Library E-Mail Customer Communication with Savannah Gives Bloomfield Township Public Library a Boost
The Bloomfield Township Public Library, a library serving a population of 40,000 in the greater Detroit metropolitan area, implemented OrangeBoy’s Savannah system about a year ago to increase customer communication.
Immediately, Savannah proved to be an effective way to notify cardholders about changes to library services during the pandemic, and ways for patrons to use library resources during those times the library building had to close for local outbreaks. As the library’s Savannah usage continued into the latter part of 2020, they found a few innovative ways to use the tool to promote library services.
GETTING STARTED
Tera Moon, Library Director, discussed their e-mail communication evolution. “We were a little nervous when we started sending e-mails in Savannah because we did not know how our community would respond.”
The good news is the library community was overwhelmingly supportive of this new communications channel. “People loved it,” Tera mentioned. “We got dozens of calls from customers saying they had no idea we were doing all the services mentioned in our e-newsletters and other promotional e-mails,” she added.
RETAINING DIGITAL NEWSLETTER USAGE
A few of the library’s e-mail campaigns stand out. One campaign targeted cardholders who were downloading digital magazines. The library’s provider merged with another digital provider and they wanted to let those customers know where to access digital magazines on the new platform. They were able to target digital magazine users directly to notify them of the change and found that this e-mail communication retained hundreds of customers. Bloomfield Township Public Library found that their stats for digital magazines on the new platform significantly outperformed neighboring library systems that did not employ similar e-mail campaigns.
PROMOTING A LIBRARY SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
The library offers an annual scholarship, funded through an endowment created by the family of a long-time library employee. Even though it is available to anyone with a connection to the Bloomfield Township Public Library, including cardholders, applications historically were low. The library decided to send targeted e-mail communication about the scholarship program. While the number of applicants remained in the single digits, it doubled that of previous years.
WHAT’S NEXT
In addition to using Savannah for e-mail communication, the library follows library behaviors and trends in the Cluster Report on their dashboard. As the library looks to the future, the team looks forward to expanding Savannah's use to collect and report usage statistics as well as expanding its e-mail communication efforts. They look forward to using the data available in Savannah during an upcoming strategic planning process, and adding welcome e-mails to new cardholders, and re-engaging their inactive users. “We are excited to expand our Savannah usage for customer communications and library measurement to serve our community,” Tera shared.