Legal marketers can use the report to:
Click here to download your free report.
Should you find that your law firm's email marketing campaigns are falling short of the benchmarks in the report, consider an email marketing audit.
For instance, the "Business Solutions" section of the website addresses such timely client concerns as alternative legal fee arrangements and developing a budget for new legal matters.
A page dedicated to RSS feeds offers the option of instant notification whenever new publications, releases, events or career opportunities are published to the website.
The firm's blogs include coverage of recent Florida Appeals Court decisions and developments related to class actions.
We recommend a visit.
The Web is rapidly being reshaped and redefined by social sharing of content, and Facebook has certainly facilitated that trend with its ubiquitous "Like" buttons, and new technology that allows apps and Web sites to automatically share your activity via Facebook as you browse. Internet titans such as Google and Salesforce.com have jumped on the bandwagon with social sharing features being added to their own applications.
Of course, as the article points out, the exponential growth of social sharing cannot continue forever - people have only a limited number of hours today to devote to social sharing, and will naturally filter out the more inane updates, and focus on those most important to them.
Still, for legal marketers, Zuckerberg's Law merits consideration - does your firm's website, and its blogs and email newsletters, include a social sharing tool? It can be as simple as incorporating an "Add This" icon. If not, that's definitely a feature to add in 2012. To be sure, most people won't care about your latest alert concerning, say, a new IRS regulation addressing some arcane international tax issue. But for the few clients who do, you'd be well advised to give them access to tools that let them share that and other firm content with their like-minded peers.
Click here to read the full MIT article.
The court cited to Ray's publication entitled Developing and Managing Condominium and Homeowners’ Associations, National Business Institute (2007) (co-authored with Kathleen M. Elmore and Cynthia Hitt Kent), in which he wrote:
”Md. Com. Law Code Ann. Sec. 13-408(a) establishes a private cause of action for damages sustained as a result of an act prohibited by the Consumer Protection Act. The Act is specifically applicable to ‘consumer realty,’ and, accordingly, representations made in connection with the sale of real property may constitute unfair and deceptive trade practices where they are misleading.”
Unfortunately, too many law firms sacrifice deliverability on the altar of savings (i.e., pennywise, pound foolish) by using cheap email blast services that attract hordes of small businesses (and some "bad guys" too) who don't follow best practices and hurt the reputation of all the other companies using the same mail server IP addresses.
So what can law firms do to maximize the likelihood of getting their email alerts and newsletters delivered, and avoid filters?
Consider this quick list of law firm email deliverability tips published by one of our clients, Cyndy McCollough, Senior Manager of Marketing Technology at Dickstein Shapiro LLP, on her new legal marketing blog (Law Marketing Geek). Among the recommendations - regular monitoring of the IP addresses and domains you are using in your emails (a service we provide to Dickstein Shapiro and other firms as part of our sender authentication package).
DeMont & Breyer is a leading intellectual property law firm with a strong focus on patents for highly specialized technologies such as electromagnetics and optics.
Running on Drupal, the website features a number of cutting edge features, including a navigable Javascript slideshow on the homepage with strong visuals highlighting the firm's successful track record in various high tech industries; a patent "expertise" section with links to download copies of numerous patents that the firm has helped prosecute; and "About Us" pages in multiple foreign languages.
The blog will focus on intellectual property issues of importance to clients in the technology, healthcare, education, media and arts industries.
The blog is running on WordPress, and part of our customization included programming of special access rules to facilitate multi-lawyer blogging.
Flash holiday cards are a great alternative to traditional print cards that help brand a firm as:
Please take a moment to view Flash holiday card samples from last year (see links to samples in the lefthand sidebar).
If you are interested in a Flash holiday card option for this coming holiday season, please contact us.
Specifically, in an online survey of 2,500 self-identified "medium-to-heavy content sharers," respondents said they often preferred email for sharing content because they viewed email as more secure and private and therefore more "personal." Apparently, email is used when people want to have a more intimate, one-to-one conversation about news they find compelling instead of a one-to-many interaction. Respondents also noted that a post can get lost in the shuffle of a Twitter or Facebook stream, but content shared via e-mail definitely will get seen and thus more likely elicit a response.
Legal marketers should keep this insight in mind when adding "sharing" functions to law firm email alerts and newsletters such as "forward to a friend" (which employs email as the sharing mechanism) and social sharing icons.
Separately, the study garnered some interesting insights into the psychology of social sharing with respondents disclosing their motivations for sharing content across various media:
Click here to read more about the study on PaidContent.
