According to a 2009 Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns Report by the online marketing company eROI, 20% of the 500 e-mail marketers they surveyed do not track the results of their e-mail campaigns.

I was struck by eROI’s analysis of their survey results because they are the only e-mail metrics company that have said:

Open rate, as mentioned earlier, is not a reliable metric. Click rate is better, but unless you can tie those clicks to dollars, campaign ROI can still be a little tough to prove. However, the ‘‘brand engagement value’’ of a click is extremely important and often discounted. Another major opportunity missed is conversion tracking (emphasis added).

eROI suggests that companies should focus on conversion rates but, according to their survey resulsts, 1/8th of all companies engaging in online marketing don’t even measure it.

eROI got it right and it is something that we, as online marketers, need to drive home daily: did your e-mail cause the recipient to act upon the e-mail and respond to a call-to-action?

When designing an e-mail campaign, ask yourself three questions:

  1. What is this e-mail’s business goal?
  2. What activity do I want the reader to perform after they read my e-mail?
  3. How can I measure whether they performed this activity?

As my team knows that I am fond of saying, “all roads lead back to the web.” Web traffic is the most measurable metric available. In my mind, every e-mail should push people to your web site. Whether you are establishing your brand, developing leads or selling a product, every online marketer’s goal is to get e-mail readers to their web site.Once on your site, depending upon the depth of your analytics tool, you can track their activity by looking at your web logs. By the end of an e-mail campaign, we online marketers should be able to report, “we sent XXX number of e-mails. Of those, XX visited our web site.”That is the true measure of e-mail success.Download eROI’s full report.

The AP announced yesterday that it was going to take “all actions necessary” to stop ISPs from pirating news content and streaming it across their sites, raising copyright concerns about the terms of “fair use”.

In an attempt to save their tumbling profits, hold off bankruptcies and defend their current business models, the newspapers are going for the big guns/deep pockets.

Its like watching dinosaurs fight with cockroaches.

Did I just say that?

This is the worst kind of defense in the war of survival of the fittest. Don’t these newspapers realize that they are fighting for their existence? Its like the captain of the Titanic trying to use his compass to gain his bearings as his ship sinks down into the deep, icy waters.

The AP is now reversing a decision they made 10 years ago that allowed ISPs to use their content for free. Now AP claims to be developing a rights-managed system that will rival Google and Yahoo’s news channels.

I think it is all too much a little too late.

More than 14,000 journalists have been laid off over the last 2 years. Just where do the newspapers think these journalists went–perhaps online to write news content?

The AP just announced war.

Brave, perhaps, but misguided. Because someone is going offend them and then the AP is going to sue an ISP and waste what precious money they have left paying for lawyers, law firms, discovery, trial time and appeals.

If all those laid off journalists were smart, they’d start their own, independent news source and sell their services to Google and Yahoo. Now there’s using your noggin!

Because you know that this war isn’t going to end well.

Professor Benjamin Akande, Webster University Dean of Business and Technology, describes the latest generation as “internet-savvy, phone-addicted, opportunistic and digitally conscious.”

Calling them iPoders, Akande says they number over 115 million and are the first generation to be raised exclusively on computers.

They have never had to manually turn on a t.v. They have never had to wonder who was on the other end of a ringing phone. And they all know how to type.

I work with this generation every day. They make up my staff. They are my nephews. And they are just now beginning to enter the work force.

I have to agree with Akande’s conclusions: the biggest lesson these kids have to learn is patience.

Although I exist in a world where I have to know and do all things web, my approach to my work is markedly different: I know that some times things are best left for a better time, some decisions need more input to gain concensus. These work habits were learned from experience.

Yes, some of the iPoders just need time to develop experience. But other generational differences exist purely based upon cultural shifts.

My nephew and his one-time girlfriend spent an entire drive back from the movies in the back seat TEXTING (I bet you thought I was going to say something else). They didn’t talk to each other, they texted each other.

These kids have, literally, thousands of friends on FaceBook. Their whole idea of “friendship” is different from yours or mine.

My idea of friendship is based upon shared time, experience and values. Instead, for iPoders, friendship is almost a tag game of, “I see you! You’re my friend now.” There is little sense of loyalty. If there is a disagreement, they just un-friend you.

