Nurturing and growing your client base is essential to the success of your firm and building and integrating your email marketing system with your CRM is an essential way to stay top of mind with your clients and keep your firm running smoothly.

When email marketing systems are not connected to a CRM system, serious challenges such as large amounts of duplicate contacts and duplicative data entry can arise. This leads to attorneys and staff wasting time on minor tasks such as entering data into disconnected systems or analyzing disconnected data in order to make important decisions.

Because these systems are so entwined, important considerations of one system shouldn’t be made without the consideration of the other. When exploring the two systems, here are a few features and other things you should consider before investing thousands of dollars into either system:

1. Bi-Directional

With bi-directional synchronization, law firms can ensure that their data stays up to date, no matter which system the data is entered into. Before integrating, check if your email marketing system supports bi-directional synchronization or you’ll be left maintaining multiple ‘silos’ of data that have to be updated manually, disrupting workflows and reducing the amount of engagement from end users.

2. Subscription Forms

An important feature of an email marketing system that law firms sometimes forget about is subscription forms. These can be utilized in ways giving firms a great deal of insight into their contact’s preferences. 

With them, firms can create forms that can be hosted on their website so contacts can select topics of interest on a particular legal matter or practice and receive related communications. Integrating an email marketing system with a CRM allows contact information and list subscriptions to be automatically recorded and updated in both systems.

In addition, these forms allow you to capture and record electronic consent to process contact information, which is required by an increasing number of global privacy regulations including GDPR, CASL, and CCPA. Recording and tracking this information allows professionals to identify individuals who have opted out of communications, so they are not added back to lists violating their privacy laws.

3. Integrating Analytics

Firms are utilizing the power of certain metrics to refine the content they send to contacts. Some email marketing systems have out-of-the-box functionality providing users with reports measuring the success of marketing campaigns, audience segmentation recommendations, and data visualization capabilities helping firms identify trends and patterns among their target audience.

An email marketing and CRM integration also enables firms to easily identify contacts with bad email addresses. Bounces and returns are real-time data quality indicators helping you stay on top of your data’s health. Since bounced emails will most likely get suppressed from future mailings by your email marketing system, it’s important to have processes in place to remove, update and re-engage these contacts.

Analytical information empowers system users to follow up personally with those contacts, which enhances opportunities for business development – and drives CRM adoption as an added benefit. Without a good integration between the two systems, this is impossible.

4. Automation

Some email marketing systems can automate various time-consuming manual processes that can streamline a firm’s marketing workflows, save time and reduce the risk of human error. Systems can be configured to communicate with clients based on engagement levels and responses to previous communications using personalized, targeted messages.

They can also be used to automate processes related to list segmentation, like adding new contacts to lists, segmenting contacts based on predefined criteria, and also removing unsubscribes and bounced emails. A tight integration between the two systems allows law firms to shift their focus from repetitive and menial tasks to more strategic projects.

5. Integrating Event Management

When implemented and integrated properly, email marketing and CRM systems can make your firm’s event management easier and more effective so you can worry less about your communications and more about what restaurant you’re going to cater from. Email marketing systems streamline the planning process, manage attendee data and promote events to email lists. 

Law firms can use their email marketing and CRM system to manage event registration and ticketing, allowing attendees to sign up and pay for events directly from their email. The RSVPs then flow back to the CRM where they are recorded and reported on. They can also use the system to manage attendee data, such as contact information, attendance history and feedback. This can help them to personalize their communication with attendees and improve their overall experience.

6. Don’t Do It Alone

Whether you’re evaluating an eMarketing or CRM system for the first time or re-evaluating your existing systems or thinking of integrating other marketing technology, CLIENTSFirst can help you select and implement the right products to provide value and return on your technology investments. We can also help you come up with a CRM and eMarketing success strategy and define efficient processes to streamline your marketing technology tasks.