Get the Guide!
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Innovation Synopsis
When Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh fully restored services and reopened to the public after the height of the COVID pandemic, patrons were slow to return to the buildings. By going back to basics, the Library designed and mailed seasonal guides listing programs/events, hours, and spotlighting services to households with children, and developed an email campaign to re-engage cardholders. An accompanying marketing push encouraged residents to look for the guide in their mailbox or stop by their neighborhood branch to pick up a copy. Program attendance rose 82.71%, with the Library registering 84,628 new cardholders and re-engaging with more than 30,000 lapsed cardholders. This was a huge lift for our organization that required building an infrastructure where staff have the tools necessary to plan and collaborate on systemwide programming and developing a partnership with a local foundation to underwrite costs.
Challenge/Opportunity
Our Library, like so many throughout the country, was not immune to the COVID pandemic. The sudden closure of our library spaces forced us to reinvent how we serve our community. When Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s branches were able to fully reopen to the public, the question was how to encourage patrons back inside the buildings.
Recognizing that patrons were fatigued by digital content and messaging, the Library decided to go back to basics—printing a modern 30+ page self-mailer reminiscent of catalogs delivered to your home.
Our goal: to get more folks to the Library using a three-step approach: (1) design and print an inviting piece for every season that covers all CLP programming across our 20 city locations, and get them into the hands of residents; (2) develop a mailing strategy to Pittsburgh area homes; and (3) total media domination as we filled the airwaves, televisions, computer screens, phones, tablets, and the web with the promotion of this resource.
Key Elements of Innovation
CLP’s Program Guide is a beautifully designed, deeply detailed list of all upcoming programs at the Library.
Offering an entire season’s worth of programs, events, and services available system-wide at the Library’s 20 locations requires a lot of coordination across departments and branches—from scheduling, design, editing/proofing, print, and mailing. We mailed four Seasonal Program Guides to (1) cardholders who have not used the Library in more than one year; (2) households with children in Pittsburgh Public Schools who recently received a library card as part of the Library’s CardFest Library Card Challenge; and (3) households with children under the age of 18.
In addition, an email drip campaign was utilized as a touch point to lapsed donors who also received the Guide at their home address. An accompanying marketing push encouraged residents to look for the Guide in their mailbox or stop by their neighborhood branch to pick up a copy.
Achieved Outcomes
The response to the Program Guide exceeded our expectations. Benchmarking from Q4 2022 to Q4 2023, program attendance rose 82.71%, with the Library registering 84,628 new cardholders, re-engaging with more than 30,000 lapsed cardholders, and increasing our number of active cardholders by 27.6%. According to data provided by Savannah, a SaaS customer intelligence platform, we started the campaign with a 30.0 market penetration and ended with 34.0 (a gain of 4 points), surpassing libraries in our budget category (30.5), population category (28.5) and all Savannah libraries (28.0).
Overall, visits to the Library rose 17.07%. Meeting room use also increased 99.31%, with Wi-Fi sessions up 28.58% and PC Minutes up 19.39%.
Success also includes the heartwarming stories shared by our staff, such as the time when a long-time resident returned to the Library after many years, telling the staff member how the booklet he received in the mail made him “realize how much he missed his community.”
