Welcome to LawyerCasting(TM)

Welcome to LawyerCastingTM, a new blog from eLawMarketing (edited by attorney/Internet marketer Joshua Fruchter) covering "best practices" in online marketing for lawyers and law firms, including websites, blogs, podcasts, webcasts, email marketing and much more!

Read the posts below and in our archives to learn all the latest tips and strategies for using the Internet to market your law firm and develop new business. Enjoy and prosper!


Lawyer Blog Directories

Securing inbound links to your law firm website or lawyer blog from topically related third party websites and blogs is a well accepted (indeed critical) search engine optimization strategy (for an older article on the subject, see here).

For lawyer bloggers, one element of this strategy is submitting your blog to all of the leading lawyer blog (or "blawg") directories - a simple step that will get you inbound links from these topically related sites. An added benefit of adding your blog to these directories is that many bloggers browse these sites looking for new and interesting blogs in their area of expertise. They may find and start following your blog, reference some of your posts, and voila! - you now have some additional inbound links.

Here's a short list of links to the submission pages for the leading law blog directories:

Also consider volunteering to host a blawg carnival on your blog - essentially a tongue-in-cheek review of interesting posts during the week you are the host. It's fun and will get your name out in the blogging community.

Law Firm SEO: Title Tags - What They Are and How to Use Them to Obtain High Search Engine Rankings for Your Law Firm Website or Blog

We'd like to start reviewing some of the top factors that are likely to influence the ranking of a law firm website or blog in search engine results, particularly Google.

First factor: the title tag of a web page. There is general agreement among SEO experts that placing the search term or phrase that you are targeting in the title tag of a web page's HTML header is a critical factor when attempting to obtain a high search engine ranking for that search term or phrase. For example, Jill Whalen, a leading SEO expert, calls the title tag, "one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings."

Writing good title tags involves a couple of steps. First, keyword research can help identify the optimal keywords to use in your title tags given your law firm's expertise, geographic location and other factors (or the subject matter of your blog). Second, as Whalen stresses, it's important to make sure your title tags are appropriately descriptive - don't just throw your law firm's name into the title tag and leave it at that! Third, since you want people to click the link to your website if it shows up in the search engines, the title tag should sound compelling (think advertising copy). Fourth, the title tag for a web page should match the content on that page, but not be identical to any particular sentence on the page. See Whalen's article for a more complete discussion of these and other best practices.

Because the title tag is so critical to high search engine rankings, make sure that the content management software you use to maintain your website or blog gives you the ability to customize the title tag for each of the website's or blog's pages.

Law Firm Video: 5 Best Practices

Found this nice summary of 5 tips to produce effective law firm video on the TechnoLawyer blog. We've already blogged about the basics of law firm video, but this TechnoLawyer post nicely sums up several important best practices:

  • Hire a Professional (for production)
  • Optimize for Search Engines
  • Promote Your Video (via email, an online press release, etc.)
  • Go Local (i.e., embed the video on your website)
  • Make Sequels Simultaneously (that is, produce several short clips at one time for economic efficiencies)

For a more detailed discussion of these best practices see the TechnoLawyer post.

Twitter for Lawyers 101

One of our aims on this blog is to provide brief reviews of the major social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) in terms of their value to lawyers as marketing and business development tools. But we don't need to reinvent the wheel each time.

Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog had a nice post a few days ago on attorneys using Twitter as a marketing and business development tool. For those who don't know what "Twitter" is, the site describes itself as "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

Kevin says his participation in Twitter chatter may yet bring new business to LexBlog, and mentions three ways he thinks lawyers can benefit from joining the site: "First, a way to socially network with people, some of which networking may lead to work, speaking engagements, and the like. Two, a means to amplify your message, i.e., spreading what you what you may be blogging, writing, or speaking on. Three, if you blog, you are going to get news from other bloggers whose content you may want to reference in your blog or work."

