Page 91 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes
over 50% of the labour and employment clients on Farella’s targeted distribution list had
opened the email, including many who clicked to read the full analysis of the ruling
prepared by Farella’s attorneys. Additionally, several readers clicked on links within the
template back to key sections of Farella’s website, thereby contributing to increased site
traffic.
Alerts from the construction and environmental groups followed soon after with each
experiencing successful response rates from clients. A multi-article IP newsletter was also
launched using the system.

Overall, Farella has been very pleased with the value delivered by eLawMarketing’s
email alert program. As Cheryl Loof, the firm’s business development manager, explains:
“We view email alerts as a cost-effective method to reinforce the firm’s expertise with
clients in specific practice areas, and to expand and develop client relationships. And the
great thing is that HTML email alerts deliver measurable results – we know who opened
our emails and which articles and/or links they were interested in. That sort of data is
quite valuable in helping us identify individual client interests, and thereby serve our
clients more proactively and effectively.”
eLawMarketing has helped many law firms leverage email as a marketing and business
development tool. Applications include email newsletters, alerts, invitations, and
announcements.
Source: http://www.envoynews.com/envoy/e_article000167220.cfm

5.1.2 RSS Feeds and Feed Readers

An increasing amount of web content is published in a format that allows you to subscribe to it
and monitor it as it is published, much like you might subscribe to a print newspaper to monitor
the news every day. Such web content is syndicated, which means that it is sent out to anyone
wishing to subscribe, and the name for this technology, RSS, stands for Really Simple Syndication.
In order to monitor and read new content published using RSS feeds, you will need to set up an
RSS feed reader (also known as a feed aggregator or news reader).

Did u know? A feed reader is separate from your email, but still operates a lot like an email
inbox.
A feed reader is a personal web space where you can log in and view your subscriptions to
various types of content. Some people find a feed reader useful for managing certain tasks
without cluttering up their email inbox – but this is just personal preference. However, if you
are also monitoring blogs, news sites, or other types of web content that is syndicated, then a
feed reader can help you manage all of this in one place, which may make this technology a
handier way to keep up-to-date. Furthermore, while email alerts require that you register with
the publisher, vendor, or database provider, this is not always necessary with RSS feeds.

Example: Setting up a feed reader
To set up a feed reader using Google Reader you will first need to register for a Google
Reader account. If you already have a Google email account, you can use that as your
login. Once logged in you may see a welcome screen or a screen that tells you your
reading list is empty, but to the left you should see a link to “Add subscription”. This is
what you will click to add feeds to your reader.

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