In this episode, I’ll answer a question from Laurie at Ellsworth Public Library. She asked, “Are websites an important cog in the machine of library marketing?”
Kudos in this episode go to the Orange County Library System. Watch the video to see why they are 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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Have you been in the grocery store cereal aisle lately?
Recently I had a craving for yogurt topped with cereal as a snack. So, I went to the store with the simple plan of buying a box of cereal.
Did you know the average grocery store carries nearly 300 types of cereal? The cereal in my store takes up the length of an ENTIRE AISLE.
Holy Cheerios, Batman.
There is such a thing as too many choices.
When you’re faced with a wide range of selections, you can end up feeling paralyzed and unable to decide. Or, worse yet, you make a decision that turns out to be the wrong one because there were too many factors to take into consideration.
I sometimes feel the same way about working in library marketing.
Many of us have too much work to do. We have multiple goals we are trying to reach. And all that work makes it impossible to do anything well. It’s no wonder our promotions fail. We need to focus on focusing.
Now that’s you’ve created a promotional strategy and you’ve set up a promotional calendar, you may be tempted to try a whole bunch of new promotional ideas all at once.
But for true library promotional success, you’ll need to pace yourself. You want to be deliberate, intentional, and thoughtful about the library promotions you put out into the world.
Easier said than done, right?
So how do you create your promotions, track the results, and not lose your mind?
By using something I like to call “the divide and conquer approach.”
I’ve put together a three-step process to help you manage your workflow. This simple plan will help make sure your time is spent wisely. It will ensure you have the time to create your promotions and check the results so you can ensure that you’re reaching your promotional goals.
This method will make your marketing goals feel more manageable to you. You won’t get overwhelmed. And you’ll be able to spend time creating and tracking promotions to make sure the work you’re doing is effective.
Tackle one goal at a time.
People often sing the praises of multitasking, but any time management expert will tell you it kills productivity and leads to burnout.
Instead, you’ll want to prioritize your library marketing goals. Decide which is the most important by asking yourself one simple question: Which goal will have the most positive impact on your library? That’s the one you should focus on.
This laser focus will actually allow you to reach ALL of your library promotional goals faster. When you focus fully on one goal, you can learn valuable lessons about your community and how they respond to your promotions on your available channels. And those lessons will make it easier for you to reach your future goals.
As you work towards your goal, you’ll learn along the way which work, which don’t, and how to carry them out effectively. You can use this valuable knowledge for future goals.
Create an action plan with list of tasks you need to complete to reach your goal.
In this step, you’ll very specifically lay out what needs to be done to reach your goal. This will make the final goal seem less overwhelming. It will also help you to gauge how much time you need to set aside each day to work on your promotions.
Let’s say that your priority goal is to increase the number of people who come to visit a physical library space. Your initial task list might look something like this.
Create a weekly email to promote a service that’s only available inside a library branch.
Create one Instagram and Facebook story per week to highlight a service that’s only available inside a library branch.
Create two social media posts per week on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote one in-person event.
Create a video that shows people coming into a library branch, focused on the physical space as a place of community and social interaction.
Now that you have your initial list of tasks, you can divide each task further into two or three smaller action items.
For example, your initial task of creating two social media posts per week on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote one in-person event can be accomplished by making a smaller action item list like this:
Choose events (consult with programming department)
Write post text
Create images
Schedule posts
Set a firm timeline for reaching your overall goal. Assign deadlines for each item on the task lists.
For our example, we may decide that we are going to work for the next two months on increasing in-person visits to the library.
Now, we can take our lists of tasks and set deadlines for when each of these tasks needs to be completed and released out into the world. Those deadlines will help you reach your target efficiently by assigning a timeframe—a start and end date—to every step in the process.
This “divide and conquer” approach gives you and your co-workers a chance to merge this new way of thinking and the new workload into your schedule without stress. It will make it easier to measure results.
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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 134: This episode was born out of a desire to help libraries address the war in Ukraine and other major world events.
There are 3 ways your library can provide context, resources, and support when a crisis breaks out at home or abroad. I’ll outline those tips.
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.
Now that you’ve created a library promotional strategy, it’s time to take the next step. And that is to create a calendar for all your library promotions.
Three main reasons a library promotional calendar is important
A promotional calendar is vital to success. This is especially true in an organization with many contributors and stakeholders, like a library.
Here’s why you’ll want to have a promotional calendar, even if your team of content creators or contributors is small.
