How Successful was the Library's Recent Letterbox Marketing Campaign?

In August 2017 Sutherland Shire Libraries delivered a double-sided A5 flyer to all letterboxes in the Sutherland Shire promoting the Digital Magazines and Children’s Reading Games available to library members online.  What follows is an analysis of the impact of that campaign.

Two sides of the campaign flyer

Campaign Details

Distribution of 80,000 flyers began on 28 July 2017 and were delivered to residents over the next week. The cost of printing and distribution for the campaign was $7000. As shown in the image above, one side of the flyer advertised the Reading Games and the other side promoted the Library’s Digital Magazines. Each side included a campaign URL - a special web address - that we could track to determine the success of the campaign. Users were guided to the relevant pages on the library website to learn more about the services and to start using both the games and the magazines.

Impact on the Library Website

As the call to action on the flyer directed people toward the website our initial assessment of the campaign should look at what impact the flyer had on visits to the Library website. When entered into a browser by a user, the campaign URLs used on the flyer will land visitors on the relevant page on our website, however, they include some extra data that we can track in Google Analytics that allows us to separate campaign traffic from general traffic. The following graph shows the daily traffic via the campaign URLs between 22 July and 12 August.

Traffic to the library website via letterbox campaign:  22/07/2017-12/08/2017

We can see that traffic begins on 28 July as soon as the first flyers are delivered and reaches a peak of 80 sessions on Wednesday, 2 August after which it slowly trails off. There were 571 sessions originating from the campaign with slightly higher proportion attributed to the Digital Magazines (55% or 316 sessions) compared with the Reading Games (45% or 255 sessions). It is interesting to note that the campaign traffic included nearly 300 new visitors (people who had not visited the library website before).

To further illustrate the impact of the letterbox campaign we can look at the top landing pages on the Library website. A Landing Page is the first page a user arrives at in an individual session. People arrive at the library website from many different sources - Google Searches, bookmarks, links from social media and other websites, etc. Equally, they don’t all arrive at the home page but rather land on different pages depending on their different needs and the path they take to the site. We can compare the top 10 landing pages on the site prior to the campaign with the pages that appear during and immediately after the flyers were distributed.

Top 10 Landing Pages: before and after campaign

In the two weeks immediately prior to the distribution neither the Digital Magazines or the Reading Games pages appeared in the top 10 landing pages on the site. In fact, the Digital Magazines page ranked 24th with 53 sessions but there were no sessions that began on the Reading Games page. The post distribution results are starkly different. Both pages appear in the top 10 landing pages, the Digital Magazines page ranking 3rd with 417 sessions and the Reading Games page ranking 6th with 240 sessions.

The last measure we can look at in regards to the library website is the number of times both the Digital Magazines and the Reading Games pages were viewed.

Number of times the Digital Magazines page was viewed: 22/07/2017-12/08/2017

Number of times the Reading Games page was viewed: 22/07/2017-12/08/2017

It is evident from the charts above that there is a steep increase in pageviews when the flyer is distributed. The RB Digital Magazines page was hovering around the 25 page views per day prior to the campaign. It quickly jumps to well over 100 views as the flyer is delivered and slowly tapers off over the next two weeks. Two weeks after the initial delivery of flyers the page is still being viewed around 40 times per day, nearly double the pre-campaign average. The trend for the Reading Games page is similar, if a little less pronounced, and the impact does not last over time quite as well.

It’s clear that the flyer had an impact. The flyer was generating enough interest to prompt people to enter the url into their browser and see what it was all about. In the end however, the success of this campaign can only be measured against the impact it had on actual usage of our digital services. This data does not reveal anything about whether it generated new users or an increase in digital loans/logins.

Impact on Digital Magazine Usage

In this section I will attempt to assess the campaign value based on the change in usage of the Digital Services that it was promoting. Unfortunately, the usage data available for the children’s reading games is lacking in detail, and therefore I will focus on the Digital Magazine service. The usage data available for the RB Digital Magazines is quite comprehensive and will allow us to assess the campaign impact on both the number of users and the number of magazines being downloaded.

To begin with, we can examine the impact of the Letterbox campaign on the number of users of the Library’s Digital Magazines. The following chart shows the user growth over time for digital magazines.

Number of registered users of RB Digital Magazines over time

This chart shows that in the period prior to the distribution of the campaign flyers, between 30 June and 28 July, the user growth was very consistent averaging 1.6 new users per day. The green line indicates the projected user growth throughout the campaign period. As the first flyers are delivered on 28 July there is a sharp increase in new users. The area above the projected growth line during the campaign period represents users that wouldn’t have signed up to the digital magazine service if it weren’t for the letterbox campaign. In fact, in that period the average number of users who signed up for RB Digital Magazines each day jumped from 1.6 to 10. If we consider the annual subscription cost of $22,160.88 we can compare the cost per user at select days of the year. On 1 July the cost per user was $11.60. By 20 August, with the increase in user signups that figure had dropped to $10.15.

It’s quite clear there is a positive impact on user growth for our Digital Magazines. However, it’s one thing for users to sign up but if they don’t download any magazines then what value do they have? So we need to look further and see whether how the campaign affected digital magazine checkouts.

