Blogs

Legal Technology News (www.law.com) recently featured an article by Adrian Dayton and Adam Stock which asked the question: how much are firms paying for each set of eyeballs that look at their website? Their article encourages law firms to measure the ROI of their website traffic based on recent cost-per-visitor research.

My question to law and other professional services firms is: are any of you having these same conversations about email marketing? Isn’t it obvious that client or prospect engagements with email campaigns are significantly more valuable than unknown website visitor statistics?

Surely you can learn more about your clients and prospects whilst generating a greater return from email marketing? After all, you already have your clients’ email addresses and email marketing technologies provide far greater reporting statistics and real client intelligence than website traffic or IP tracking.

The lack of attention given to email makes me wonder if lawyers and business development managers actually know about the effectiveness and potential of email marketing? I suspect they don’t.

An even more interesting question law firms should ask is: do we actually know the return on investment from our email marketing? 

While the rest of the market is obsessed with social media and if it can win new business, every firm continues to miss huge opportunities that already exist with email marketing. Email should be the most valuable weapon in marketing’s arsenal. It is proven to win new business, yet its never been used effectively by professional service firms. Why, when it has statistics and proven methodologies to assist in building / enhancing long and valuable relationships with clients?

Are firms looking for a return from email marketing?

If marketers aren’t actually calculating the cost of email marketing, or at least setting objectives for every email campaign, then I’d argue it’s not really marketing. It’s throwing money out the window. 

So how can firms stop the hemorrhaging? I believe they need to do three things: Interpret, Action & Share.

Interpret: It is critical that marketers dedicate time to review the valuable email analytics available post campaign. Identify which clients engaged, what content was most interesting and how much time they spent reading it.  Ask yourself: what does this data mean to my lawyers or BD teams?

Action: marketers need to segment their marketing lists, targeting each with relevant content. There will be opportunities to include snippets of similar content for cross selling purposes, but first you must give your clients what they want. 

Share: it is vital to share marketing’s interpretations and what this means to their lawyers, accountants or consultants. They need to be informed of the impact their content has — both positive and negative. This can shape future topics, improve contact data and identify clients that require personal follow-up

It’s important to calculate the cost, set real objectives and measure the return of each email campaign, then review, adjust and repeat. Simple. 

Email marketing can win new business but requires a solid strategy to achieve any success.