Finally, Kevin references a helpful blog post from legal marketer Steven Matthews with some quick tips for lawyers to benefit from Twitter.

Well, I'm persuaded and joined - feel free to follow me.

My only question remains: if a lawyer spends substantial time each day blogging, and updating Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other networks to which they belong (Pulse anyone???), what about life outside work? At some point, it seems to me, there isn't enough time in the day to participate regularly on EVERY site, and still maintain a healthy work life balance. I guess one has to try different services and then see over time which network pays the biggest dividends, and then focus on that one.

Does Google Adwords Work for Lawyers?

Does Google Adwords work for lawyers? Clearly, since there are so many personal injury ads that display in the righthand column when one types "New York personal injury lawyer" into Google (or any other geographic location).

But it could be Google Adwords only works for attorneys who are happy with securing a high volume of inquiries from budget-conscious prospects. It may not work as well for lawyers looking for affluent clients willing to pay top dollar for high end service. As a recent blog post by San Francisco estate planning lawyer Peter Myers attests.

Peter Myers runs an eponymous law firm in San Francisco specializing in estate and retirement planning. According to a May 13, 2008 blog post, Myers decided to launch a Google Adwords campaign using the keyphrase "San Francisco estate planner." However, the results were disappointing. As Myers puts it, while the ads increased site traffic, the inquiries generated were primarily from price-sensitive consumers who did not appear to appreciate the premium service that Myers' firm provides. As an example, he cites an inquiry from a woman with what sounds like a complicated estate planning situation who twice asks Myers to quote a fee. One is reminded of the adage, "if you have to ask how much it costs, then you can't afford it." Anyway, Myers says he responded with a letter that basically says he can't quote a fee until he reviews the woman's entire financial and family situation, and that this will not be an inexpensive process (Myers bills $600/hour).

Myers concludes that Google Adwords commoditizes legal services, and that this is detrimental to his business model since, as he puts it, "when your service becomes a commodity, the only remaining determinant between your ounce of gold and someone else's ounce of gold (or whatever commodity) is . . . price." Instead of intangibles like experience, insight, diligence, precision and commitment.

On the other hand, we have one client - a major California firm - that seems to have had success with Google Adwords since the ads are still running after several years.

Any thoughts, dear readers? We'd be happy to publish any stories you have.

How Law Firms Can Better Engage Clients with Microsites

A recent study conducted by Keynote Competitive Research in October 2007 tracked reactions of consumers planning to buy an automobile within the next six months as they interacted with microsites for various car models, including the Toyota Yaris. A microsite is a specialized website dedicated exclusively to a particular car model (or more broadly, a particular branded product).

Keynote found that microsites help promote stronger engagement between site visitors and the brand promoted by the microsite as measured by time spent at the microsite and other metrics. The study further demonstrated that higher engagement translates into higher conversion rates.

Similarly, a recent MarketinSherpa study found that marketers ranked "cool microsites" the highest in terms of delivering great results such as stronger conversion rates - higher than other online marketing tools such as online games and quizzes, video clips, audio clips, and e-cards. See study chart here.

What do these findings mean for law firms? Admittedly, many consumer microsites employ animation and other entertaining interactivity that would be inappropriate for a law firm website. See the Toyota Yaris site as an example. However, firms should consider building microsites dedicated to niche practice areas that can engage the attention of clients, prospects and other audiences more effectively than a standard website.

Think about it - the general counsel of an energy exploration company is going to be much more engaged by a microsite aggregating court decisions, legislation, rules and regulations, forms, and other resources relevant to the oil and gas industry than a more generalized law firm website that happens to discuss the firm's oil and gas practice. The same general counsel will also be much more likely to bookmark an oil and gas microsite than a standard website, as well as be more likely to subscribe to email alerts and/or RSS feeds on such a microsite.

Good examples of law firm microsites are Perkins Coie's More Soft Money Hard Law focused on campaign finance law and Law and Ethics Online dedicated to lobbying law. See also Dinsmore & Shohl's Coal Law focused on (what else?) coal law, Mayer Brown's microsite on securitization, and Dykema's Gambling.net focused on casino law.