Which brings up the issue of trust: most iPoders seeing nothing unusual about developing meaningful relationships online. Face-to-face encounters aren’t necessary. But what happens when trust crosses paths with cultural differences? Can we truly trust someone who does not share the same community-based beliefs? Or will we see new communities, and therefore, new beliefs, develop?

My latest best example of the development of online community values is David Pogue’s recent gaff. A NYTimes Technology columnist, he was a new twitter convert. One night, in all of his fumblings, he accidently twittered his mobile phone number to his 21,000 followers.

Fearing mischief and mayhem, he sent out a “Please don’t re-tweet!” Fearing the worst, he went to bed.

Upon waking, he checked his phone. Not one person had called.

So maybe this iPod generation knows a thing or two. Maybe my nephews will grow up to change the world. Maybe they will use their digital prowess for good, not evil.

Breaking News: All 800 attorneys and 200 Paralegals at an undisclosed BigLaw firm are to receive Kindle 2’s. The Kindles will all come preloaded with the entire National Reporter Sets, US Code, CFR and Federal Register.

“It just makes more sense to enable our attorneys with a portable library at their fingertips” says the firm’s press spokesman. “We’re taking out most of the compact shelving in the firm’s library and converting that space into trial prep rooms. So, it is a win-win for the attorneys.”
When asked if attorneys can also download the latest novels to the Kindle, the firm’s spokes person merely shrugged and said that the attorneys would have to use their discretion on what would be appropriate. On follow-up, the spokes person said that the “Twilight” series was requested by a group of attorneys as standard issue on Kindles, but the request was rejected by the Kindle committee.
Now armed with Whisper-Sync, the Kindles will have up-to-date case law and statutes, and the attorneys can also download the new iPhone Kindle App so they can pick up the case right where they left off.
One of the associates from the firm commented that he was going to buy the Kindle belt holster so that he could have ready access to his new Kindle whenever he needed it. “Although it looks a little bulky under my suit jacket, it is actually quite comfortable. Plus, my girlfriend thinks I look really sexy with the bulge on my hip.”
The firm’s spokesman also discussed the affects on staffing. “We’re excited about is that all of the attorney’s journals are going to be sent to their Kindles, rather than routed to them in inter-office mail. We’re hoping this means we can layoff some of our mail room staff and cover the costs of the Kindles through staff reductions.”
The firm is hoping that the IT staff can figure out a way to synchronize email to the Kindle by using the Kindles cell wifi service. “This could save the firm millions in BlackBerry subscription if we could just piggy-back onto the free service that comes with the Kindle. It could also mean reducing IT staffing if everything works out. At this point, it doesn’t look like it is possible, but we have another committee working on that issue.”
It will be interesting to see how this Kindle experiment works in a large law firm setting. The firm is hoping that its initial investment of $370,000 for new Kindle 2’s, plus the subscription costs for each unit will end up saving them millions in print and labor costs.
April Fools.

One of my favorite things to do is to test out new products.  And, last week, I gave a try at the Twitter tool “HootSuite“.  At first glance, I thought this was one of the better Twitter tools out there because there were lots of value added resources available through the product.  But, once I jumped in and started testing it (on an unsuspecting group of followers), well, there were problems that were quickly pointed out to me.

First, a little background:
While having lunch with the other two geeks last week, Lisa mentioned that she was looking at HootSuite, and that she’d heard good things about it, and even folks like Guy Kawasaki were using it to help them Twitter throughout the day.  Although, I’m certainly no Guy Kawasaki, I too, like a good Twitter tool that will help me manage the moderate number of followers and friends I have.  So, I sat down Thursday night and gave it a go.
The Good:
HootSuite has a lot of nice features to help you manage one or more Twitter accounts.
  • Multiple Editors:
    If you’re a Twitter Stud like Guy Kawasaki, you can add additional editors to your HootSuite Login, and still maintain privacy of your own Twitter password.  So, you can have people help feed to your Twitter followers, but still prevent they rouge editor from changing your password and hijacking your account.

