Kelly Rembert grew up in rural Wisconsin but went to Detroit after college.
“Growing up, I visited the library regularly but never thought of working there,” confesses Kelly. “I loved the books and looking at the displays. In college, I studied journalism and German. ”
“After college, I was working as a secretary at a bank ‑ which wasn’t for me – and read an article about how a bunch of librarians would be hitting retirement age soon. It was a lightbulb moment. I realized that I like working with people and I like books, so I enrolled in library school a few weeks later at Wayne State University.”
Kelly now works as an Outreach Librarian for Southfield Public Library, which is located in a suburb of Detroit. The library has an individual location serving 80,000 residents.
Kelly started soon after the ribbon was cut on a new building, some 21 years ago. She’s part of the Community Outreach department, which oversees the library’s marketing, promotion, exhibits, and large programs. In addition to Kelly, the department has a full-time intern, a part-time graphic artist, and a part-time assistant.
One day, Kelly was attending a webinar when she got a big idea for a publicity campaign called 30 Days of Savings.
“I wanted a way to call attention to all the great things the library can do to help save patrons money and time, especially with the high inflation cutting into our paychecks. We decided to highlight one library program or service each day.”
-Kelly Rembert
“We came up with ideas and taglines. We fought against our wordy librarian tendencies and kept the tagline short and simple.”
“We highlighted services that fit the day. For example, Election Day was ‘Learn from History: Study the Past to Define the Future.’ The Saturday after Thanksgiving was ‘Stream Movies: Save on Streaming’, where we highlighted free movies on Hoopla and Kanopy.”
Though the planning process began in June, the library decided to launch 30 Days of Savings in November. They put all the information into a spreadsheet which included the message idea, the tagline, and the URL to be used by patrons.
You can download a copy of Kelly’s plan below.
From there, the library’s graphic artist produced graphics to use in print, on the website, and on social media.
In October, Kelly and her team created the website, got all the social media posts scheduled, and printed out signs and a large calendar. Before they knew it, it was November, time to launch the campaign!
“First thing each morning, the savings of the day were posted on Facebook and Instagram and highlighted on our website,” explains Kelly. “The savings item was also added daily to a large calendar located in our lobby. A special e-newsletter was sent at the beginning of the month to highlight the 30 Days of Savings program, and the daily savings items were featured in our weekly e-newsletters.”
“Information about the campaign was also sent to our local schools and some of them shared it with their students. Additionally, we sent out information to our elected officials and key community contacts and it was featured in the weekly Lathrup Village e-newsletter, which is our contract community.”
The month passed quickly and soon it was December. Kelly and her team were eager to analyze the results of their campaign.
“We looked at our statistics to find out if the campaign was a success,” says Kelly. “We compared our web views in October, before the campaign, to our numbers in November and each page view went up. The 30-day webpage was viewed over 1,300 times and we had almost 1,600 clicks from our e-newsletters.”
Putting the campaign together took thought and planning but no outright costs. Since the parameters are now set up, continuing the program will be easy.
“We plan to repeat this each April and November,” comments Kelly. “We will highlight the services we didn’t fit into November and repeat some programs and services again. This is a great way to draw attention to some of our lesser-known services.”
When Kelly isn’t planning her own big campaign, she’s fangirling over the marketing efforts of nearby Ferndale District Library and Grosse Pointe Public Library. She also loves to follow the work of Milwaukee Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Community Library Sedona.
She gives your library full permission to replicate the 30 Days of Savings.
“I hope that other libraries will gain inspiration from this and put their own spin on it,” declares Kelly. “What benefits one library benefits us all.”
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