I recently had the pleasure of talking with Jasmina Basic, Director of Communications at DRI, during an Office Hours session focused on how her organization strategically uses JD Supra to achieve their marketing objectives.
My ongoing Office Hours series enables clients to listen (or actively 
participate) via Zoom to a 30-minute program as I focus on a particular aspect of our service – either solo or with a guest. Because Jasmina works on behalf of a global membership organization, I was particularly excited to share her perspective with attendees. Her insights and takeaways apply broadly to all manner of professional service organizations interested in reaching a wider audience.
Indeed, as I think about our work together, one big picture takeaway for me is simply this: if a partner or solution provider offers you access to a client service team on an ongoing basis, take advantage! In the six months since DRI joined JD Supra, I’ve been lucky to participate on a handful of calls with Jasmina, including our kick-off call, an early analytics review, and some ongoing account-based email communications. Among other things, this open channel enables my team to get a better understanding of any organization’s goals and strategic plans – which allows us to better communicate the features that can be of greatest value to achieving success.
In short: if you are a JD Supra client, talk to me. The benefit goes both ways.
As Jasmina shared, DRI came to JD Supra in order to:
- expand visibility beyond their existing membership for greater name recognition among those in media and at law firms;
- expand thought leadership of their authors and amplify the member benefit of contributing to DRI publications or participating in the organization’s programming;
- develop warm leads for business development and membership opportunities.
In addition, Jasmina explained that “as a nonprofit association, sometimes our staff or budget are limited, so being able to leverage a platform like JD Supra really helps amplify our voice while accessing a great support network on JD Supra’s team and keeping things manageable on our side.”
These initial objectives translate for a variety of entities, whether you are (like DRI) a global membership organization, or a global law firm, or a smaller firm focused on a specific region or marketplace.
So, how did we do in our first six months together?
Jasmina kindly walked Office Hours attendees through the various ways we have supported DRI. Her perspective reads like a cross between a content strategy marketing plan (use it!) and an informal case study of JD Supra’s distribution benefits and additional features. In Jasmina’s words:
On reaching a wider audience
Among other things, “our content has been shared on social media by other organizations (WestLaw, Today’s Managing Partner, Texas Center for Legal Ethics, individual thought leaders on LinkedIn) and media outlets who organically found us through the platform and its newsletters, including JD Supra’s high-level curated newsletters Corporate Law Report and Morning Brief.”
On editorial guidance & trending topics
“JD Supra’s writing prompts allow us to spur more engagement with committees in several practice areas. Lawyers are so busy already, so having a jumping-off point has helped us solicit more content for our publications. Sometimes it can be harder at DRI to connect with members who are less vocal, so the trends help us understand the everyday civil defense attorney better.”
Additionally, “readership trends help inform strategy. We leverage this for our editorial calendar, webinar topics, and more.”
On extending brand visibility
“If you work in marketing, you know the importance of maintaining the brand identity. JD Supra made it easy for us to incorporate our colors, logo, and social network links to really strengthen that connection between the great content we provide and the source of that content.
It’s all about establishing that connection in the reader’s mind and continually reinforcing it so we become the go-to source for civil defense leaders.”
On event and webinar promotion
By listing events and webinars on JD Supra, “we’re increasing our visibility to non-members and other potential speakers and vendors, which can be a struggle for us.
Our members get so much value from our offerings, but sometimes it’s hard moving beyond existing members to those new audiences, and with people in the profession constantly changing practices or retiring, it’s essential to keep the prospect funnel filled.”
And, bonus, by promoting them on JD Supra “we have been contacted by vendors looking to exhibit at our seminars.”
On the strength of analytics and reader info
“We had information from our website and specific marketing tools, but the viewership numbers we’ve seen through JD Supra have often gone beyond what we’ve been able to capture in other ways.
We’re also better able to connect the dots between new leads and how they came across our offerings. For example, we’re able to set up tracking links that indicate whether somebody who signed up for one of our seminars initially came across that on JD Supra.
This also makes my job easier because we can better calculate the return on investment we’re getting from the platform for those members of our team who need those more concrete figures when it comes time to set the annual budget.”
And speaking of which, Jasmina uses our new Report Builder tool “which has been helpful with our board of directors. Our executive team meets with our board of directors, made up of volunteers who are really active in the organization, and the reports allow us to easily capture the data and share it with them.
Our board is always interested in how our staff efforts are supporting our organization’s mission, and having that updated, comprehensive data, that I can customize and have delivered on a regular basis right to my inbox, makes it much easier to keep everybody on the same page.”
On JD Supra’s email support (analytics, reader highlight alerts, editorial guidance)
“We have leaders across our team tap into our JD Supra analytics, including in our programming, membership, and business development departments.
I might visit the editorial guidance portion of the platform often while our membership team is looking for which firms are continually reading our content to potentially start a conversation about firm membership deals.
Multiple departments being able to leverage the platform also helps us break down silos and strategize big projects together that are based on hard data.”
Bonus takeaway
Finally, given Jasmina’s Master’s degree in literature, I asked her to close the program with book recommendations. Her reply:
“Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow.”
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Thank you Jasmina! This and all other Office Hours sessions are available in video archive for your convenience. If you are a JD Supra client, log into your account dashboard and look for the Office Hours link.
- Paul Ryplewski, VP Client Services, JD Supra