of other words you can use in your subject line to get a response. Data shows email recipients respond to subject lines that convey urgency, curiosity, excitement, and joy.
Here is a starter list of words that World Data says are proven to do well in email marketing. Challenge yourself to add one of these words to the emails you send to your library community.
Amazing
Ultimate
Important
Challenging
Surprising
Best
Secret
Exact
Last Chance
Now
Final
Official
Free
Tip #5: Use words your audience will understand.
Drop the acronyms and library industry jargon like periodicals, database, interlibrary loan, reference, serial, audiovisual, abstract, or resource. Use words that regular people understand–magazines, music, online classes, and helpful information.
Avoid reference to a vendor service like Overdrive, Hoopla, Freegal, BookFlix, Zinio, etc. As far as your cardholders are concerned, all material comes from the library.
If you are using email to promote one of these services, like Overdrive, your subject line could say, “Free e-books are now available at your library!” You can mention the vendor in the body text of the email.
Free tools to make your headlines irresistible
When I craft an email, I spend a lot of time thinking about the subject line. Sometimes I think about it for days.
I use a couple of online headline analyzers. These free online tools all work pretty much the same way. You put your headline in and you get a score, plus tips on how to improve them. My favorites are:
The higher the score, the better your chances of getting people to open the email. I always shoot for a score above 70
I ran the headline for this post through the three analyzers, as if it were an email subject line. Sharethrough gave me a 71, Advanced Marketing Institute gave me a 73.3, and Subject Line gave me a 75. Those are good scores, so I would likely use this headline as a subject line in an email.
In this episode, I’ll answer a viewer question from Hannah at the Johnson City Public Library. She asks, “What criteria would you use to justify retiring/making ‘private’ old blog posts?”
Kudos in this episode go to the Mary Wood Weldon Memorial Public Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
Last week, I wrote about the new email marketing data that changed the way I think about email and libraries. This week, I wanted to share more new tips to help you improve the chances your email subscribers will act.
Some of these come from Nancy Harhut, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of HMT Marketing. Nancy is an expert on behavioral science and consumer behavior. She studies how and why humans behave the way they do when they interact with marketing.
Nancy spoke at Content Marketing World. Her talk included a list of tricks to improve the effectiveness of your library promotional emails. I’ve combined her advice with new best practices I recently discovered while doing some deep research on email marketing.
And there’s a bonus in this post! Scroll down for a special free tool you can use to check the “spamminess” of your emails and get suggestions for improvement.
Tip #1: Make your community the focus of your email.
There’s a common mistake we make in library marketing. We often tell our community what we want them to hear.
But your email recipients are interested in how the library can help them. They have needs and wants that are specific to them.
@nharhut says your email recipients are not interested in everything you want to tell them. They want to know about the one thing they are looking for that will improve their lives.
Here’s a quick exercise you can do every time you create an email. Instead of making a list of items your library wants to promote, ask yourself these four questions about the person who receives your email.
What are their needs?
What’s driving their decision-making?
What are their goals?
What are they feeling?
This exercise will help you to focus on the way your library can help your community member. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to include text in your email that makes it clear your library puts your community member first. It’s easiest to explain this using an example.
Library-focused readers’ advisory message: “We can recommend great books for you to read.”
Customer-focused readers’ advisory message: “You love to read. You’re busy. Leave the searching to us and get your reading recommendations fast.”
A few simple tweaks in wording put the patron first.
Finally, the images you choose for your email play a big part in making your community members feel that your library is focused on them. Be sure to choose images that reflect your community.
Here’s a real-life example: A library was creating an email to promote a yoga program. They chose a photo of a young, physically fit white woman in a yoga pose as their accompanying image.
But when they talked a bit about who actually comes to their yoga programs, they realized it’s attended by older, more diverse members of their population. Some of those attendees have physical challenges.
So, they found a new image that more accurately reflected their community. The image change helped drive more attendance to their yoga program!
Tip #2: Use first and second-person pronouns in your call-to- action button.
In all your library marketing text, you must connect with your community and make them feel seen, welcome, and invited. Using first and second-person pronouns like “me” and “my” or “you” and “yours” will help your email recipients to imagine themselves using your library.
In fact, using a first- or second-person pronoun for your CTA can result in as much as a 90 percent increase in clicks, according to market research conducted by two content marketing companies, Unbounce and ContentVerve.
Again, this is a simple tweak in wording that can lead to big results. Some pronoun-centered CTAs are:
Download my book
Claim your seat
Reserve your spot
Get my library card
Make your donation
Tip #3: Pair your calls-to-action.
Library emails tend to include many offers. But, according to Harhut, we should put our calls-to-action together, in pairs!
Why? Giving your email recipients a choice between two options will increase the likelihood that your subscriber will take an action, according to Harhut. In fact, she told us that researchers at Tulane University found pairing calls to action will quadruple the chance that someone will make a choice between the two options at the moment.
Here’s an easy example. Let’s say you are sending an email to promote new books in your collection. Simply pair them together, like this:
Pair book covers together to improve the chances that someone will click on a jacket and place a hold.
