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How marketing can help increase the value of e-resource investments: Five key findings
By Charlotte Dewhurst, Director Global Customer and Usage Marketing, Elsevier, San Diego, CA, USA

Campus events, competitions, liaison activities, email campaigns, advertising, instruction programs, seminars, Web 2.0, sound familiar? Outreach staff working for libraries and publishing companies use all sorts of tools to engage our user communities. We share this goal: to encourage our audiences to get the most out of products and services in which we have made significant investment, as customers or as developers. And the quest continues to find the ideal set of tools or “marketing mix” to achieve our objectives.

Understanding the effectiveness and demonstrating the value of these various tools, or elements of the marketing mix, is a challenge we also share. This knowledge is essential as it enables us to make better decisions on where to focus attention and resources as we move forward.

Scopus launched in 2005. Because Elsevier took a user-centric approach in the design of the product, it was only natural for us to roll out a co-marketing program with librarians alongside the first licenses. Together, Elsevier and specific libraries tried a diverse set of tactics, from onsite product training, Scopus awareness days and a student ambassador program to email campaigns. About a year and a half after the launch of Scopus, we were able to study the impact of these marketing activities on usage of this major, new electronic product.

The research findings were based on trend analysis examining the effects of marketing actions on Scopus usage at particular institutions during the 17-month period of January 2005 through May 2006. To identify patterns of growth in the use of Scopus attributable to marketing actions, we mined usage data together with records of marketing activity worldwide. The main impact was observed on growth in number of users. In this article, I’m sharing some of the key findings and the underlying marketing lessons learned.

Five key findings on increasing value through marketing

1. Interpersonal connections make the difference

In this age of Web 2.0, it’s good to see that face-to-face interaction still makes a difference. The number of Scopus users at customer accounts where in-person support was offered — whether through training, onsite awareness-raising events or more formal student involvement programs such as the SAmP (Student Ambassador Program) grew at the highest rate observed by the study and more than double that at customer accounts where no in-person activities took place. Elsevier’s Student Ambassador Program has been successfully implemented across the globe with very positive feedback from librarian and student participants. In addition to positive feedback there has also been a positive impact on the usage of Scopus at institutions implementing the SAmP, where, on average, the rate of growth in users during the study period was 50% higher than at accounts where the SAmP was not running.

This graph shows the impact of in-person marketing activities on Scopus
usage at select institutions from January 2005 to May 2006.

2. Training is a key component of the marketing mix

Customer accounts where in-person training sessions had been held showed the highest growth in users. We found that even just one training session could have a significant impact. Marketing activities unsupported by in-person training were not as effective in increasing the number of users. At these accounts the number of users grew at half the rate of accounts receiving training.

Since reviewing the results of our research, Elsevier has expanded our freelance trainer network to enable us to offer more local-language training support. To complement existing product instruction programs, Elsevier account development managers now provide local-language training in languages including Chinese, Czech, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Thai. We’ve also launched the Elsevier TrainingDesk (www.trainingdesk.elsevier.com) — an initiative offering additional opportunities for librarians and researchers to benefit from free professional training on products and industry topics in a collaborative online environment.

3. Never underestimate the importance of a librarian

This graph shows the impact of librarian-involved marketing activities
on Scopus usage at select institutions from January 2005 to May 2006.

We found that institutes where one or more of our marketing activities focused on cooperation with a librarian showed a higher growth in number of users than those where librarians were not involved in the marketing activities. For example, working directly with a library to implement an email campaign to users was shown to result in considerable impact, efficiency and effectiveness as opposed to not working with the library.

4. Interactive promotions are effective

Promotions that included some level of interactivity, such as the Scopus Quiz, proved successful in gaining the attention of new users and provided a fun way of encouraging users to go in and use the product.

5. Repetition is important

A classic marketing concept continues to hold true. At customer accounts where more than four marketing activities took place, we observed a higher growth in the number of users. Of course good integrated marketing is not just about quantity, but also about quality, variety, customer focus, planning and coordination.

Where to from here?

We believe co-marketing programs can significantly increase the number of users of information resources and thereby increase the value an institution receives for its investment. Elsevier account development managers are available for marketing consultations and we’re eager to explore with librarians more ways of working together to achieve our common goal of ensuring users make the most of scholarly resources available to them.

There’s certainly more to learn. Watch this space for findings from future studies.