Grosse Pointe Public Library Shares Their Favorite Savannah Features
n 2019, Grosse Pointe Public Library System’s Marketing and Programming Coordinator Mary Ann Short connected with OrangeBoy, Inc. at a conference in St. Louis. She had never heard of OrangeBoy and its customer engagement platform, Savannah, but knew that this system created exclusively for libraries would be beneficial. Fast forward to more than two years after this Michigan library system officially joined the Savannah Community, here are their four favorite ways they utilize Savannah daily:
Targeted Email Marketing
Before joining the Savannah Community, Grosse Pointe Public Library was utilizing another email marketing platform to broadly communicate with cardholders. This platform did not allow them to target based on activity or location and provided little data. Mary Ann shared that her team could not have effectively made it through 2020 without the ability to send targeted emails through Savannah. “Being able to target customers during the pandemic allowed us to quickly inform everyone on the daily changing landscape.” They found that the pandemic highlighted the importance of targeted messaging. Now they are sending at least three separate communications per week to three different Clusters.
There have also been numerous scenarios where Grosse Pointe was able to target campaigns to a specific area if one of its locations had to close on short notice. “We had a major water leak at one branch and were quickly and easily able to alert cardholders in that specific area about the closure,” Short commented.
The OrangeBoy team always loves to hear about new and exciting library projects in the pipeline. Mary Ann was thrilled to offer that Grosse Pointe is currently working on refurbishing its branches. This summer they plan to renovate the main branch while it is closed for a year and a half. Through Savannah, they have effortlessly been able to communicate updates about closures and renovations with targeted messaging. Click here to read more about this exciting project!
Savannah Dashboard
Each month Mary Ann presents key performance indicators to the Leadership Team such as the library’s market engagement and can provide comparisons to the previous year as well as benchmark against other Savannah libraries.
During the pandemic, the data also told a story that customers were starting to use online databases more frequently. “Thank God we had Savannah,” Short shared, “I do not know what we would have done without the ability to target and see what our patrons were doing. Without the dashboard, it would have been tough.” Through the power of data, they were able to see that there was a 30% increase in the use of streaming services like Libby and Kanopy and were able to focus on pushing those. “The benefit of Savannah allowed customer messaging to be targeted and it made a dramatic difference. Compared to pre-pandemic numbers, usage is still up,” Short said.
Net Promoter Score
Six months ago, the Michigan library decided to explore Net Promotor Score (NPS), a widely used customer loyalty measure by many service and hospitality industries and offered to public libraries by OrangeBoy. Mary Ann shared that NPS allows the library to have continuous feedback from customers and shares this metric with the library’s staff and Board of Directors. Short happily shared: “We consistently find that the reason why our cardholders love the library so much is because of the staff.”
Market Watch
In 2020, Grosse Pointe Public Library won the Opie Award, an annual award presented by OrangeBoy, Inc. With the awarded funds, the library was able to execute a small direct mail campaign utilizing data from Market Watch. As a result of that mailing, they welcomed new cardholders into their system.
Over the last few years, Savannah has allowed Grosse Pointe to diversify its marketing efforts by offering multi-channel marketing resulting in reaching more of its community and increased services.
From one library marketing department to another, “Get Savannah!” said Short, “It makes your job so much easier for a reasonable amount of money. You have to do it!”