When the doors of Broward County Libraries reopened to the public in March 2021 after being closed due to COVID, many in-person customers did not return. By January 2022, the number of physical customers was still low. For example, in January 2020, two months before the shutdowns, the overall door count for all BCL locations was 571,886 over 8,192 service hours, an average of 69 customers per hour. By January 2022, that had only gone up to 287, 145 customers in 6,559 service hours, an average of 43 customers per hour.

With the goal of encouraging customers to return to their local/home branch after COVID shutdowns, library staff created a campaign to bring customers back and increase door counts. Posters for each library location were printed with a QR code and link that can be scanned for instant connection to an online list of that particular branches’ programs. Monthly e-newsletters, one for each library location, were sent to a curated subscriber list made up of people who opened their library account at that branch.

The campaign was a success. Between January 2022 and January 2023, with a comparable number of service hours, those door counts increased by 34%. The QR codes and links on the branch posters were accessed by customers an average of 10-110 times monthly, and the email open rates have been increasing since their launch in January 2023.