Websites remain a mainstay of a law firm’s online presence. Whether via Google, a referral, or other source, prospective clients come to your website to learn more about your firm’s experience and track record, and to determine whether your attorneys have the expertise to meet their needs. Indeed, in a recent survey of general counsel, 100% of respondents indicated that they always review a firm's website when evaluating and purchasing legal services, while 90% reported that lawyer biographies are the most important section of a law firm's website.
A law firm website that is well-designed, easily navigated, and populated with useful content projects expertise, attention to detail, and technological savvy – key qualities that clients look for in a law firm.
On the other hand, an outdated, poorly designed website is, as one general counsel aptly remarked in a recent survey, "like showing up to a meeting in a crumpled suit."
Deploying a law firm website that attracts visitors, holds their attention and converts them into leads, requires compliance with "best practices."
Our white paper discusses the following top 10 law firm website best practices:
Download your free copy of the white paper today.
If your firm is interested in building a website that complies with "best practices," please contact us.
Due to the huge developer community (now exceeding 10,000 individuals worldwide) constantly extending and refining Drupal's core capabilities, and contributing value-added modules, we find that we can deploy sophisticated website features at low cost that might otherwise be out of reach for law firms operating on a tight budget and working with a proprietary, closed content management system.
We are thus grateful to Larry Bodine for publishing to his Law Marketing blog today our recent interview with him concerning the benefits of developing a law firm website on Drupal. The interview walks through a number of "power" features available on Drupal such as:
Enjoy!
(note: we don't recommend Drupal for law firm blogs. For blogs, we prefer development on Word Press, which has numerous key blogging features built into the software and available out-of-the-box. Perhaps that will be the subject of a future interview ; - ).
Alas, it's been over a year since Steve Jobs' penned his famous "Thoughts on Flash" explaining why iPods, iPads and iPhones don't run Flash (which is still the case, although there are apps available for the iPad that allow users to view Flash).
Given the popularity of Apple devices, and the obvious importance of catering to the broadest audience possible, we've started recommending that firms avoid Flash and use Javascript instead to create interactive slideshows if they want some pizzazz on the homepage of their website. See examples of slideshows on our websites at http://www.emonlinemedia.com and http://www.elawmarketing.com.
We've got two law firm websites in production that will feature even more impressive slideshows.
Of course, for some applications, like Flash holiday cards for law firms, the animation desired is so complex that one must resort to Flash. In which case, when a firm distributes a link to a Flash holiday card to clients via email, we'd recommend a little disclaimer that the card won't run on an Apple device, and thus should be viewed on another computer or device.
To be sure, because different lawyers have different business development styles, lawyers will tend to gravitate to the social media platform that most appeals to their personal style.
Personally, I like LinkedIn, which is focused more on "hands-on," practical networking - less conversational than Twitter, less casual than Facebook. It's just my preference.
Anyway, here's an outline of the LinkedIn tips and tricks we prepared for the client's attorneys. Lawyers can consider these guidelines and see if LinkedIn works for them.
1. Profile: A solid LinkedIn profile is key. When people search for you on Google, your LinkedIn profile is likely to be one of the top results (assuming you have a profile, which most Web savvy professionals have these days).
Your profile should have a professional photo and a short descriptive title under your name (i.e, something other than simply "Partner" or "Associate", which will be displayed under your Employment section anyway).
Use the "Summary" section to position yourself specifically for the type of business you are seeking, and to demonstrate your expertise and track record in a specific area of the law and/or an industry segment. Where possible, use detail (e.g., "I led M&A teams that successfully advised on over 20 transactions involving client companies with an aggregate market cap of over $100 billion.").
Because Linkedin is a social site, consider using the first person when creating your Summary. As a social site it’s okay to take a more friendly, personal approach.
Note: most local bar rules may require lawyers to steer clear of identifying "specialties" so don't populate the "specialties" field.
LinkedIn allows you to see who has been reading your profile. This option can lead to meetings with some high-value contacts who you may have thought were no longer interested in your services.
When viewing other profiles, if you see one that interests you, but are not yet ready to make contact, use the "Save Profile" tool.
2. Connections: think as broadly as possible - high school, camp, college, graduate school. You never know where people ended up in life. For example, that friend from sleepaway camp many years ago may now be running a hedge fund (I know, because that's what happened to me!).
To reach people that are not first degree connections, there are a few options. If there is some "prior relationship" basis for doing so, you can invite someone to connect. Or you can ask one of your first degree connections for an introduction. Or use InMail to send a "cold call" message. Finally, you can join the group of a person you want to reach and send them a message via the group since members of the same group can send messages to each other even if they are not directly connected.