Blogs essentially function as microsites by aggregating commentary in a niche area of the law, and can be just as effective as more traditional microsites at building thought leadership in a particular practice area. However, in many (though not all cases) blogs tend to consist primarily of chronologically ordered commentary on recent legal developments in a niche practice area, while traditional microsites tend to also feature extensive libraries of resources such as (in the case of Law and Ethics Online) links to lobbying laws, rules and regulations in all 50 States. Building such libraries requires an extensive research effort.

In sum, beyond your standard law firm website, consider launching microsites and blogs in niche practice areas to build client engagement, thought leadership, and stronger search engine visibility.

TechnoLawyer Evaluates 4 Lawyer Videos on YouTube

The Technolawyer blog recently undertook a review of four lawyer videos appearing on YouTube. The post evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each video from the standpoint of marketing effectiveness, production quality and other criteria. For lawyers interested in using online video as a marketing tool, there are some great pointers on what to do and what NOT to do. Check it out.

What is the Keyword Efficiency Index and How Can It Help Me Optimize My Law Firm Website for Search Engines?

Law firms involved in improving the search engine visibility of their websites may have come across the term "Keyword Efficiency Index" or "KEI."

Briefly, when conducting keyword research, the goal is to find keywords that will have the greatest positive impact on your website's search engine visibility when used in site copy and meta tags. KEI is a formula that can be usesd to measure the search engine optimization impact of individual keywords by comparing the frequency with which a keyword is used in search queries to the number of competing sites using that keyword.

Mathematically, KEI is calculated as a ratio where the numerator is the popularity of the keyword (measured as the number of times a keyword has appeared in search queries recorded by a sample search database in the past 90 or so days), and the denominator is the number of competing sites that are using that keyword as an exact phrase (i.e., surrounded by quotes).

Based on this definition, the KEI for a keyword increases if its popularity increases (i.e., it is being used in more searches), and the KEI for a keyword decreases as the number of websites using that exact keyword increases (i.e., use of that exact keyword is more competitive). In short, the best keywords are those which have a high KEI, i.e., are popular in searches, but face little competition (i.e., high numerator, low denominator).

As a purely hypothetical example, if the keyphrase “New York tax lawyer” appeared in 85 searches in the sample search database in the past 100 days, and 1,670 websites use that exact phrase, the KEI for that keyword is 4.326 (i.e., 85 squared divided by 1670).

Generally, a keyword with a KEI of 10-100 is considered “good” from the standpoint of SEO, while keywords with KEI rankings of 100 or higher are considered “excellent.”

However, just because a keyword has a high KEI, doesn't mean you should add it to your website copy and tags. Plugging in keywords that have no relevance to your website in terms of content simply because they have high KEI will not impress Google (which says it only consider related keywords when ranking a site). Instead, keywords should be added to a website so they make sense in context and will make sense to readers.

Further, even though keywords with a high KEI will contribute the most to a website's search engine visibility, it doesn't mean you should omit other keywords which will also help tell Google and other search engines what the site is about. Indeed, it may be that none of the keywords your firm is interested in have a high KEI. Nevertheless, in the end, you should still write site copy that is as descriptive as possible in terms of your firm's practice areas and expertise.

Using the ALT Tag With Images in Emails and on Websites and Blogs (Helps With SEO Too!)

Many email applications suppress images in HTML emails by default. To counter this reality, it is a "best practice" to populate the "ALT" tag for the key images in your HTML emails.

What is the ALT tag (a/k/a "ALT attribute")? As explained by Wikipedia, "the alt attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify text that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered." In other words, if an email recipient can't see your images (because they are suppressed), the ALT attribute describes the nature of each image for them using text. This is a helpful way to encourage subscribers to display the images in your emails if they are suppressed by default.

