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Global law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP has been advising many of the world’s leading corporations and financial institutions, governments and governmental organizations for more than 130 years. Headquartered in New York, it has 19 offices located in major financial centers around the world. It is well known for both its litigation and transactional work, especially in International Arbitration, Capital Markets, Finance, and Mergers & Acquisitions.
In early 2007, Shearman & Sterling took the strategic decision to review the way it communicated digitally with key clients and prospects. At the time, campaigns were sent in bulk from Lotus Notes, a process that was deemed unsatisfactory for a number of reasons.
Mass delivery of up to 5,000 emails at a time was causing stress on the firm’s IT infrastructure. There was also the potential of negatively affecting the shearman.com corporate domain reputation, since when large volumes of email are sent, mail filters can begin to associate the address with spam and cause legitimate email to get buried in bulk email boxes. As with any business, Shearman & Sterling’s emails are frequently time sensitive and to client satisfaction.
In addition, Shearman & Sterling recognized that it could do more with online content. As the channel is a direct and immediate interface with clients, it was internally acknowledged that the quality of communication needed to be as optical as possible and the user experience enhanced. Also, the power of the Shearman & Sterling brand was not realizing its full potential and there was a lack of consistency in global communications that could affect brand recognition.
Finally, the marketing team required second-day intelligence so they could immediately follow up with clients. For instance, were recipients receiving emails? Did they find the information relevant? Were they forwarding content on to colleagues?
In all, there was a solid argument for a new approach.
After talking to a number of digital providers and reviewing the solutions available in the marketplace, Sherman & Sterling commenced a serious dialogue with Concep.
There were four main reasons for this engagement:
- Shearman & Sterling was impressed with the number of other firms that were already using the service (Concep’s client base includes 50% of the top 30 global law firms);
- Concep understands the legal space and the idiosyncrasies of the sector;
- Concep is a global operation with offices in London, New York, and Sydney and was therefore au fait with European regulations such as the Data Protection Act;
- Concep delivers technology that is recogonized as industry leading and has won numerous awards for innovation.
To gain support for the technology from partners and the wider organization, the firm decided to pilot the solution and use it to manage the logistics and promotion of its prestigious annual Corporate Governance Symposium. For the first time, the firm was using a digital platform for an event that was one of the most important in the calendar year. The stakes were undoubtedly high and the credentials of Concep’s technology were most certainly under the microscope.
Concep worked closely with the firm’s in-house design team to build email templates for the event and the team was given a crash course on the functionality and capabilities of Concep Campaigner, Concep’s interactive email marketing platform.
The solution was used to send out staggered invitations; multi reminders to manage the RSVP process to provide the event team with centralized, at-a-glance-data on who had expressed an interest and who was expected to attend.
Crucially, this up-to-the-minute customer information could be instantaneously circulated to all senior client-facing staff. For the first time, Shearman & Sterling could access actionable intelligence.
The results from using Concep Campaigner for the symposium were deemed very impressive. Online communications were visibly more sophisticated and the entire marketing strategy behind the event was more coordinated and joined up.
In fact, the templates designed by Shearman & Sterling’s in-house team for the Corporate Governance Symposium were recgonized by the Legal Marketing Associations (LMA) at its annual award ceremony, the 2008 Your Honor Awards. The team picked up an “Electronic Media” award for the invitation’s quality and creativity.
Moreover, making Concep Campaigner pivotal to the logistics of the event resulted in a reduction in print and administration costs, which demonstrated the immediate return on investment that can be accrued from using such a solution.
The use of Concep Campaigner has dramatically changed how many global information vehicles are now distributed at Shearman & Sterling. The firm uses the platform to send out event invitations, which normally take the form of workshops or panel discussions, client alerts on sector specific legal topics, party invitations, and numerous types of internal communications.
Finally, the statistics provided by Concep Campaigner enable Shearman & Sterling to cleanse its database and update LexisNexis InterAction, its CRM system. Currently this is done manually, but in the future it is planned to integrate the two systems as Concep has developed an application which automatically feeds data gathered from a sent email campaign, such as opt-out requests or invalid email addresses, directly into InterAction.
In essence, the technology has sharpened minds as to the business development potential of a premeditated online strategy where customer preference data drives content creation.
Ennio A. Rizzi, Director, Marketing Services at Shearman & Sterling, said; “The customer service and support we have received from Concep has been outstanding. They have delivered on everything promised, problems have been fixed and they have guided us through a change in strategy which we knew would represent a whole new way of doing on-line outreach. From our perspective, we didn’t just want a technology; we required a proactive partner that would be with us for a long term, one that will help us to evolve our online strategy and provide best -practice recommendations on how best to exploit this channel in the future.”
“In essence, we use Concep Campaigner as a door opener. It’s a pure business development tool, which offers both technical and operational support. We now have statistics on client and prospect behavior which were just not available before. We fully expect to generate a more significant return on investment as compared to our various online initiatives.”