3. Groups: groups are an excellent medium through which to meet and interact with peers with like-minded interests and/or a shared background. Focus on joining groups that match your specialties and interests, and then get involved by participating in, and then later initiating discussions. Don't spread yourself too thin by joining too many groups.
You can elect to be notified about recent group discussions via email digests.
You might even consider starting your own group as a means of forming a nucleus of connections centered around a common interest, background, specialty, affinity, etc.
Law firms might also consider forming a group for the purpose of jumpstarting discussions concerning an upcoming event like a seminar. Several colleagues and I took this approach to help develop content for a presentation on "Using Social Media as a Business Development Tool" at the last LMA conference in April 2011 - that is, we based the direction of the presentation on the questions posed by the members of our group in advance via a discussion we initiated. This is often referred to as "crowdsourcing" content.
4. Applications - LinkedIn has integrated certain applications that allow users to showcase different types of content in their profiles. Activate those applications which will best help you promote your expertise.
For example, Box.net facilitates display of PDF documents, while Slideshare displays Powerpoint files. Other applications can be used to display recent blog posts. Status updates can be shared on Twitter via an integration.
Finally, consider activating the JD Supra application to share your firm's work product across a broad range of media channels from traditional mainstream to social media outlets.
5. Answers. Use RSS feeds to follow questions in a particular subject area and respond to these questions to develop a track record for expertise. But lawyers need to be careful of giving legal advice, and thereby inadvertently forming a lawyer-client relationship. A disclaimer may be in order in certain circumstances. Confer with the ethics counsel at your firm.
6. Recommendations: A large number of meaningful recommendations can be very helpful in terms of building immediate credibility with people who view your profile. It's good practice to solicit recommendations from connections soon after the successful conclusion of a project when the details of what you accomplished are still fresh in their minds.
Note: lawyers should check local bar rules regarding permissibility of "endorsements"
For firms wishing to learn more about our social media services, please visit our website.
Is social media finally killing off email as the "pundits" have been predicting of years? Hardly.
As an article on eMarketer from late February 2011 observes that, with the proliferation of mobile devices, web-based email checked at a desktop computer is only one slice of all email communications. Further data cited in the article shows a more nuanced picture.
Specifically, 87% of internet users checked personal email daily in 2010, a number that has changed little since 2007. And among those with a separate email account for commercial email - i.e., the B2B crowd - 60% checked that account daily, down just 1 percentage point since 2008.
Moreover, the data shows that social media users are significantly more likely than other internet users to check their email four or more times per day, and less likely to check infrequently. So one could say that social media is actually boosting email usage.
So don't discard your email addresses just yet. Instead, as always, the key is to use email marketing and social media synergistically. For example, on our own email marketing platform, we recently rolled out the ability to insert social sharing icons, as well as a Facebook "Like" button, so that readers can easily share a law firm's email alert, newsletter or invite content with their social network and/or on their Facebook wall.
To read the full eMarketer article, click here.
1. Reputation: the reputation of a sending server's IP address can have a significant impact on deliverability. The reputation of an IP address suffers when the lists used to distribute emails from that address contain relatively high numbers of unknown users and "spam traps" (i.e., seemingly valid email addresses that haven't subscribed to any communications, and therefore anything they receive is presumed to be spam).
Accordingly, proper list hygiene is a critical component of maximizing deliverability. This means obsessively monitoring the source of email addresses to make sure they belong to legitimate clients or other contacts with whom a firm has an existing business relationship, and quickly pruning bad addresses from subscriber databases.
It also means avoiding cheaper email blast services that cram hundreds of customers on a single IP address, many of whom may not be practicing good list hygiene, and thereby damage the reputation of the IP address for all other legitimate accounts. As we've previously noted, sharing an IP address with spammers (or even mom-and-pop businesses with poor list hygiene practices) is like sharing a social security number with a deadbeat.
2. Infrastructure: receiving mail systems search for signals that a sending mail server is not legitimate such as reverse DNS issues, and failed or non-existent authentication. When these items are not addressed properly, a sender looks unsophisticated and possibly malicious.
Therefore, the report recommends making the proper implementation of authentication and other protocols a high priority.
For firms with existing email marketing programs, a thorough reputation analysis can identify IP address and infrastructure issues.
Click here to download a copy of the Return Path report.
Click here to learn more about our own advanced deliverability solutions