For example, let's say you distribute an email invitation that includes a graphic that says, "Register Today." Some recipients may not see that graphic, but if you include an ALT attribute that reads "Register Now," readers will see that text and understand that the image should be clicked to register for the event being promoted.

As explained by Wikipedia, ALT text is also useful in the following additional contexts:

  • For people with low bandwidth connections, who may opt not to load graphics - this way such site visitors can understand the nature of the images on your web page
  • For people using handheld devices
  • For people with disabilities who use assistive technology, such as refreshable braille displays or screen readers (indeed, using meaningful ALT tags is necessary to comply with accessibility standards for people accessing the Web with devices other than a standard browser)
  • Search engine optimization: most search engines interpret the meaning of objects by analysing their alt attribute - in its webmaster guidelines, Google advises to "make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate."

The Intersection of Lawyer Blogs and Email Marketing

At eLawMarketing, we take a "holistic" approach to Internet marketing that stresses synergy between our clients' various online marketing tools. A good example is the use of email marketing to promote blogs, and vice versa.

Many law firms and attorneys publish blogs, which have emerged as a superb tool for promoting expertise and developing a reputation for thought leadership. Yet, if they polled their clients, many lawyer bloggers would undoubtedly find that a large percentage of their clients are not subscribed to their blogs for various reasons, including lack of familiarity with RSS (the primary mechanism for receiving blog updates), lack of time to read all the new posts (especially if they are subscribed to other blogs already), or lack of awareness of a blog's existence or the blog's value to their business decisions.

This is unfortunate since, as noted, blogs demonstrate expertise, and it is beneficial from a marketing standpoint for a lawyer to regularly remind clients about his or her expertise (so the clients think of that lawyer first when new legal business arises). Clients also lose out since lawyers typically use blogs to provide insight on breaking legal developments germane to clients' businesses. Clients could certainly benefit from those insights.

A simple solution that many bloggers overlook is to send periodic HTML email alerts to their clients with links to the latest and most important blog posts. Lawyers already communicate on a day-to-day basis with clients via email, and periodically send email alerts to clients covering breaking legal developments. Thus, it is a good idea to add "blog updates" to the mix to ensure that all of an attorney's important clients are aware of the blog and then regularly updated (e.g., monthly) concerning new blog posts of possible interest and value. One can use a free analytics tool like Google Analytics to measure the impact of email updates on blog traffic in terms of page views and other metrics.

An added benefit is that clickthroughs on links to blog posts in email alerts are trackable down to the individual subscriber. This technology lets lawyer bloggers gain insight into which clients are interested in which blog posts (thus identifying possible business development opportunities as in, "Hey, I'm noticing that John Doe at Peoria Energy is an avid reader of my posts on new energy tax credits, maybe I should give him a call about that issue."). In contrast, because the common subscription mechanism for blogs - RSS - is anonymous, it does not allow attorneys to tell which subscribers are reading which posts.

That's how email alerts can be used to promote blogs. On the flip side, blogs can drive subscriptions to email alerts and newsletters. A simple subscription box positioned at the top of the the lefthand or righthand column of a blog can pick up new subscribers for a law firm's email alerts from prospective clients, journalists and other visitors who find the blog through the search engines. Why not try to pick up these blog readers as email alert or newsletter subscribers as well by encouraging them to opt into your email publications?

In short, use email alerts to promote blogs, and blogs to promote email alerts - that's the synergy you should be aiming for to get the most out of all of your Internet marketing tools.

Email Viruses: Another Reason Not to Send Law Firm Email Alerts with Attachments

I received a "chain" email today warning me about a new computer virus (a/k/a "worm") that arrives as an attachment to emails with the subject line: "Mail Server Report." I headed over to Snopes to see if this was a hoax or for real (btw, for those unfamiliar with it, Snopes is a great site for ascertaining the accuracy of any "chain" email you receive with "warnings" or incredible stories that seem too weird or wild to be true). I learned that this particular virus represented a real threat, albeit it originated it 2006, and the warning now making the rounds in March 2008 erroneously links this virus to the "Life is Beautiful" worm virus, which was a hoax).

