Use Relationship Data to Amplify Impact in Legal Marketing

Every day, strong, actionable data is becoming increasingly key for successful marketing campaigns. This is especially true in legal marketing, where strategic data usage can significantly impact revenue generation, client acquisition (referrals are critical here for law firms who often derive 60-70% of their revenue from them), relationship management, and account growth (cross-selling).

The need for data-driven marketing becomes even more critical as the market for legal services and representation continues to get more challenging and competitive. Clients are less loyal than they once were and more likely to commoditize services or leave big firms for upstarts and boutique firms in order to cut costs. At the same time, they have higher expectations.

So who wins in this challenging environment? A recent study produced five statistically-defined business development approaches most likely to do so to varying degrees: the Expert; the Confidant; the Activator; the Debater; and the Realist.

Activators—those who focus on “we,” building many-to-many relationships that are multi-threaded—had the highest revenue, with Realists coming in second.
Realists are the folks that win client trust through honesty and transparency, and are very protective of their teams.
The rest—Experts, Debaters, and Confidants—although still successful, seemed to struggle more to keep up with revenue goals.

Regardless of your firm’s specific approach to business development, consistent success is going to require highly strategic, data-driven decision-making and marketing. But, as we already know all too well, harnessing the power of data is far easier said than done, and requires a nuanced understanding of the various tools, methodologies, and best practices it takes to do it right.

The following is a detailed guide for legal marketers on how to navigate the world of data-driven marketing while maximizing its benefits for lead generation and sales.

Enhancing Legal Marketing with Data-Driven Tools

Data-driven tools like Introhive, and Foundation Software stand to significantly enhance legal marketing strategies that therefore produce better results. More and stronger client insights allow you to better understand your target audience and their specific needs to deliver personalized messaging and campaigns that are more likely to drive conversion by delivering the right message to the right people, at the right time.

Further, these tools make it far easier and more efficient to measure and monitor results to continually optimize client journeys and marketing campaigns for maximized results. They’ve even been shown to help better understand client touchpoints and streamline trip planning for law firms.

As an example, Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP worked with Introhive to deploy a suite of solutions to address the firm’s CRM adoption and data quality management challenges. This resulted in greater CRM adoption and client insights, automated data capture in CRM, and cleaner, more accurate data—all of which served to power a more consistent client experience; drastically reduced admin and busy work for the firm’s partners and attorneys; and more seamless business development and marketing overall.

Driving Cross-Selling and Building Strong Relationships with Data

Cross-selling—ensuring all applicable practice groups within a law firm are introduced to the client—is a critical use case for data-driven relationship building and account growth. Remember, 80% of your revenue often comes from 20% of your clients!

To this effect, tools like Introhive find new opportunities in the client data you already have and help you identify untapped revenue in accounts where you have established relationships. This is done by combining billing, customer relationship data, and opportunity data to seamlessly spot opportunities to expand into existing accounts by cross-selling and upselling your products or services. This type of analysis also identifies accounts that don’t have incoming revenue in other lines of business. All together, these hidden opportunities in your data—which can be easily uncovered with the right tools—are “the white space” where you will find gaps in client needs that you can then work to fill with your products or services.

As an example, following the merger of Wilson Legal and Stanton Allen, and just 120 days after going live with Introhive, the new Wilson Allen firm realized the following results:

A 584% return on investment from cost savings mapped to pre-meeting digest intelligence reports
The platform enabled the merged company to identify and close cross-selling opportunities more efficiently by immediately bringing together two disparate data sets into one cleaned an enriched database (this also helped ensure an overall smoother transition into a single business unit, which can often prove difficult without a tool like Introhive)
The simple use of the platform enabled Wilson Allen to reinforce to clients its value and power, creating new growth opportunities for the company’s services business

“Introhive has helped in identifying relationships that exist in other practices of
the business without the need to ask ;who knows who.’ Specifically, it’s helped
with a cross-selling initiative for the CRM Practice into existing Wilson legal
clients.”
Michael Warren, VP of Client Development and Intake Practice at Wilson Allen.

The Future of Legal Marketing: Automation and Streamlining

Automation is critical in gaining the ability to reduce the manual work involved in collecting, managing, and mining the business-critical data required to streamline legal marketing strategies and boost results. This includes the ability to automate the resolution of duplicate contacts and understanding company hierarchies for more targeted messaging. It’s [automation] also far more cost-effective and accurate than staffing data stewards.

According to Datameer, in addition to automation, personalization and speaking directly to the unique needs and interests of individual clients (think more one-to-one and less one-to-many campaigns) is likely to remain a growing trend in legal marketing. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also trending upwards as firms strive to process and analyze large amounts of data quickly and accurately, making it easier to gain insights and make effective data-driven decisions. In 2023 and beyond, it is expected that more firms, even smaller ones, will leverage AI and ML to optimize marketing efforts and drive better results.

Omni channel marketing, predictive analytics, and customer data platforms (CDPs) that can help firms create a single, more comprehensive view of their clients and power more relevant marketing experiences will also continue to rise in popularity as the market for legal services continues to grow more challenging and harder to penetrate.

Demonstrating the ROI of Relationship Data-Driven Marketing in Legal Firms

It’s not enough for law firms to implement data-driven legal marketing strategies and tactics. They also have to be able to demonstrate the ROI of these efforts in order to cultivate a truly data-driven culture and build a strong, actionable data foundation to drive results. Introhive helps you do just that by consistently proving ROI and regularly optimizing our platform and tools to fit your needs and move the needle. Just look at Lupton Fawcett who realized a 350% ROI from data automation alone within just 9 months of deploying Introhive, and LBMC who saw a 567% ROI in time savings from doing the same.

A strong marketing team knows the clients and buyers, and knows what they are selling, who to, and how they sell best. They also have specific targets/KPIs they measure marketing efforts against (ex: 10% overall growth or 15% account growth) and always measure the revenue derived from each marketing activity—from email marketing to live events—in order to best allocate resources to the strategies that are eliciting the best results.

The Data Revolution in Legal Marketing is Here. Are You Ready?

Even if your current marketing strategies seem to be working “well-enough” to keep the lights on, just imagine the incredible potential law firms can unleash by investing more in data-driven marketing, tools, and strategies (especially when it comes to growth)?

Explore the benefits of data-driven legal marketing, consider investing in data automation and analysis tools, and further study how these techniques can be applied within your particular firm to drive results.

Connect with the Introhive team today for an industry-specific deep dive and stop leaving money on the table.