Current News & Events
Here you will find the most recent news and press releases regarding legalspan. |
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Published
Sunday, December 01, 2002
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AFFILIATE
NEWSLETTER |
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NEW!
Administrative Area Reports
You may have noticed the new “Reports” tab in the administrative area. We have been working over the past few weeks to bring all the various reports under this tab so that you have a single place to go to obtain ecommerce and usage reports and other summary information. He is a brief description of the reports we have integrated so far.
Online Seminars: This report is very similar to the existing report with a couple of important differences. First, you should notice that the report load many times faster than the previous report. We have spent a good deal of time optimizing this code to handle the very large numbers of transactions you are achieving during your compliance periods. From now on you shouldn't have to go get coffee every time you load a report during compliance time.
Secondly, the report now initially loads as a simple list. This allows you to quickly get a snapshot of the month’s transactions and get a sense of the percentage of seminars that have been completed.
Additionally, you can now sort the entire list by each of the column headings. Click on the “Item Name” column heading, for example, and the whole list will be sorted by that column heading in ascending order. Click on that same column heading again and the list will sort going the other direction (i.e., descending).
You can also now view only completed or uncompleted seminars. This is a quick way to see how many of the seminars that have been purchased in a given month still need to be completed.
Many of you have been asking for a way to search for transactions in a particular date range. You now have this ability. You can enter specific dates into the “Choose a Range” section to see the transactions in that date range. We have also given you a drop-down providing quick access to the “Last 7 Days”, transactions that occurred “Yesterday” and transactions that have occurred so far “Today”.
Location of Sales: This report allows you to view a summary of the cities and states your users are coming from. It also breaks up live seminar, online seminar, audio tapes, video tapes, books and other item sales (for those affiliates that use our system for those items). Thus, this report allows you to see where the sales of each of those items are coming from. If, for example, you have a large number of book purchases from a particular region, you can use this information to direct additional marketing for books to that region.
Usage Report: This report basically shows how many of each of your seminars or other items you have sold in the current year and the current month. This information can be used to provide additional programming in areas of heavy usage or to delete seminars that have been up for a long time with little or no activity. All items in your catalog are summarized so you can compare the sales of book to, for example, the sales of video tapes or online seminars.
Export Current Results to Excel: In the upper right side of the page you will see a box which says “Export Current Results to Excel”. Clicking this link will generate an Excel spreadsheet containing the current result set. This can be handy if you wish to export information from our system to another system. We are working on a direct dump to a database file which can then be downloaded, but most systems can import an Excel file.
Future Updates: We are in the process of adding new reports that enable you to see your information in more useful ways all the time, so please let me know if you have ideas for additional reports. Just send me an email at jdavis@legalspan.com with as complete a description of the new report as you can manage and I’ll try to work it in.
New Seminar Submission Form:
Previously we have asked you to submit our Seminar Production
Sheet with each of the new seminars you sent us for
production. We have now moved this form online. Now, any
time you wish to send us a new seminar simply log into the
administrative area and click on the "ONLINE Seminar Submission
Form". Once you have completed the information for a
given seminar, print out the confirmation page and include this with
your video tapes and handout materials that you mail to
us. |
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Send your marketing ideas to Karen for inclusion in this newsletter. We
can all work together to make each other successful.
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Is Your Ad Working?
Creating an Ad that Sells Your Program
Time is a scarce and precious resource and your readers will decide in a second or two whether or not your seminar brochure, e-mail, or ad is worth their time. After all, there are hundreds more e-mails to wade through, papers to sign, budgets to review, and calls to return.
As marketers of our seminars, we face keen competition for the attention of our target audience. As much as we are convinced that our program is not-to-be-missed, our readers likely feel otherwise.
That’s our challenge, and it’s by no means a small one! That’s why this column is dedicated to tips that will help us all succeed. Please email your tips to Karen@Legalspan.com. In the meantime, here are some tips based in common sense.
Establish the objective.
You must understand what your objective is before putting words and images on a page. This is easy if you’re advertising one seminar at a time. The basic objective is to move people to action – to register for the program. However, sometimes we must introduce a new product or service, or a new process for an old product. In this case, your objective will serve as your focal point – something that you can reference throughout your advertisement.
Present one central proposition.
