March 2, 2023. How many exciting, interesting, and educational events does your library host? Probably more than your community is aware of But how can you get their attention? We're here to help with Vega Promote!
With Vega Promote, your library has a modern, user-friendly way of reaching your patrons; inviting them to participate in events, engaging them through monthly newsletters, sending important reminders and notifications, and promoting collaboration with the community. Your library can send as many emails as you want and send to the right audience at the right time while ensuring your patrons' data stays in one system thanks to the in-house connectivity to your integrated library system (ILS).
And we did not stop there! In 2022, we introduced Vega Promote to libraries and throughout the year our teams have been continually developing Vega Promote, adding dozens of features and developments to increase our support for your community engagement needs. We even love this product so much that we have been using Vega Promote to distribute Vega Discover release notes!
We are excited to share what we have accomplished and are looking forward to an equally productive 2023.
2022: A Year in Review
- March 2022: Launched Vega Promote
- July 2022: first Vega Promote email sent by an institution to 540 people!
- November 2022: Launched free, online demos
- Design partnership: We've partnered with a creative technology and digital services group familiar with city and county governments and mission-driven organizations to work with libraries to customize Vega Promote for each community.
Email Templates and Design
- Launched Professional Email Templates. To help libraries get started quickly, we partnered with a design agency to create eight out of the box email templates for events, newsletters, announcements, and fundraisers. These prebuilt templates will save you time, without the sacrifice of sending beautiful, high-quality emails.
- Expanded our custom design library. With design blocks, you can save multiple elements from your email to the design library from a frequently-used header and footer to your favorite three-column layout or announcements banner for future re-use in other emails.
- Added an AI Assistant. Our AI-assisted suggestion tool can help you pick content for your email and break through writers' block. The in-app AI assistant helps generate witty or friendly headlines based on the content you've written. Or any headline style you think best fits the content you are promoting. It can also help you pick the text for your call-to-action button, or even generate a custom image for your email.
Patron Engagement
- Added a newsletter sign-up form that can be embedded into your emails for easy and quick registration.
- Insert Vega Discover showcases in your emails to increase engagement and interest. It's as simple as searching for the showcase, then seeing it magically appear in your email design. No more wasted time looking for book cover images or fussing with sizing.
- Track patron engagement. Gain insight into exactly which links and content within your email are being clicked on and interacted with. This gives you insight on how to re-use or improve content for future emails.
- Integration with LX Starter: Promote and LX Starter are now integrated. Libraries using both products will have one place to login, one database of cardholders and non-cardholders, and one email editor for designing patron notices and marketing emails.
Segmentation and Analytics
- Create segments using tags for easy-to-access segments and email groups, and view each segment's details, so you know exactly which patrons this segment represents.
- Updated the contact record to show a searchable activity feed so you can find an exact message sent to a contact and how that contact interacted with it. The record includes additional relevant information such as the segments the contact is associated with, and their subscription status.
- Improved search for existing segments by introducing a dropdown of the most recently created segments, so you do not have to remember the exact name you used.
- On the segment tab, the "New Campaign" button streamlines the campaign creation workflow for this segment and saves you time.
- Segment Performance Metrics are critical to understanding how engaged each segment is with your email campaigns and enable you to make educated decisions about future emailing opportunities.
Security & Automation
- Extended bounce-back automation gives more support for away-messages and other automated responses.
- Complaint handling for any email recipient who has marked a library marketing email as spam, they will be automatically unsubscribed from all marketing segments. This helps protect the library's sender reputation. Marked as spam rates are displayed for each email on their metrics overview.
- Patron Records in Promote: View cardholders and non-cardholders (marketing-only contacts) in one place.
- Privacy masking: We've taken steps to mask sensitive patron data to protect the accidental disclosure of personally identifiable information as it is transmitted via email or viewed on screen, as part of our commitment to security and privacy.
What's next for Vega Promote?
Check out our Vega Promote Product Roadmap to learn more about our plans for 2023 and onwards. Included in our plans, as part of our commitment to accessibility, we will begin the process of submitting the Vega Promote interface for a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) review.
Do you have innovative ideas you would like to share with us and the community? We will be transitioning to the Idea Exchange later this year and will have a dedicated space for hosting Vega Promote ideas! For more details, see our recent blog post on this topic.
Interested in additional resources and tips on promoting your library? Check out these two thrilling webinars we hosted with Cordelia Anderson: Level Up Your Library's Marketing and Communications, and Library Marketing Strategies That Get Results.
Another way to stay engaged and involved with the Innovative team and other community members is to attend the IUG 2023 conference. Get more information on the conference and registration here.