October 10, 2019. Imagine increasing the responses to your annual customer survey by more than 90% in just one year. That is exactly what happened at Multnomah County Library when they used Savannah's targeted messaging feature to distribute the annual customer survey that provides the library with important demographic data and customer input that informs the library's budgeting and services decisions.

"By utilizing Savannah, the survey just pops up directly in a customer's inbox," commented Jeremy Graybill, Multnomah County Library System's Marketing and Online Engagement Director.

The library has been using the survey since 1986, making it available to customers on paper at branches and on the library's website. The library relied on on-site advertising and social media to encourage patron participation. In 2018, the library saw a response rate of about 10% among their almost 200,000 cardholders.

This year, the team at Multnomah decided to employ Savannah's targeted messaging to directly engage customers. The survey message had an open rate of 40%, and within a week the library had received responses from over 22,000 customers—a stark difference from the previous year's total of 2,000 completed surveys. In addition to the increased number of completed surveys, the library also saw a ten-fold increase in the number of open-ended customer comments—increasing from 855 to 9,000!

Graybill believes that targeted messages were successful because cardholders "want to respond to requests from their library" and having the survey sent to them in a direct appeal is an easy and effective way for customers to do that.

Using the data from the survey allows Multnomah to formulate its budget, improve services and expand the library's collection with the customer's voice in mind.

For now, though, Multnomah is celebrating their survey results with 93% of responding customers finding something of interest every time they visit the library, 94% think of their library as a safe and welcoming place, and 98% of Multnomah County Library customers are satisfied with their library services.