Once you’ve established the objective, stick to it and resist the temptation to introduce other points and concepts. Avoid cluttering up the message with additional information that isn’t germane to the objective. Your headline may do its job of getting a reader’s attention, but if the text is only casually devoted to the topic in the headline the reader feels shortchanged and tosses the ad.
Sell the merits of the program.
Support your objective with text and visuals that reinforce the message — figures, statistics, comparisons and testimonials. Avoid outlandish claims or statements that can’t be substantiated. Document your claims where possible and speak in terms that readers will understand. And remember that you’re building credibility with this audience at every program. Be absolutely certain that your program delivers on its promises.
Design the overall ad for easy reading.
Be sure to use simple and specific language. Call your readers to action – and give them the essential information needed to act. Beware of the following “Don’ts”
- Don’t’ try to get the most for your money. This results in an ad that looks more like an article than a well-crafted ad. The phrase “less is more” should usually be heeded.
- Fonts and graphics: just because we have them doesn’t mean we should use them. Now that desktop design capability is so readily available, everyone with a computer thinks they’re a desktop publisher. Be sure to choose typefaces based on size and readability. Whether your copy is long or short, it must be well organized and well laid out, or you’ll lose the reader’s interest mid-stream.
- Only give “artistic license” to those designs that ensure ease of reading. There are numerous techniques that may “look” great, but which detract from a readers’ ability to understand the intended message. For example, dark backgrounds, small headlines, difficult-to-read fonts, numerous unrelated photos/images, and atypical layouts (vertical headlines, imbedded headlines, etc.) make the reader wonder, “Where do I start?”
Repeat a Successful Ad -- Drop an Unsuccessful Ad
Stay with a winner. A well-designed ad will not wear out as fast as you may think it will. Although it’s understandable to confuse your boredom with the boredom of your readers, resist. Repetition reinforces the message that achieves your objectives and reinforces your particular brand. On the flip side, an ineffective ad will not improve with repetition; if it’s not working for you, get rid of it.
There is no secret recipe
Sometimes common sense gets lost and people get bored with the tried and true — “it’s time to break the mold” becomes the motto. So much time is spent analyzing what others are doing and looking for the “secret” that will drastically improve sales…when more times than not, there is no secret, there is no special formula, no one particular thing that others are doing, that if you do, will guarantee your success.
Success is created one step at a time through trial and error, a good product, and impeccable customer service. Whether or not you realize it, you’ve been testing and re-designing for years. Did you do fax blasts at one time? Do you now use e-mail? Do you allow online registration? Don’t change just to change. Your legacy trials deserve due credence for the information they generated and the direction they’ve brought.
In Conclusion
Obviously, each of the tips listed has its exceptions. There is little doubt, however, that the best way to create an effective ad is to present one key idea; in a manner which is easy to read and understand; that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience; and is supported by the headline, illustration, and text. With this formula, whether it’s an e-mail, a printed brochure, or a flyer handed out at a seminar, you’ll never lose!
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Susan Swope is the Pennsylvania Bar Institute's Director of Technology-Based Services. She practiced law in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for seven years before coming to PBI 20 years ago. Susan has produced hundreds of traditional seminars and headed PBI's publications department for a number of years. She was responsible for several projects that won ACLEA awards, and now chairs ACLEA's awards committee. In 1996, she designed PBI's web site as soon as the first
"wysiwyg" web design software became available. She continues to be a faithful Macintosh fanatic although she reluctantly became PC-literate three years ago.
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The Pennsylvania CLE Board, an agency of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, recommended a change in the rules to allow online CLE beginning January 1, 2003. Membership to PBI is not mandatory, yet PBI has about 40-45% of the market share in Pennsylvania. Of the 12 credits required annually, 3 will be allowed online. There is no such thing as self-study in Pennsylvania. There are about 40,000 practicing, active attorneys.
How did you get started?
Susan and her staff weren’t sure they wanted online programming because they felt, as is common, that undertaking an online CLE effort would require a lot of time and resources. In addition, they felt that the combination of live seminars, satellite, and video replays met the needs of their members fairly well.
“We did a lot of research on the other competitors and at doing it ourselves,” says Susan. “It became clear how much tech support would be demanded from our customers and we were not prepared for this, nor did we have the infrastructure for e-commerce or video streaming. We really liked the fact that LegalSpan enables us to maintain our own presence and they just operate in background. This allows us to focus on what we’re good at and lets LegalSpan focus on what we don’t want to do.”
