CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter

By Chuck Bingaman

<Email chuck@chuckbingaman.com; Twitter @chuckbingaman>

#42 December 2009

Leadership At last month’s LERN Annual Conference, www.IICLE.com, the web site of Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, was cited as one of the best of the year in the wide world of continuing education. IICLE Executive Director Nora Crandall last week credited key staff members Al Gietl and Chris Hull with development of IICLE’s versatile and effective site. Check it out for a bundle of innovative information, marketing and communication ideas! In his annual State of Lifelong Learning 2010 keynote in November, LERN Executive Director Bill Draves observed that 2009 was the fist year that eMarketing has become a distinct job in continuing education and that he expects all significant continuing education programs to have a full-time eMarketer in the next few years. Are you thinking along those lines?

Management A few email marketing tips from email marketing guru Dan Belhasssen, email marketing guru from Winnipeg, Wednesdays have been found to be the best days to send advertising email by a small margin over Tuesdays as judged by “open” rates. Don’t send your email early in the morning; let your recipients first get through all the accumulated email from overnight first! Build your organization’s name or acronym into the subject line for credibility’s sake and offer a specific benefit for opening the email in the subject.  “Hybrid’ instruction is the single greatest unrecognized trend in higher education today,” according to Graham B. Spanier, President of Penn State University. What’s a “hybrid”? It’s a blending of the best of face-to-face learning with online learning, and it’s coming on quickly. It’s offering a course with one or more sessions in person and the rest online. Or some mix of those elements. It may be well attuned to law firms not wishing to pay lawyers to travel, to the rise in telecommuters, to H1N1 and to the learning needs of many who cannot easily go to far-flung classes, particularly for multiple sessions. Want to increase course enrollments and cut marketing costs? One classic strategy is to identify your 7 primary CLE market segments, to tailor your offerings and marketing to what each segment wants, and to focus on satisfying those segments. It will make you focus on your best customers, provide what they want and avoid spinning your wheels on distractions and losers.  The Key Recommendations of October’s Summit Conference on Equipping Our Lawyers are now up on the Summit’s web site at www.equippingourlawyers.org. ALI-ABA and ACLEA planners are assembling a committee to push for implementation. Expect action in 2010. Your comments/feedback are welcome.

Resources Do you publish one or more eNewsletters? If so, you might find Debbie Weil’s blog called WordBiz Report at www.debbieweil.com/newsletter/wordbiz. Valuable! Sure, you’ve got a web site that is crucial to your operations, but are you analyzing the traffic coming to your site, what viewers read and don’t read, how long they stay, where they come from, and more? Google Analytics is one of the best services available to help you maintain a great—and effective—site. And it’s free! Check it out www.google.com/analytics. Want a steady stream of new ideas for being found on the Web by potential customers? Sign up for http://blog.hubspot.com/blog. It features stories by many companies seeking to attract business through their web sites.  LERN is also offering in 2010 your choice of in-person or online courses leading to a Certified eMarketing Professional (CeP) designation. I’ve spent time with all three instructors, Dan Belhassen, Bill Draves, and Suzanne Kart, and I can tell you that all are terrific! For more information, email Tammy Peterson at Tammy@LERN.org.

I hope your holiday season has been packed—packed!—with good friends, good family events and good cheer! And I hope the 2010 is your best year ever! Chuck Bingaman

Meeting Your Organization's Renewal Needs

Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major American CLE organization, I now consult on CLE strategic planning, marketing, communication and management challenges with CLE organizations, bar associations, and law firms. Last fall I served as the Reporter for the ALI-ABA/ACLEA Critical Issues Summit. I welcome your inquiries on projects designed to enhance your organization’s effectiveness. You can contact me at 603-756-9268, at chuck@chuckbingaman.com, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH, USA 03068. Past issues of this newsletter are archived at www.chuckbingaman.com.