If you are promoting databases or events, use the same pairing trick. Put two options side-by-side. Doing this will create a “this or that” decision for your email recipient and increase the chances that they will choose one of the two options.
Tip #4: Try a tiny dose of negativity.
Our library promotional emails almost always emphasize the benefits or advantages of using the library. But Harhut says people are twice as motivated to avoid the pain of loss as they are to reap the benefits of gains.
This happens because of the Loss Aversion Theory. It was formulated by Nobel Prize-winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
Their research found that people value a loss more than an equivalent gain. Losses are unpleasant and evoke emotions like fear, guilt, regret, and anger. People will do pretty much anything to avoid those negative emotions.
We can take that fear of losing and use it to strengthen our library. How exactly does this work?
Let’s say your library is creating an email to promote your graduate school test preparation resources. You might try some text that says, “More than 50 percent of the students who don’t study for the LSAT can’t get into law school.” (A fact I looked up for this example… feel free to steal!)
Or, for your next ticketed event, emphasize the need to register before all the seats are taken.
These are just two examples of the way you can work a subtle hint of negative emotion into your marketing. For more ideas, I recommend this well-written research article from the Open Journal of Social Science: When and Why Negative Emotional Appeals Work in Advertising.
Tip #5: Include a good testimonial.
Your library emails shouldn’t just include promotions for products and services. Testimonials can help people to make decisions about whether to use your library. They help people to imagine themselves using your services.
Harhut says we should always be collecting and sorting testimonials so that we can use the best of them in our emails. It’s another great way to show that your library is focused on your community.
Use this list to help you pick your best testimonials.
Include a few lines from the testimonial in your email. Try putting it at the top of the email, before your promotions. This is especially effective if the testimonial is from someone who benefited from the program, service, or collection item you are promoting in your email.
Tip #6: Proofread. Then do it again. And again.
Spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors will damage the trust your community puts into your library.
Copy and paste your email text into Word, then run the editorial review.
Ask your co-workers to read through your email.
Read your email out loud. You’ll be surprised how many mistakes your brain will gloss over when you read silently.
Bonus: Free email testing tool.
There’s a new free tool I just learned about that can help your email. It’s called Mail Tester.
It was designed by software engineers who wanted a way to test the quality of their own email newsletters. So, they built their own tool and made it free to anyone who wanted to use it.
Here’s how it works.
Take an email that you plan on sending to your community and send it to Mail Tester first. They generate a random email address every time you go to their website.
Next, you click on the “check your score” button and wait for your results. You can see your results for up to 7 days.
I tried it using an example email I created for a presentation. Here are my results:
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In this episode, I’ll answer a viewer question from Kathy at Niagra Falls Public Library. She said, ” We love our community and want to share all the great stuff that organizations have going on. In the Before Times that would be done with posters on a bulletin board. With the pandemic and the increasing rise of digital marketing – how can we share information for these organizations without throwing off the almighty algorithm?”
Kudos in this episode go to the Dayton Metro Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
The most powerful tool you have to reach your community is email.
I know there are some readers who don’t believe me. But here’s a fact that cannot be denied: 90 percent of Americans over the age of 15 use email. In the United Kingdom and Canada, 85 percentof people use email.
That’s a big portion of your community.
The digital divide is real but not as wide as most of us thought. The latest Pew Research Center study released in August 2021 shows:
Rural residents have seen a nine percentage point rise in home broadband adoption in the last five years.
72 percent of rural Americans have high-speed internet access.
Smartphone ownership also rose nine percentage points among rural residents in the past three years.
For most of my library friends, the percentage of people in your community who can (and should) be receiving email marketing from your library far outpaces the percentage of people who don’t have an email address.
Social media platforms do not care about your library. The press does not care about your library. Google does not care about your library.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your library is. You have the power in email marketing.
Now, I’ve learned some brand-new information about email marketing. I am not exaggerating when I say this new data has made me re-think the advice I give to my library marketing friends.
This information comes from Michael Barber, who is a brand consultant and marketing strategist. He was the featured speaker of a recent Marketing Profs webinar that frankly blew my mind.
Here are the four big things I learned from his presentation.
Your open rate does not mean what you think it means.
Remember when I said that open rates are a sign of customer loyalty?
My view has changed.
With most email services, the open rate is tracked with the help of a hidden one-pixel image placed in the body of the email message. It used to be that the email counted as being “opened” when the recipient opened the email up.
But now, the email counts as opened when it loads in a recipient’s inbox because that’s when the pixel is now being triggered. Apps like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and any Apple device with iOS 15 will preload images.
That means a human didn’t necessarily open your email.
What does this mean for your library?
Email marketing expert Jay Schwedelson says your email open rate provides direction for your strategy. It can still serve as a benchmark for testing factors like subject lines and send times.
If you work on your library’s email marketing, you’ll need to really focus on the action created by your email.
Use trackable links inside the body to see what people click on. And then measure what they do after they click.
