Elisabeth Leonard on Libraries

Email marketing warning

E-mail Marketing: Forrester Says It Will Double in 5 Years - Advertising Age - News. In its latest study, Forrester Research projects that consumers will receive more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages a year by 2014. That translates to about 25 messages a day, double the average of 10 to 12 people deal with today. According to the study, spending on e-mail marketing will hit $2 billion in five years, nearly double the projected 2009 spending of $1.2 billion. E-mail is cheaper, faster and easier to measure than traditional creative advertising. But that doesn't make it perfect. The report, which surveyed 286 e-mail marketers in the U.S. and 3,730 U.S. online consumers, also predicts marketers will waste $144 million on e-messages that never reach their primary targets because of poor list hygiene and mailing practices, as well as overzealous ISPs that group good messages with spam.

Well...yikes! When I think about how often librarians email their students, faculty, general public, I almost shudder when I picture our outreach getting lost in the masses of other marketing messages going to these same people.  If ever there was a time to begin thinking strategically about our marketing communications (and yes, outreach is a form of marketing), then now is that time, before our patrons get even more saturated with and tired of email. If nothing else, we need to ask ourselves:

• What is there about this message that is best served by email?
• How can I make my point clearly and quickly?
• How I can make sure that the patron will OPEN this email?
• Why should my patron WANT to open this email?
• Will the patron's opinion about me be favorable after I send this email (in other words, am I about to become spam to this person)?

I think that unless we can answer these questions, the email should remain unsent. 

How Many People Actually Use Twitter?

How Many People Actually Use Twitter?. But how many of those visitors – many of whom are likely checking out Twitter after hearing about it on TV – are actually signing up for the service? eMarketer takes a stab at that question today, and estimates that there are currently about 6 million registered Twitter users, which equates to around 3.8 percent of people on the Internet. The research firm further projects that those numbers will double by the end of this year to 12.1 million users, and gap up another 50 percent in 2010 to bring the service to a total audience of roughly 18 million registered users.

Now, I'm just curious, has anyone seen stats on Twitter and college students?  Any other demographic info?

Twitter, redux

I have mentioned Twitter as a means for marketing before, but I have been shocked at how in the last month it seems like EVERYONE in TV-land has suddenly become part of the Twitterati.  From Oprah, Barbara Walters to CNN and Ashton Kucher, being on Twitter has suddenly become mainstream.  While I hope that means that more library patrons will also be on Twitter, I worry about what this sudden attention may mean...will libraries jump onto Twitter because they believe that if everyone else is there, they should be there too...without thinking first about WHY they should be there (and maybe WHY NOT?).

Personally, I like it best when I get to follow the CEO, CIO, CMO and hear about changes the company is making, how the company is thinking about its products/services.  A couple folks to follow (if you want to see what I mean):
Jeffrey Hayzlett (Kodak)
Barry Judge (BestBuy)
Tony Hsieh (Zappos -- the online shoe company and perhaps my favorite of the people listed -- he really talks about HIMSELF a lot, which is kinda fun)

Here's what I think libraries forget: going into a social medium, like Twitter, requires that you have a purpose and a personality!  Twitter only gives you 140 characters..and people expect you to update regularly (and sometimes to either be witty or to be relevant).  It's something that I see individual librarians do well, but not something I see libraries as organizations do well. 

Do negative advertisements go too far?

While walking on the treadmill this morning, I watched a segment on the Today show about an ad that is running in NYC.  The ad is intended to stop smokers from smoking, presumably by playing on their emotional connection to their children (I won't go off on a tangent that not every adult has children, but that thought did cross my mind).  The ad shows a crying child who appears to be abandoned in a public place. The Today show reported that since the ad began running, calls to the smoking cessation hotline have increased substantially.  What they don't report is WHY -- after all, the rest of the segment was spent talking about how the ad was created (the concern is that this child was not acting; he was perhaps forced to cry).

Here's what I want to know: while I am all for campaigns that promote healthy behavior, when did guilt become such a powerful ....WEAPON?  Sex sells and guilt causes you to stop?  At some point, advertisers and the people who pay them need to consider that it isn't enough to just sell a product (or in this case, to stop people from using a product).  I want to be treated not just as someone with emotions, but as someone who can think.  Don't use guilt to cause me to change my behavior...it won't change my behavior long term, which is what I would like to think the goal of any campaign really is.

The more things change...

I am working on a paper this month on what innovations academic libraries have initiated in the last 15 years.  To prepare for it, i am reading Technological innovation in libraries, 1860-1960.  In it I read:

Like the automobile, the radio is far-reaching in its influence.  The whole family comes under its spell.  There are thousands of individuals who appear to be quite bewitched by this instrument and its myserious power....Are we approaching the decline and fall of the printed book and its influence upon civilization? (Sherman, Library Journal, 1924)

Now fast forward to the present and all the reports on the decline in reading:

• Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline, According to National Endowment for the Arts Survey
• Fewer Than Half of American Adults Now Read LiteratureHemingway as 'Chick-Lit' When it comes to fiction, the gender gap is at its widest. Men account for only 20 percent of the fiction market, according to surveys conducted in the U.S., Canada and Britain.
• Literacy of College Graduates Is on Decline Survey's Finding of a Drop in Reading Proficiency Is Inexplicable, Experts Say
• To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. Americans are reading less and reading less well! 

• Reading scores for 12th-grade readers fell significantly from 1992 to 2005, with the sharpest declines among lower-level readers.
• 2005 reading scores for male 12th-graders are 13 points lower than for female 12th-graders, and that gender gap has widened since 1992.
• Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.

This is not to put the blame on radio, TV, or the Internet.  Instead, it is intended to be a call to action for all librarians.  If you believe literacy is important, what is YOUR library doing to change this?  A READ poster won't make a difference, especially to people who never see it.

I saw a campaign this week for Red Cross, the Become a Hero campaign.  Perhaps we need to send a similar message, not just for fundraising, but for raising literacy and raising the involvement of libraries in this crisis.

I'm just sayin'.