Using Data to Engage Underserved Communities: Oak Park Public Library’s Journey
Meet Oak Park Public Library
The Oak Park Public Library (OPPL) has been in operation since 1903 and has since grown its footprint in a four-square-mile area adjacent to Chicago, Illinois. With three branches, the library caters to the needs of approximately 52,500 residents in its service area. As a public library in a Book Sanctuary Community, OPPL is committed to providing access to information, services, and opportunities that help fulfill Oak Park's aspirations.
In 2021, OPPL established its inaugural Anti-Racism Strategic Plan: The plan prioritized anti-racism and equity, engagement, learning, and stewardship. One of the primary goals was to connect with historically marginalized communities in the area, which required identifying underserved populations and developing outreach strategies for non-cardholders. The library had to come up with a practical and effective solution to bridge the gap with these communities and better serve them.
Market Watch and Reaching the Community
OrangeBoy, Inc. joined the discussion with Jodi Kolo, Director of Communications for over a decade at Oak Park in 2021 to enhance the community's library campaign goals and achieve them efficiently. The first focus was to identify the individuals who were not benefiting from library services. OrangeBoy then explored the best ways to connect with them. Using data gathered from Savannah, Orangeboy identified target audiences and created a strategy to increase engagement, signups, and awareness.
The team began by utilizing Savannah’s Market Watch module – a GIS mapping tool that overlays library data and census information – to identify the demographics within Oak Park's service area. Market Watch was able to provide data to identify sub-areas and census tracts with higher concentrations of Black/African American populations and households living at or below the poverty level. This aligned with Oak Park Library's Equity and Anti-Racism priority, as it helped to narrow down the target audience they were trying to reach.
Strategic Marketing Campaign
To effectively reach underrepresented community segments, OPPL collaborated with Orange Dot Studios, an agency within OrangeBoy, to create a multi-channel strategic marketing campaign. The campaign was tailored to meet the specific needs of the library's target audience, as determined by market analysis, using a combination of direct mail, email, and geofenced mobile ads.
Market Watch provided valuable metrics on the community, including the number of households with internet and smartphone access, as well as active library users. The team used this information to create content that was accessible and appealing to the target audience.
OPPL's exceptional Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures customer satisfaction, loyalty, and predicts future growth, further motivated the development of the #OPPLChampions program to recruit library cardholders as social media ambassadors for the library. With a score of 81.2 in 2021, the library was able to engage users who valued the library highly to share their experiences about the library on social media for word-of-mouth engagement to the broader community.
Data is Here for You
The "Here for You" strategic marketing campaign was launched in Fall 2021, with a focus on centering historically marginalized individuals within the Oak Park community. OrangeBoy utilized various channels to reach active and inactive users, as well as non-cardholders.
After the first strategic marketing campaign in 2021, OrangeBoy provided the results of the campaign to Oak Park. There had been 990 new users signed up in the area the market campaign targeted between September and November 2021 - a 96% increase from 2020 signups. The library’s total active households in the community grew from 12,400 to 12,860 between fall to the end of the year, increasing Market Penetration to 53% of all households in the Oak Park service area. An impressive 739 lapsed users who had not used their cards in the past three months returned to the library after receiving emails from these strategic efforts. This data showed that the campaign had put the library back on the community’s radar during the pandemic and gave the team more insight to set up additional campaigns for the next two years.
Orangeboy continued to execute strategic marketing campaigns in 2022 and 2023. The second-year campaign, in 2022, utilized the same “Here for You” theme and message. This campaign was delivered in the summer rather than the fall and highlighted unique aspects of the OPPL and summer activities. In addition to the postcards, emails, and mobile ads, the library’s magazine “The Storyline” was also distributed in line with these efforts, further detailing relevant events, and information pertinent to the community.
Finding Our Voice with Data
The third-year campaign, after the very successful previous campaigns, took on a new theme, “Find Your Voice,” which related to the library's mission of sharing information, services, and opportunities that fulfill the community members of Oak Park’s aspirations. Another edition of “The Storyline” was sent out during this time. Utilizing data from Market Watch, and the results of the previous campaigns, OPPL was able to connect the campaign to programs and services that not only appealed to the community but were also synergetic together. By marketing an event celebrating 50 years of Hip Hop, advertising the opening of a Creative Studio, and emphasizing using and finding your creative voice in the magazine edition, this last campaign resulted in more engagement than the previous ones.
In 2023 after the last campaign, there were 1,167 signups, 3,409 lapsed users had returned, and 929 people used library resources within a week of receiving an email. In September of 2023, the library’s total active households had grown to 13,336, reaching Market Penetration of 58%. After the campaigns ended, OrangeBoy performed a “health check”, using data gathered from Savannah. Doing so, the firm was able to compare metrics such as New Cardholder Retention and Market Penetration against libraries with a similarly sized budget and population. This showed that Oak Park had significantly higher than average New Cardholder Retention and Market Penetration than other libraries after the campaign. In the last quarter of 2023, New Cardholder Retention was at 70% and Market Penetration was still at 58%. OPPL’s Net Promoter score was also continuously on the rise, with a score of 88.7 in the last quarter of 2023, a 7.5 increase from its 2021 score.
By using data effectively, Orangeboy can help libraries look at the micro and macro levels when marketing by geography or demographics. Having the data and multiple metrics collected and displayed together allows for context and insight to be more easily discerned. By using this data in a strategic marketing campaign, a library can not only enhance its engagement and awareness within the community but can also highlight a moment of "data success" among its staff, board members, and other stakeholders.
In our community, and striving to be a library for everyone, this is a strong tactic to reach who we are not serving.
Jodi Kolo, Director of Communications & Development, Oak Park Public Library
OPPL’s efforts to engage underserved communities through Savannah data have yielded promising results. By raising awareness among patrons and promoting the library's resources, as well as internally encouraging staff to become more comfortable with data analysis, the library has successfully used aggregate data to identify connections and inform people about the resources available to them.It is heartening to note that there is staff buy-in to use OrangeBoy tools and Savannah. Overall, the library's commitment to using data to improve its services is commendable and bodes well for its future success.
Interested in learning more about OPPL’s journey using data to engage underserved communities? Check out our recent webinar to learn more.
Want to launch a Strategic Marketing Campaign of your own? Contact us today!