Dear MLS Subscribers,

This issue brings you some great advice for communicating effectively, via many channels: email, a strategic campaign, partnerships, and art.

Important Note:
Marketing Library Services is currently seeking articles for the remainder of 2024. Please contact me, Kathy Dempsey, if you’d like to share your library’s projects! MLS covers strategies and tactics for all marketing-related topics: outreach, branding, segmentation, social media, funding initiatives, long-term campaigns, assessment, ROI, partnerships, promo materials, program publicity, communications, PR, advertising, etc.

Email your ideas so we can discuss your potential articles. Fellow MLS readers want to hear from you!

~KD

Examples to Emulate

Building Political Power With Email Lists
By Patrick "PC" Sweeney
This issue kicks off with guidance from a professional library advocate. Patrick Sweeney shares his deep expertise from years of working for EveryLibrary, the only political action committee dedicated to our field. Hopefully, all readers will follow his advice to expand their email lists to include non-users and to start sending more email appeals for support.

How-To

Writing a Marketing Communications Plan to Announce a Change in Procedure
By Jackie Boyd
Here’s the article many of you have been waiting for—a step-by-step example of how to write a marketing communications plan. Jackie Boyd, from Orland Park Public Library, went through the whole process as she prepared to announce a big change to her user community. It’s all here: a SWOT analysis, the four Ps, a timeline, budget considerations, and finally, publicity and promotion. The results prove that this classic marketing strategy worked wonders.

Interviews With Marketing Masters

CUNY’s Polger Juggles Marketing, Teaching, Publishing, Presenting, and Volunteering
By Judith Gibbons
In this interview, Judith Gibbons discovers that Mark Aaron Polger has done impressive marketing and outreach as an academic librarian in the City University of New York system. Some of their biggest successes have come from working with partners and from continuing to iterate communication ideas that didn’t quite hit the mark the first time. They also discuss the challenges of balancing online and in-person learning in the post-pandemic education era.

Feature

Augmented-Reality SRP Campaign Nets Big Numbers for Patchogue-Medford Library
By Laura F. Accardi
This summer reading campaign was a unique, high-tech undertaking that involved the whole library staff as well as community partners and vendors. Laura Accardi explains how her team learned, planned, tested, and prepared to host an amazing public art installation. They turned the library’s huge windows into an augmented-reality aquarium and invited everyone to color images of tropical fish, which were then uploaded into the “water” before people’s eyes. It’s no surprise that this project won a John Cotton Dana Award and others as well.