On top of the time and resource concern, PBI was concerned about treading upon their relationship with the county bars. The two largest county bars were concerned that if PBI created an online campus, that their county programs would suffer. To address this concern, PBI created a very interesting option that the county bars and the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association could partake. PBI would create a county bar section on PBI’s online campus, allowing the county bar’s courses to go up on the PBI online campus system. Or, a second option, should the county bar wish to remain separate, is to waive the exclusivity agreement with LegalSpan in the state and allow the county bars to have a relationship with LegalSpan separate from PBI’s. So far, everyone has chosen the first option, seeing the benefit of tacking on to PBI’s state-wide audience.
How did you prepare to go online?
“We have been videotaping our seminars for 20 years and have an in-house staff of three people dedicated to videotaping and editing. We use the DVCPro professional format. Not much has to change to take our videotapes online. Mostly, we just want to be sure that each faculty have slides. Where we don’t have slides, we are using a law student to build a slide and build in hyperlinks to the law. The law students earn $15/hr plus they learn a little bit about a lot of different areas of law.” Also, the law student alerts Susan to problems with the video and lets her know whether the program is too Pennsylvania specific or not, so Susan doesn’t have to watch all the tapes. “This alone is a tremendous help,” Susan exclaimed.
“One of the nice things that going online is forcing us to do is to be more vigilant in terms of quality. We have set the goal that all of our materials must be in the PDF format. This makes it easier for our in-house print shop as well as for putting the materials online. We can assure the quality, pagination issues, copyright issues and continuity between programs now.”
“Something I find very exciting,” Susan continues, “is the ability sell very fresh updates on the online campus. This actually takes us to a new market, one we are trying to develop. This medium is perfect for getting out information very quickly. We are in the process of recruiting teams of our best faculty to commit to periodically recording updates in the law. So for the first time, if there’s a hot case or new statute, we can get information up there in a week or two instead of the time it took previously to get a hotel, advertise the program, etc.”
How are you getting the word out?
“We’re lucky in that we’re starting to advertise before the rule change hits in January. We took this opportunity to give a facelift to the entire CLE web site and we created a separate brand and logo for onlinecle.pbi.org. This in turn helps brand pbi.org. We created a simple one-page ad and we send this flyer out with all orders, hand it out at seminars, include it in the announcements at the beginning of programs, and run a powerpoint show at each program during breaks and before the program starts.”
Just as important is getting the entire institution to buy-in to online cle so that they understand it. Susan sends emails to them regularly, keeping them posted on what is going on.
If you have questions for Susan, she says you may contact her at sswope@pbi.org.
We will check back with Susan mid-next year to see how it is going! Thanks Susan! |
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Kevin and Ryan Hodges are members of the
Production staff and, as you’ve probably guessed, are brothers. They are
responsible for taking the materials that you submit (videotapes, slides,
handouts) and converting them to the finished product – the online
seminar. This column will be devoted to tips, tricks and lessons learned
from Kevin and Ryan in the process of getting your seminars captured and put
online.
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Technical Issues Viewing the Seminar
When your users contact you saying the video isn’t playing, the following items may bring resolution to common problems encountered when viewing presentations.
Extensive Buffering: Buffering can be caused by many factors. As a first step, try adjusting the speed of the video stream or choosing an audio only stream.
If you are using a dial-up modem, you will probably be limited to the audio only stream. If you still experience buffering even with an audio only stream, there are basically 3 areas to look into.
1. Time online: Log off your ISP, log back in and try the seminar again. After you have been connected to your ISP for a substantial amount of time - more than an hour - your priority is lowered. This means that your requests get answered by the ISP after requests by other users who logged on after you did. By logging out and back in again you can raise your priority.
2. Weather: If you are experiencing bad weather this can cause your connection to be sluggish.
3. Peak Usage: If you try to access the seminar during peak bandwidth times for your ISP you may experience buffering. Try accessing the seminar at a different time of the day.
Technical Support Holiday Hours
Technical Support will be available over the holidays with the exception of December 25 and January 1.
As always during this busy time of the year, we have extend our technical
support hours to assist users accessing the system later in the day and on
the weekends.
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New seminars are available for your review in the Administrative Section of your site. Click on the “New Seminars Added” link on the home page of your administrative area to see the newest Shared Seminars.
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