The annual regional conference of the Legal Marketing Association - New England Chapter takes place November 7, 2003 at the Warren Conference Center in Ashland, Massachusetts. For information and registration see the conference website.
The editors of Law Office Computing have announced the finalists and winners of the 5th Annual Best Law Office Web Site Contest highlighting “firms whose approach to utilization of the Internet stands at the forefront of innovation and value-added content.”
Large Firms
Jones Day (winner)
Kirkpatrick & Lockhart (finalist)
Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox (finalist)
Porter Wright Morris & Arthur (finalist)
Small Firms
Zupkus & Angell (winner)
Wolf Greenfield & Sacks (finalist)
Gorberg, Gorberg and Zuber (finalist)
Gallagher, Callahan & Gartrell (finalist) Law Office Computing.
I’ve read lots of opinions on which is better. A lot of e-mail marketers pushing HTML newsletter solutions will swear that HTML is best. However, here’s an interesting test survey on MarketingSherpa.com that shows there’s not a big difference… both work about equally.
Personally this has been my experience. I run a monthly e-newsletter for a client and we send out a plain text e-mail newsletter with lots of hyperlinks to full articles on the web site (including a link right at the top to an HTML version of the entire e-newsletter). Some people click to the web version of the newsletter (identical in content), others scroll through the plain-text email and click through to articles of interest.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (scratched CD? corrupt MP3 file?), what’s more important than the platform is the presentation of the content. I get lots of cluttered, poorly focused, salesly HTML web marketing that fail to communicate quickly and effectively. In such a case a well written, logically organized, easy to navigate, plain text e-newsletter that offers me information I need is going to make me click.
How about you? Got an opinion or a study on this topic?
Please comment.
“I am sorry… But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television.”
Two good posts on PressThink on John Ashcroft’s slight to the print press on his Patriot Act Summer Tour.
Wow. I’m Feedster’s Blog of the Day.
Also check out the cool Feedster tools I’ve added to the right hand column of this blog that allow visitors to easily search my blog as well as view a full table of contents of all posts. Thanks Feedster!
More than half (52%) of lawyers prefers Google for general-purpose Internet searches. The other half prefers Yahoo! (23%), MSN Search (13%) and AOL Search (5%). This is according to the recently released 2002 ABA Legal Technology Resource Center Survey Report.
86% of those surveyed perform legal-specific research online, with 46% prefering to start with a fee-based online resource, 32% a free, legal-specific search engine or directory, and 18% searching the open internet.
Interestingly, many lawyers often prefer to conduct their own research.
Download the full executive summary on the ABA web site.
FCC chairman Michael Powell’s recent interview on OJR, where he admits he’s a wired, gadget carrying news freak who doesn’t watch the evening news, had this interesting quote that ultimately shows he favors big media:
“… the problem in a society is not concentration and scarcity but actually abundance, fragmentation and hyper competition. There’s so much of it the audience is getting fragmented across so many different media that they’re very hard to reach and hold onto.”
I have a couple problems with this statement. First, what’s wrong with fragmentation, which translates to more and smaller more specific audiences? A lot if you’re a big media company or a mass marketer. The “reach and hold on to” part of this statement reduces citizens to mere consumer lemmings of mass advertising pitches.
During Consumer WebWatch’s First National Summit on Web Credibility, Dave Kurns admits to having an “obsession with how advertisers are becoming content creators and syndicators…. advertisers are creating content and then shoving it to people, saying, ‘Put it on your Web site. It’s free of charge. Now, either don’t charge me for it or charge a different price.’”
See the transcript of the panel discussion, Web Publishers Grapple With Guidelines on Consumer Web Watch.
Interesting post on marketing in near real time — or how to get rich selling “I survived the [disaster d’jour]” T- shirts — on how news-based ads appeared immediately following the blackout on Design Media blog.
While a study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau claims online ads are up 7% for each of the first two quarters marking a sea change, see Online Advertising Showing Signs of Recovery… and the Motley fool cites a WSJ article claiming similar good news for web advertising in Web Ads Cycle Up… Some attribute context sensitive search engine ads for at least part of the upswing. But don’t get too excited. A Reuters article, Web Search Content Ads Seen Falling Short shows the search engine ads to be serving up ads that people treat like banners.
This all seems to correlate with eye-tracking studies of people’s viewing habits that show that they stare at the “content well” waiting for the content of a page to appear, and don’t pay attention to banners, images, and navigation, unless they don’t find what they are looking for. Which only portends a future where content and advertising are likely to become (more) blurred.