Number of magazines checked out from RB Digital over time

This chart shows the number of digital magazines borrowed each day. Once again, the green line shows the average number of checkouts per day in the pre-campaign period, which extends past the distribution of the flyers to project the daily checkouts after delivery.

The data demonstrates that the number of digital magazine checkouts rises once the distribution of the flyers begins on 28 July. The average number of checkouts per day rises from 77 (pre-delivery) to 123 (post-delivery), an increase of 60%.

Interestingly, on 4 July there are 282 magazine checkouts, which is way over the pre-campaign daily average of 77 and is the highest number of checkouts on any day throughout the period. This outlying data point has been discounted when calculating the averages as it distorts the picture of normal use. At this stage, we have not been able to identify any specific event that might have lead to such a large number of downloads on a single day and it appears it is just a coincidence.

We know now that the letterbox distribution campaign definitely generates an increase in both users and checkouts for the digital magazines. In an attempt to asses the campaign in relation to cost, with this data, we can look at how the cost per checkout changes over time for digital magazines.

Digital Magazines: cost per checkout

Between 2014/15 and 2016/17 the number of magazine checkouts remained very stable , ranging from about 26,300 to 26,600, however, the subscription cost increased each year, rising by $2,500 over this period. As a result, the cost per checkout increased slightly each year from $0.72 in 2014/15 to $0.82 in 2016/17.

The post campaign period in the chart above refers to 23 days from 28 July to 20 August. In order to calculate the cost per checkout during this period, the 2017/18 subscription cost was divided by 365 to get a daily rate, then multiplied by 23 (the number of days post campaign), which gives a subscription cost for the post campaign period. This cost was then divided by the number of checkouts in that same period to arrive at a cost per checkout. This works out at $0.47 per checkout during those 23 days, a reduction of 42% on the 2016/17 cost. Even if we add half the campaign cost ($3,500 for one side of the flyer) to the 2017/18 subscription fee the cost per checkout only rises to $0.55, still a 33% reduction on the 2016/17 benchmark.

Of course, it is likely that the rise in magazine checkouts in the immediate aftermath of the letterbox campaign will not be sustained for the rest of the year. I expect that we will see a sharp bump over this period and then the number of checkouts will drop back slightly. What we hope is that the base level rises with the increase in number of users, providing lasting impact. The cost per checkout should ideally be calculated again at the end of the 2017/18 financial year to get a clearer picture of the ongoing impact of the campaign.

If the Library is aiming to get maximum return on investment (ROI) for its digital resources, spending money on a marketing campaign that targets the whole Sutherland Shire is worth it, at least for services like digital magazines that have broad appeal across all demographics. It may be, however, that more niche services do not warrant such spending.

Impact on Library Membership

Surely one of the key reasons for distributing marketing material to all letterboxes in the Sutherland Shire is to gain access to all the people who live here but are not currently active library members. Typically, libraries have found it very hard to raise awareness of their services to non-members. Therefore, in a campaign such as this, one of the goals must surely be to motivate people who are not currently library members to join up. In assessing the ultimate value and success of this letterbox distribution we must look its impact on library membership.

The chart below shows the growth in the number of registered library members pre and post campaign, between 6 July and 20 August, with the first flyers distributed on 28 July, marked by the orange line.

Number of Library members over time

We can see that the membership growth is very consistent right throughout the period. Unlike the Digital Magazine User Growth chart, there is no discernible increase or upswing in people signing up for a library card after the campaign flyers were distributed. It is quite clear that this campaign generated almost no new library members. Considering the actual number of daily signups, the best I could say was that the campaign possibly generated a handful (less than 10) of new memberships in the few days after the delivery of the flyers began, and even that is without any certainty.

Although it is impossible to say for sure, the distribution of flyers to all letterboxes in the Sutherland Shire appears to have resulted in virtually no new library memberships.

Conclusions

So what conclusions can we make about this campaign? We can state with confidence that we can drive traffic to the library website. It is also clear that we can have a positive impact on the use of our digital services, assuming we market the right service. Indeed, that increase in usage can be substantial enough to make a real difference to the ROI for the library, given the cost of some services, however, this campaign was not successful in converting non-members into library users.

In considering whether the Library should pursue a similar campaign in the future, there are a number of things that we should keep in mind.

• If the library is going to run broad marketing campaigns that do not target specific demographics, the services being marketed should have very broad appeal.
• Marketing materials should have a strong Call to Action - People need to be able to take advantage of whatever is being advertised immediately and it should be clear how they can do that.
• The campaign objectives should be well considered and identified before any content is created.
• Marketing content (copy, images, calls to action, etc.) should be tightly coupled with the campaign objectives. For example, if the campaign goal is to generate new memberships the call to action should be to join the library and the rest of the marketing content should support that objective.

If I was to offer any suggestions for improvements to the current campaign should it be repeated, based on the results discussed above, I would recommend some changes to the content of the flyer. One possible approach would be to keep the digital magazine content on one side of the flyer as we know this has generated interest and action from users. Of course we could also replace the digital magazine content with another service that has equally broad appeal, like Kanopy Streaming. On the flip side of the flyer, however, I would suggest that the content should be targeted at non-members and clearly articulate how someone can join the library to take advantage of the service being advertised.