  • Share a Business Twitter Account:
    With Multiple Editors, you can have a “business” Twitter account, and have your employees Tweet information as needed.  So, if your law firm has a Twitter account, you can share the responsibility of Tweeting and answering Tweets among the staff.  Perhaps having one person Tweeting your events and publications, while another answers any replies or Direct Messages you may receive.  Come to think of it, this would work really well for a Politician that has a Twitter account and needs to make sure he or she is on top of everything.

  • Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts:
    Got a personal and a business Twitter account?  HootSuite allows you to manage all of them in one place.  Switching back and forth, or posting to all of your Tweets via the HootSuite Dashboard.  This is a great convenience if you have ever had to go back and forth from one account to the other.  And, if you’ve ever accidentally posted a personal tweet on your business account by mistake, this could help save you that embarrassment in the future.

  • Schedule Tweets:
    I’m constantly finding a lot of good resources out there, but I don’t want to necessarily Tweet all of them within a 10 minute period of time.  Or, I find them at 3:00 AM and I want to discuss them with my 10:00 AM Twitter friends (although, I still love all of my Aussie Twitter Mates.)  This also works if you are scheduling an event, and would like to send out periodic Tweets reminding people that the event is coming up.   There are lots of Twitter Elites out there that schedule their Tweets throughout the day.  HootSuite makes it pretty easy to set it up and send it out later.

  • Monitor Who Is Clicking on Your Tweet Links:
    NOTE:  I’ll give the good on this one here, but be warned, there are a lot of folks out there that do not like this part.
    If you ever wonder if anyone ever really goes to the links you Tweet about, then HootSuite has a way to do that for you.  HootSuite uses “ow.ly” to shorten the URLs, but it also uses it as a monitor for click-thru’s and feedback options.  On the surface, this sounds like a great tool.  It is nice being able to see that 83 people clicked on your link to the blog you mentioned.  In addition, people can vote their positive or negative reaction to the link in the OW.LY frame that surrounds the web page you Tweeted about.  So, in a way it is like a mini Google Analytics program for your Tweets.  You can even add your Google Adsense code to your HootSuite account, and generate revenue from your Tweet Links.

  • Save Keyword Searches:
    Got some key terms you like to search?  Well, HootSuite allows you to save some of those keyword searches and retrieve them at the click of a button.  This is pretty convenient to have included with all the other resources found on HootSuite.

  • Easy To Navigate Dashboard
    The HootSuite Dashboard is set up with tabs for you “Home”, “@Replies”, “DM’s”, etc.  Pretty easy to use, and similar looking to the Twitter.com homepage, so there’s not a big learning curve involved.
The Bad:
  • Just Who Am I Tweeting To Anyway??
    None of us like to be fooled, or made to believe we are communicating with one person, when in reality, it is someone else.  This goes for the fake Brittney Spears twit, as well as the big personalities on Twitter that use ghost writers to tweet for them.  So, if you are one of those folks that has the money to pay people to Tweet for you, just make sure that people understand that is how you set things up.  

  • The Whole “OW.LY” Thing….
    Alright, this is the big one.  
    I barely got my first test Tweet out on HootSuite when someone called me out for “annoying” if not “illegal” framing of web content.  Now, I confess that I didn’t realize what OW.LY was doing until after I had sent out the Tweet, so I was pretty ignorant of the drawbacks of using OW.LY as my URL shrinker.  At first glance, the frame is a little annoying, but also a little useful.  So, I had a nice little discussion with Doug Cornelius about the benefits.  Whereas I thought HootSuite’s ability to gather statistics and feedback could be a benefit to the person Tweeting the link —  Doug thought it was something close to the incarnation of Satan himself (okay, I’m being a little over dramatic on Doug’s response… but, not that far off!)  

    After looking at the positives and the negatives, I decided that framing of other people’s content really isn’t a great idea.  It is annoying for one, and it borders on the unethical for another.  I would ask the folks at HootSuite to give the users of their product an option to use a non-framing version of OW.LY that would still gather the metrics of who did the click-thru, without annoying the hell out of them!!

    As for the putting Google Adsense code on OW.LY to generate revenue from your Tweets, I’d have to say that would not be something that I would do, or recommend.  Some may argue that people would not have gone to these websites if it were not for your Tweets, but I’d have to say that there seems to be a certain sliminess about that type of revenue generating that I do not like.  

