Customer Relationship Marketing

Lawyer Marketing - Network Affiliates

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is a very important component of lawyer marketing. CRM basically entails staying in touch with your clients and potential clients at all phases of the client life cycle. This includes even after you are done with a person’s case. Your law firm should be reaching out to its database of clients on a consistent basis in order to win easy business. It is far more expensive to win a new client than it is to get repeat business from a happy client.

CRM isn’t rocket science. A good basis for any CRM campaign for an attorney is a strong firm brochure that goes home with every person that has walked through your law firm’s doors. This is crucial as a client may not have a case the first time they speak with one of your lawyers. But in six months, this person may be involved in a more serious accident and will need an attorney to represent them. Or, while this potential client may not have a case, they may have a friend or family member that does have a case and they can pass this brochure on to this person. This can create a case for your law firm that TV may not have been able to produce.

CRM also includes sending out newsletters or firm updates. This can be accomplished easily by leveraging the powers of the Internet and e-mail. Virtually everyone has an e-mail address and your law firm should be collecting e-mail addresses to keep in touch with your past and current clients. If your firm begins taking on certain mass tort cases, your firm should send out an e-mail to your database informing your clients about this litigation. The e-mail should have a call to action, but should be informational in nature. Your firm can also send updates about nursing homes with a history of abuse or even a reminder about driving safely during the holiday season. The options are nearly limitless when it comes to an e-mail based campaign and can really bolster your Internet marketing in general.

Texting and mobile marketing is also a viable option for the marketing lawyer. Over 90% of all text messages are read when compared to under 10% for e-mails. If your firm collects cell phone numbers, your firm can ask for its clients’s permission to receive firm updates via text message.  Your firm can send a text about new litigation or happenings in the community that they should know about from a legal standpoint. Either way, texting allows your attorneys to be in front if their clients on a more consistent basis which leads to better top of mind awareness and the greater likelihood of receiving referral cases.

Your law firm’s CRM campaign doesn’t have to end with the client, either. Your firm can just as easily market to other lawyers with a CRM campaign and try to educate other local attorneys about the specialities of your firm, resulting in more referral business from other lawyers. The only limit a CRM campaign has is the time and resources you are willing to put into a CRM campaign. Since CRM tends to be more inexpensive and systematic than television advertising, your law firm should seriously consider using CRM to get more cases. Contact Network Affiliates today to get a better handle on what CRM possibilities exist and how to best leverage your database with an ongoing CRM campaign.