Anyway, the virus arrives as an email asking unsuspecting recipients to download a .zip file attached to the email to install updates to eliminate the virus allegedly detected on the recipient's computer.

To avoid getting infected by this virus, the sensible advice given was:

Please do NOT open any emails with attachments from individuals or organizations you are NOT familiar with. Also, since it is possible for viruses to "spoof" or fake the sender's address, do NOT open emails with attachments even from people you know, but from whom you were not expecting an attachment or if the attachment is a file type or file name that you customarily do not receive from this person.

What does all this have to do with email marketing? Simply, it explains why it is a really bad idea to distribute mass email alerts or newsletters with attachments (e.g., a copy of a court decision that is the subject of the email alert). The reason is that, as per the advice above, tech-savvy recipients have been trained not to download attachments - even from people they know - unless they were expecting an attachment of a particular file type from a particular sender. By definition, a mass email alert or newsletter is not expected (although it may typically arrive at a certain time each month).

So sending your email alert or newsletter with an attachment is a sure way to DISCOURAGE clients and other contacts from reading the file you are telling them about. Yet, I see many law firms still sending attachments with their email alerts, and have been told by legal marketing folks that some law firm partners or other senior attorneys insist on it despite our very strong recommendations to the contrary.

Instead, if you want to send a PDF or other file to recipients of your email alert or newsletter (e.g., a copy of a court decision), upload the PDF or other file to your website or a "document library" provided by your email services provider, and then insert a URL linking to the file inside the email that recipients can click to access the file. For available solutions to do this, see our prior post describing digital document delivery solutions for files of any size.

P.S. attachments are bad practice for other reasons - among these, you can't track attachment downloads like you can track clicks on links, and so sending files as attachments prevents you from measuring reader interest in your file.

Lawyer White Papers: The Top 10 Best Practices

More lawyers should write white papers. Why? White papers have some serious "viral marketing" benefits. Research shows, for example, that 77% of prospects who download white papers will pass it along to their colleagues, and 24% will be pass it along to a supervisor (MarketingSherpa).

White paper offers can also be lead generation machines. Some of our clients have captured leads numbering in the hundreds from white paper promotions.

So what makes a good attorney white paper? Here are ten guidelines:

#1. Style: A white paper should not be a disguised sales pitch. That is, do not write a white paper suggesting why you are the greatest lawyer since Atticus Finch and why any intelligent client should hire you and your law firm. Instead, a good white paper will educate readers by, for example, telling them “how to” solve a tactical problem, avoid a common pitfall, capitalize on a growing trend, or address a compelling need (note: research shows that white paper readers tend to think more in terms of their problems (e.g., spyware) than possible solutions (e.g., anti-spyware)).  In other words, think of a white paper as a short written tutorial that conveys expertise indirectly (since only an "expert" can be an effective tutor).

#2. Hire a "Ghostwriter": don't have time to write a white paper? Hire a "ghostwriter" - there are many talented writers out there - often former attorneys - who can take an outline that you provide to them and convert it into a compelling, well-written white paper. Don't use the "I don't have time" excuse to miss out on such a valuable marketing tool.

#3. Length: avoid broad topics that it would take a book (or at least a law review article) to cover properly. Instead, focus on a small, but fascinating slice of your knowledge base. To paraphrase a well-known proverb, write about individual “trees”, as opposed to the “forest.” This will also help you build a larger library of white papers over time.

Ideally, you want to aim for probably not more than 4-5 pages. If your audience is particularly harried, busy and stressed (such as investment bankers), even shorter might be better. The key is to deliver "bit-sized" chunks of guidance and insight that is valuable to your target audience.

#4. White Paper Titles: the title you choose for your white paper may probably be the most important choice you make since it is the title the attracts people's attention and gets them to download the white paper. Follow these guidelines for a great title.

a. The shorter the title, the better.