  • Good Lord!!  Are You Always on Twitter???
    I mentioned to a friend of mine one day that it seems that people we knew are spending all of their time on Twitter.  He laughed and said, “No.  They only spend half of the day on Twitter.  The other half they are on LinkedIn trying to find more connections.”
    Do I really need a scheduled tweet from you every 15 minutes?  Does the scheduling of Tweets take away from the “social” part of the social network platform?  Eh..  perhaps.  I’d say as long as you don’t overdue it, use it.
HootSuite offers a lot of valuable Twitter resources for those of us that like to Tweet a lot or have multiple accounts.  The ability to get metrics out of our Tweets has value too, but we have to be cognizant of the problems that the frame method that OW.LY employs.  At this time, I don’t think that framing is the way to go.  Again, if you can get some stats without the frames, that would be an excellent resource.
I still like the overall benefits that HootSuite gives you.  My suggestion would be to try it, but not use it in a way that would annoy or offend those that will see your tweets.
Got comments??  Put them below.  Or, you can follow me on Twitter at @glambert and let me know what you think about HootSuite or any other resource you’d like reviewed.

I spotted a James Carville article in the FT.com op/ed (Daddy, tell me, what exactly is a derivative?) this morning that reminded me of how difficult it is to write for the web.Carville was writing about Obama’s “supposed communication breakdown during the financial crisis.” Carville says the failure is not in Obama’s ability to communicate but in the complexity of what he is trying to explain.I can definitely relate.I will never forget what my grizzly, old editor told me when I was interning for a small newspaper in Orange County, “Honey, you gotta write dumber. Most people can’t read above a 4th grade level.”Writing dumb may sound easy, but it is not, especially if you are writing about a complex topic.Granted, in the legal field, I am generally writing to a more sophisticated audience. But I run into another challenge: time.My readers do not want to pour over paragraphs of analysis. They want to be able to read my story in less than 30 seconds.So I have to be able to tell my story in a paragraph. And, no, that does not mean a 10-line paragraph. If you look at my writing, most of my paragraphs are only 1-2 sentences long. And my sentences are very short.Here’s another lesson that I learned from another grizzly old guy: look at your sentence and eliminate every fifth word.Yeah, it is hard to write small. And just like I pointed out in my SEO post: you have 3-4 seconds to get their attention on the web.So you better engage them fast!

Although I see the appeal of the Just Do It crowd, there needs to be some performance metrics when it comes to Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs). And all paths on this subject point to The Budget. So for our next “How To” step towards AFAs, we need to dive in deeper on this subject.

The Bottomless Budget

The lawyer personality tends to want to eliminate risk (we have mentioned that before here on 3 Geeks). From this perspective, the best budget is the one that takes into account every possible task, the people who will work on it and the number of 6 minute increments each person will apply to these tasks. In a perfect world, this type of budget would be tremendously valuable. Unfortunately, we live here on earth. Besides – this type of budgeting approach allows lawyers to spend all their time analyzing instead of pricing and engaging with clients. In my experience, even when the effort is made to produce a budget like this – it is not a final product. Lawyers will step back (to yet again analyze instead of act) and consider how much resource is going to each task, phase or budget line item. From this larger perspective, it becomes apparent that adjustments must be made. The lawyer knows in his gut that too much resource or not enough is committed to different portions of the budget. So even this “get-down-in-the-weeds” approach to determining a budget and a firm’s cost of production will not produce a perfect budget. In fact, this quest for the ‘perfect budget’ is a journey and not a destination. Which is another way of saying it allows lawyers to do what they like (analysis) and avoid what makes them uncomfortable (talking to clients about price).

The Wafer Thin Budget

“My gut tells me … $.” Although likely an accurate estimation, the “feels-right-in-my-gut” budget does not give enough information to measure performance. Although at the end of the matter you will see how well you did, a firm will benefit from gaining metrics through-out the representation. Theoretically, you could use the gut measure to estimate various phases of a budget (e.g. investigation, discovery, …), but those sorts of numbers won’t give you a solid profitability measure (a.k.a. leverage). Obviously we need to find some middle ground – somewhere between the “weeds” and “my gut.”