Do they register for a program? Do they put a book on hold? Do they log into a database? Those are human-triggered actions. Those are the true measure of the effectiveness of your email.
The new iOS update isn’t as bad as it seems… for now.
In September 2021, Apple released the iOS 15 update, which includes more user protection from third-party trackers, including mail privacy protection that stops email senders from collecting data on how a person interacts with email.
The new privacy settings keep marketers from seeing who opened their emails, what time they opened them, where they opened them, and what device they used to open the email.
Michael says it’s not as bad as it seems. First, the privacy protections only apply to people who have actually downloaded the update, and who use Apple Mail.
About 72 percent of Apple users have upgraded to iOS 15. Statistics on the number of people who use Apple Mail vary according to industry and location. But most email providers say they see around 35% of their recipients use Apple Mail.
And so far, according to Michael, not everyone is opting into the privacy protections offered by iOS 15. Only about 48 percent of Apple Mail users are turning on the new privacy settings.
What does this mean for your library?
As always, be watchful of your metrics so you can spot any downward trends in engagement. But don’t panic. Focus on sending great content to your email list.
Your sender reputation is incredibly important
Email sender reputation is a score that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns to an organization that sends email. The higher the score, the more likely an ISP will deliver emails to the inboxes of recipients on their network.
There are three positive signals of engagement that can raise your library’s sender reputation, according to Michael. They are:
Replying to your message.
Clicking on links inside the email.
Adding you to their contacts.
Conversely, there are three negative signals of engagement that can hurt your library’s sender reputation, according to Michael. You want to prevent your library email recipients from:
Moving your library’s email to their junk or spam folders.
Deleting your email without opening it.
Leaving your email unopened and sitting in their inbox. Michael says this is a stronger negative signal than unsubscribing! (WOW, right?)
What does this mean for your library?
Michael says replies are a “super strong signal of engagement.” He encourages email marketers to stop using the “no-reply” return email address in their emails. Use a real email address for replies.
And you’ll want to go a step further by directly asking recipients to reply to your emails. You could ask for their feedback on a service. Or ask recipients to reply with the name of a book they think should be included in your next booklist or book display. This is a chance for you to be creative! You don’t have to respond to every email reply. But this is an opportunity to improve your sender reputation while gathering information that will help you to better serve your community.
You’ll also want to focus on raising your email click rate. Here are five ideas.
Finally, include great content in your email so your recipients will never let it sit in their inbox unopened.
We need to start thinking about how “dark mode” affects design.
Dark Mode inverts the colors on your device to decrease the amount of light on your screen. Dark mode turns the default white background with black text to a black background with white text.
Dark Mode eases the strain on your eyes, especially at night or in dark conditions. It also helps preserve battery power.
What does this mean for your library?
The way our emails are designed will need to change. Michael recommends that, if your email provider has this data, you may want to start tracking how many of your email recipients look at your emails in dark mode.
You’ll also want to test your emails using dark mode to determine if your library’s brand colors work with the darker background.
Finally, make sure your email provider is mobile responsive. This will ensure your emails will be converted properly.
Next week: 6 super-easy tricks to make your library emails stand out in the inbox and get results!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
In this episode, I’ll answer a question from Dianne at the Pottsboro Area Public Library. She has been trying to drive attendance to her library events using Facebook events. It’s not working. So she wondered what else she can do?
Kudos in this episode go to the Nashua Public Library. Watch the video to find out why they’re being recognized.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
“Language is one of the most important parts of any culture. It is the way by which people communicate with one another, build relationships, and create a sense of community.”
Kelsey Holmes, Greenheart Club Program Assistant.
One of the ways we can best make all our community members feel welcome and safe is to use inclusive language in our library marketing and promotions.
What is inclusive language?
The University of Oregon has the best definition of inclusive language that I’ve found. In their editorial guidelines, they say “For communication to be effective, it needs to appropriately address all audiences for which it is intended. Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equitable opportunities.”
Why inclusive language is important to your library
When your library uses inclusive language in print and digital marketing materials, on your website, and in conversation at the front desk, you are fulfilling the library’s core mission. You are giving people the signal that your library is a safe space.
A lack of inclusivity reflects negatively on your library and values. It affects library staff morale. Worst of all, it can hurt the community’s perception of your library, affecting donations and fundraising efforts.
You must make time to check all your promotions for inclusive language. Every email, social media post, blog post, digital sign, bookmark, and brochure must be examined. You must make sure you aren’t excluding someone in your patron base.
The latest on inclusive language
Inclusive language changes and evolves. Since this post was originally published, I’ve written an update on the NoveList blog which you can read here.
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In this episode, I’ll share the latest social media updates for January 2022, including a new way to filter analytics on YouTube and a new way to share video clips from Facebook to your stories. We’ll talk about what all of this means for libraries. Plus a study that may make you rethink the way you spent ad $$ for Summer Reading and other big library programs.
Kudos in this episode go to the ten winners of a huge award given by the American Library Association! Watch the video to see why they’re being recognized.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 