It helps you stay organized and focused on the goals you set as part of your promotional strategy.
It helps you to keep track of holidays, seasonal library and literary events, and major annual promotions like summer reading.
It keeps everyone at your library up to date on your promotional plans.
How to set up your library’s promotional calendar
Scroll down to the bottom of this post for my recommendations of three free calendar templates that you can use to create your library’s promotional calendar.
No matter which template you choose, the calendar should be shareable. This will ensure the contributors at your library can see all future promotional plans. It will also make it easy for contributors to add comments and ideas.
Once you choose a template and a location where it will “live,” set up the columns to track the important pieces for library marketing. Your calendar should include spaces to track these things:
The name of the event or service you wish to promote
The date of the event or service launch if the service is new. If it’s an existing service, you can leave this space blank.
The start and end date of the promotion
The type of content. For example, blog post, video, etc.
The channel(s) in which the promotional content will be published. For example: email, social media platform, digital signs, etc.
The topic. For example: you may have two promotions for summer reading. One could be planned for two weeks before summer reading begins with the purpose of promoting registration. Later in the summer, you may launch a second promotion marking the halfway point and encouraging readers to log their reading hours. The “topics” for these two promotions could be “Registration Push” and “Halfway Check-in.”
Due dates
The date and time for publishing the content
The person in charge of each promotion
Follow-through. This column is where you will note if the content was published according to schedule or if there were delays. Tracking follow-through will help you spot hurdles in the process of creating and approving promotions, which will lead to more efficient planning of promotions in the future.
Links to promotions after they are published. This will be helpful for those times when you’ll need to find and analyze a promotion after it’s out in the world.
Success measurements. List the data you gather after the promotion is published to measure engagement and effectiveness. Tracking your promotional success will help you spot the topics, formats, and publishing platforms that yield the best results for your library.
How your promotional calendar will improve your library marketing
The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a prospect needs to hear or see the advertiser’s message at least seven times before they’ll buy that product or service.
For your library, the Marketing Rule of 7 means it’s important to publish content on various platforms and in multiple formats. This will allow your library to reach your entire target audience.
Your promotional calendar will help you make those decisions by having a list of your channels all in one spot. Your calendar will also help you to spot effective ways to re-purpose your content.
For example, let’s say you created an infographic demonstrating the value of summer reading in preventing the loss of literary skills. Initially, you planned to post the infographic to Instagram.
Using your promotional calendar, it may occur to you that the infographic would be a great starter for a blog post on the dangers of the “summer slide.” Then, you realize you can promote that blog post and infographic in your next library e-newsletter.
The library promotional calendar helps you to see all your promotions and create a holistic campaign. It can help you decide if you have enough resources to focus on the platforms where your target audience is most likely to see your content.
Use your calendar to prioritize your most important channels. Focus on creating high-quality content instead of aimlessly posting on all available platforms.
Your calendar can also help you set deadlines. You’ll quickly learn how often you can realistically create and release new promotions.
Finally, your library promotional calendar will help you spot the busiest times for your library before they sneak up on you. It will help you plan for those busy times. You’ll be able to ensure that the promotional creation process is finished well before the publishing date!
What to include in your library promotional calendar
Holidays, especially ones that affect your library’s service hours like Independence Day and Veterans Day.
Local holidays. For example, where I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, opening day for the Cincinnati Reds is a holiday.
Literary holidays such as Library Lovers Day or Audiobook Appreciation Month.
Seasons, like back to school or graduation.
Promotions tied to popular culture, like the Superbowl and the Olympics.
Building openings/renovations
New service releases
Summer Reading
Author events
Fundraising opportunities, like Giving Tuesday and National Library Week.
Patron stories
Interesting or funny details about your library.
Evergreen content, like collection promotion.
Three free promotional calendar templates
Some of these websites make you an offer to try their product, but you can still get these calendars without making a purchase.
Smartsheet: I recommend the Marketing Campaign Calendar Template.
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The Library Marketing Show, Episode 133: In this episode, I’ll address a recent discussion in the chat of a virtual conference I attended.
The commenter said, “I struggle with marketing our digital collection when my goal is getting people back in the Library. I am thankful for our digital collection and how it meets the needs of patrons, but when patrons mostly use our digital collection, they don’t come into the library. How should I be rethinking this?”
Kudos in this episode go to Rhone Talsma of the Chicago Public Library. Watch the video to find out why he’s 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 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.
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 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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Super Library Marketing: Practical Tips and Ideas for Library Promotion 