Try to convey the subject matter of your white paper in as few words as possible. For example, research of downloads from CNET revealed that the most-viewed white paper on digital security was named, “The Starter PKI Program,” and the least popular paper was, “An Introduction to Enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).”

If a longer title is necessary to convey the subject matter of a white paper (as is usually the case), break it into sections using colons and subtitles, such as: The Dangers of Web Due Diligence: Why Google is No Substitute for a Professional Background Investigation  (research shows that 70% of the top 10 white papers use a colon, compared to only 30% of the bottom 10) (MarketingSherpa).

b. Promise a benefit in the title.

As examples, the following white papers were among the most popular in a leading IT white paper database:

  • Measuring the Return on HR Technology
  • 10 Things You Need to Know About Compliance
  • VoIP Basics for IT Technicians

c. Use numbers.

For some reason, people love numbers (we see this regularly with email newsletter subject lines like "The Top 5 M&A Pitfalls"). As an example, “10 Things You Need to Know about Compliance” conveys to readers that your paper offers tangible, rapidly digestible facts.

d.  Use “ing” words

People love "How To's". “How to” white papers offering specific advice or solutions frequently have titles with words like: “Identifying,” “Preventing,” (or “Avoiding”), and “Defending.”

e. Stick with plain English.

Do not use terms readers won’t be familiar with, or overly technical or pompous language, such as: “Best Practices in Utilization of Value Proposition Theorems”.

f. Add mystery

Titles like “Secrets of” or “Insider’s Guide To”

(click below for Tips #5-10).

Continue... "Lawyer White Papers: The Top 10 Best Practices" »

Using Online Press Releases for SEO, Building Traffic and Lead Generation

Many law firms and lawyers invest substantial time and money optimizing their websites for the search engines. Their goal is to achieve a high ranking for the website in the free search results on Google and other search engines for various keywords or phrases. However, in the pursuit of a high ranking on Google many firms and attorneys overlook a highly effective tool for improving their site's ranking - the online press release.

The key here is to understand that the number of inbound links back to your website is one of the most important criteria by which Google and other search engines rank your website.

Given the importance of inbound links, online press releases can contribute to the search engine visibility of a website in two key ways. First, when you distribute a press release through an online press release service such as PR Web, you can hyperlink various keywords within the release back to relevant pages on your website (such as a landing page with a white paper offer). When the press release gets published to the Web, these links will be counted as inbound links back to your website.

Additionally, if you've optimized the release with appropriate keywords, and the release has been picked up by Google News, journalists, bloggers, and other individuals searching for news using those keywords will find your release and may visit your website via one of the links included in your release. If these visitors like your content, they may also link back to your site, which will further add to your inbound links. Finally, you may actually get some press coverage on a news site.

Aside from SEO, online press release distribution can also build traffic from search engines such as Google News that index the release. In turn, that traffic can generate leads if the pages you link to from your press release offer some kind of free resource such as a white paper. For example, in a case study published on MarketingSherpa, one company that distributed a press release online announcing the release of a white paper reported that within one week of publication, the release enjoyed a top 5 ranking on several search engines for keywords used in the release, while 58 prospects had downloaded the white paper promoted in the release.

The steps for creating and distributing an effective online press release are simple:

1. Identify a newsworthy announcement. This could be as simple as announcing the release of a new white paper on a subject of interest to the firm's clients

2. Identify appropriate keywords to highlight in the release.

3. Write an optimized press release incorporating your most important keywords. However, don't just stuff these keywords into your release. Copywriting can't go out the window. Instead, make sure that even after incorporating your important keywords, the press release remains a compelling read. Also, avoid using your keywords too frequently within the release; that might be considered spam by the search engines. Instead limit "density" of single keywords to 3-5 mentions, and critical keyphrases to 1-2 mentions.

4. Identify pages on your website relevant to the release and hyperlink to these pages from the release (e.g., a landing page offering the white paper).