The Balanced Budget

I propose a reasonable, middle-ground for building a matter budget. A seasoned lawyer’s instincts on estimated fees are a great resource. We just need to focus them to the right level of detail. Let’s start with the UTBMS task codes. I know – these are both universally vilified and praised. I say start with them because they are an existing (and accepted) standard and they are in use in most every e-billing system around. This means even though they may not be the most directly applicable division of tasks, they provide common ground. Another advantage they bring; they provide reasonable case phase definitions (L100, L200, and so on).

Now take your seasoned partner’s gut and point it at this structure. Get him/her to estimate fees per task code and phase. Take it a step further and have them estimate how each task code should be leveraged – partner to associate wise. Some codes or phases will be partner intensive – some associate. I suggest the resulting budget will be a good approximation of fees, arrived at in short-order and with enough information to serve as a performance metric benchmark.

The “Balanced Budget” is one possible approach. There must be others. Whatever a firm or lawyer does for AFAs, they will need to understand the cost of providing services and be able to measure how each matter stacks up in terms of profitability. The Budget will play a central role in meeting both of those needs.

A friend of mine mentioned on Twitter that she was “loving” the FeeFieFoeFirm website this morning. I’ve looked at that site in the past, but never really took the time to do any serious searching on it. The timing of this reminder couldn’t have been better. I just happened to be thinking of a project where I wanted a way to gather data on a particular legal topic, written by lawyers, and it turns out that FeeFieFoeFirm just may help me turn that into a reality.

Here’s my idea: Compile a list of recent articles from law firms that discuss Electronic Discovery and (here’s the hard part) keep the list up-to-date via RSS feed.
Well, I’m kind of a search whiz, and heck, I’ve even won awards in the past for creating these types of resources, but quite frankly, this particular idea was kicking my butt. I could easily set up a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) to index the sites I wanted, but I couldn’t set “time restrictions” on those results. Now, enter FeeFieFoeFirm.
Turns out that in January FeeFieFoeFirm figured out a way to put the date on the information they were indexing via Google CSE. This was the key piece I’d been missing. Now I could search for electronic discovery articles that had been written in the past 24 hours:
Very nice!!
But, not everything was peaches and cream in the land of e-discovery article searching. Alas, there was no RSS feed available to help me move the information from FeeFieFoeFirm to an RSS feed.
No problem!!
I turned to one of my favorite tools, Dapper Factory, to help create this step. For those of you that were with the 3 Geeks back in the beginning, you’ll know that I reviewed Dapper Factory and found it to be a great resource in creating RSS feeds or widgets that housed the feeds.
By mashing FeeFieFoeFirm and Dapper Factory together, I found a way to put my idea to the test!! It still has a little tweaking to do, but then most of my ideas do. Go check them both out!!
If you know of other ways to do this type of search to RSS feed, feel free to comment below.

@AngelaJames and I just had an epiphany.

A little bit of background. @AngelaJames just made friends on Twitter. She’s the executive editor at Samhain Publishing, specializing in digital books.

Anywhoo, she was twittering with some of her peers about a book I didn’t know–Blood and Chocolate–and I know a lot of books! So I asked her to give me a review. On Twitter. In 140 characters or less.

Suddenly, we both saw the possibilities of Twitter.

I held my breath.

In less than a minute, she twittered back a succinct plot line with her critique.

Teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

We then both realized the beauty of Twitter. It teaches you to write better faster.

As one of my favorite lines by AJ Liebling goes, “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.”

Tweets refine your thinking, creativity, wit and writing.

And, if done well, a twitter can be repurposed for elevator pitches, bylines, resumes and queries.

Twitter: helping the cause of literacy one character at a time.

Time Inc. has developed a 10-week experiment called Mine that will allow subscribers to pick their content and publish it in the requested format. The magazine is free, but limited to 200,000 online subscribers and 31,000 print subscribers.

Similar to your customized Google page, your pods of information are printed in one publication.

Couldn’t you imagine a daily newspaper like this? Honestly, I never read sports sections, horoscopes or grizzly news. But I always read international, business and lifestyle news. Oh, and the funnies.

If I could get a daily, customized newspaper that had monthly features from my favorite magazines: Wired, InStyle, Entertainment and Harpers, how much would I pay for that???

Hmm. That sounds like a very attractive package to me that I might be willing to lay some serious bucks down for . . .