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More than 70% of email is spam : Rethink law firm alerts and newsletters

August 10, 2013

20130810-153750.jpg Mashable’s Kurt Wagner (@kurtwagner8) reports this morning that more than 70% of email is spam.

If you’ve noticed more spam in your email inbox lately, you aren’t alone. A recent study by IT Security company Kaspersky Lab found that more than 70% of email sent in Q2 was actually spam, an increase of more than 4% over Q1 totals.

In the early days of LexBlog we positioned blogs as the answer to spammy and obtrusive email. Our website depicted law firm email newsletters being tossed into a garbage can.

I wasn’t acting on my own in taking this position. In May, 2004, Bill Gates told attendees at his CEO summit that blogs and RSS were the future of business communication, websites and email were outmoded and obtrusive.

Gates could not have imagined today’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social networks. Let alone, the wide use of RSS readers by the influencers and amplifiers in our society. But he no doubt understood there was a better way to move knowledge, insight, and information than through an email box filled with useless information.

Law firm email alerts are outmoded communication. Sure, use them if you want, but use them as a complement to better media channels.

Put your insight in an email, only people who subscribe see your content. And that’s assuming they can find your alert among the clutter, and open it.

Put your insight in a blog and your insight flows like water across the Internet. A reporter will see your content if they’re are subscribed to certain words (companies, codes, cases, terms of art). 99% of the reporters at the New York Times do this. Think they subscribe to your email alerts and read them?

Share your knowledge in a blog and your content gets cited by other blogs and reporters. Seen a reporter at the Washington Post cite a law firm newsletter?

A blog gets your content into Feedly, Flipboard, and Zite. These apps on mobile devices are how executives, in-house counsel and business leaders are consuming information and news.

Offer your know how and experience in a blog and your content will be shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 45% of people get there news and information from others they trust via social experiences. Seen law firm email newsletters or alerts shared virally across the net.

I had lunch this week with Steve Bell (@SteveMBell) and Russell Thomas (@3rdDeadline) of Womble Carlyle.

Without any prompting, Steve, Womble’s CMO, shared his belief that email would be dead in a few years. Businesses, including law firms, would find a better way to communicate and collaborate.

I don’t know if email will be dead in a few years, but at the rate technology is changing the status quo, there is no question we’ll use social networks and social media more and more for communication, sharing, and collaborating.

Heck, the demographics of business leaders will demand a move from email. Try reaching your kids via email? How does it work as compared to text, Facebook, or Twitter?

Don’t be fooled into holding onto the past by the number of subscribers or the open rates on emails newsletters and alerts. You do that because it’s easy and can be understood by everyone, especially by those you have not a clue about social.

Those analytics are not included in your law firm CFO’s financial reports? Revenue is. Revenue generated through relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation. Relationships and reputation accelerated through the effective and innovative use of the Internet.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Naystin.

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