5. Submit the press release for distribution to online services such as PR Web (other services include PR Newswire, Business Wire, 24/7 Press Release, and PR Leap.

6. Track traffic on the hyperlinked pages with a tool like Google Analytics and downloads of any free resources offered on those pages. For an additional cost, services such as PR Web will provide access to stats showing the number of page views of your release and clicks on the links in your press release.

Email Marketing Metrics: Hard and Soft Bounces

Any law firm or lawyer engaged in email marketing will have encountered the terms "hard" and "soft" bounces in their campaign reports. What do these terms mean?

Briefly, when you distribute an email to a subscriber list, the email will not reach all of its intended recipients. When your mail server receives a message back from a recipient's mail server that the email was not deliverable, the email has "bounced."

A "hard" bounce is an e-mail message that has bounced because of some "permanent" problem - typically, because the domain used in the address doesn't exist, or more likely because the recipient's address is unknown at the specified domain. In some cases, receiving mail servers may "hard bounce" all emails received from a particular sender as spam.

With some email service providers, an email address may be removed from your distribution list after a single hard bounce. However, the "better practice" is to wait for at least 3 hard bounces separated by more than 15 days.

A "soft" bounce is an email message that has bounced due to some "temporary" issue such as a mailbox that is full, a recipient who is on vacation or "out of office", or a temporary connection failure. Email service providers will typically attempt to resend a "soft bounced" email at a later time.

For further technical information on bounces, see this entry on bounced emails on Wikipedia.

Email Newsletter Advertising: Text Ads or Banner Ads?

It's a good idea for law firms to consider advertising "niche" practice areas in email newsletters targeted at prospective clients of those practice areas. For example, if a law firm specializes in representing private equity firms or hedge funds, it might consider placing an ad in PE Wire (reaching over 40,000 private equity and related industry professionals on a daily basis) or Hedge Fund Daily (reaching over 95,000 hedge fund and related industry professionals on a daily basis).

When inserting an email newsletter ad, the ad should link to a landing page that offers visitors the chance to download something of value (e.g., a white paper) in exchange for providing some basic contact information (typically name and email address with phone number optional - remember to keep the form short to maximize conversion rate). If the firm even gets a few solid leads, the investment may be recouped many times over.

In terms of newsletter ad formats, there are two options - a graphical banner or button ad (typically positioned at the top of the newsletter or in the right margin (a/k/a skyscraper)), or a text ad (typically positioned among the newsletter articles). Which format will perform better? It probably depends on the industry and readership, but most people's "gut" reaction seems to be that visually appealing, "cool" graphic banner ads - with nice colors and animation - will attract far more interest than dull looking text ads.

Well, that wasn't the case with a client who recently placed both banner ads and text ads in PE Wire and Hedge Fund Daily. The text ads outperformed the banners ads by more than 2 to 1 in terms of driving traffic to the landing page where the client offered a white paper.

Why the difference? Could be the "Google Adwords" effect. As some of our readers may be familiar, Google has long offered website owners the option of displaying blocks of text ads on their sites. Called "Google Adsense," the program automatically crawls the content of website pages and delivers ads that are relevant to the site's audience and content. While Google now offers image ads, text ads have remained the most popular. The reason seems to be that the text ads are often so well integrated into the sites that display them that visitors often mistake the ads for part of the site's content and click on them (generating more revenue for the site owner).

Seems the same effect is at work with newsletter text ads. Well-positioned among the newsletters' articles, the text ads seem to more easily catch readers' attention as they peruse the core newsletter content. Whereas it seems readers may have conditioned themselves to ignore the fancy banner ads in the margins as they focus on the content. Our theory, anyway.

Of course, as noted, results may differ in different newsletters targeted at different audiences. But the lesson learned is don't write off text ads because they aren't as "fancy" or "cool" as graphic banner ads. You have to test both formats and see which works better for the newsletter selected.