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

StudentsStudents

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

StudentsStudents

A Program by

Amy Hale Janeke, JD, MLSReference Librarian / Media CoordinatorSan Diego County Public Law Library

www.sdcpll.orgahale@sdcll.org

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 e-mail- 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 e-mails– 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 anE-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 E-mails?

• 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 e-mails 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

ahale@sdcll.org