Reaching Your Market: the Public, Law Firms, and Students

A Program by Amy Hale Janeke, JD, MLS Reference Librarian / Media Coordinator San Diego County Public Law Library

How Do You Reach Your Target Market?

Three Most Common Ways to Get a Message Across Face to Face verbal communication (f2f) Written Auditory (hearing)

Face to Face Most effective Most time-consuming Most expensive

Written Effective Inexpensive Least time consuming

Auditory Least effective – 3 times rule Expensive Difficult for listener to verify information easily

Most Efficient Approach Use written or auditory methods to entice person into a f2f setting –Newsletters –Flyers –Radio ads or shows

What Works? Info that is timely Info that is interesting Info delivered in a format pleasing to consumer

Print Newsletters Expensive –($2,000 per issue in printing/mailing costs) Ineffective –Less than 10% of members read it Inefficient –3 month delay

PDF Newsletters Difficult to navigate Takes time to load Need special program (Adobe) to open the documents

E-Newsletter Cheaper –Saving $3500 in first year of use And $5000 a year every year thereafter More efficient –Send info out once a month –Pops up in readers - no downloading Effective –Readership increased by 40-45%

Cost Print newsletter- $8,000 / year –Printing –Postage –Staff time to assemble E-newsletter- –Initial set up fee of $1500 –Monthly fee of about $250 Saves us –$3500 in first year of use –And $5000 a year every year thereafter

How Can I do an E-Newsletter? Easy even if you don’t know HTML –Write content –Add graphics –Get s –Send!

Getting Started Type information into Word or Wordperfect Get some clip art –CDs or –Clipart.com ($99/ year) Subscribe to a vendor –Subscribermail.com –Blue Hornet

1.Type up information

2.Get clip art

3.Subscribe to vendor

What to Look for in an E-Newsletter Vendor Can I archive the materials for free? What is the monthly cost? How many addresses will that get me? What kind of statistics will I be able to see? Length of contract

Once you get all your text and graphics into the system and have created all the story files you need, you are ready to put the e- newsletter together.

How Do You Collect s? Use membership list Use web sign-up –“We respect your privacy and do not sell personal information.” Use sign-up sheets at desk

Results Readership is up from 10% to 40% Comments like this: –"Outstanding and informative newsletter." –"I just read your newsletter online and wanted to let you know how impressed was with it. It is brief, but quite informative." –"Thanks for sending the newsletter--I love it. It's interesting and I'm sure very useful to recipients." –"Thank you very much for the e mail. I look forward to the next one!" –"Thank you very much for the heads up on the changes in the civil code."

Results Patrons come in and ask for books featured in newsletter Patrons perceive the law librarians as information professionals, not clerks Patrons recognize the value of the law library and its staff

Unexpected Benefit When a patron calls in or s us with a question, sometimes we have already addressed the question in one of our newsletters. So we can direct the patron to our web page so they can see our newsletter. They get the info and we get to raise their awareness of our web page.

Conclusion E-newsletters are a great way to connect with your target market –Cost efficient –Easy to do –Excellent response (lots of people see it)

Thanks for Coming! Questions or comments, please write