Whether you are an individual lawyer, a small law firm, or a large firm with many lawyers and staff, marketing is essential. Marketing is not just essential to your business growth – it’s essential to survival. The legal industry is highly competitive, and it can be challenging to get new clients.
The good news is that the internet has opened up a whole range of new ways to market your services and reach potential clients. There is also a wide range of tools available that make it easier than ever before to market yourself.
In this post, we will explore the best marketing automation software solutions for law firms. We will cover the top platforms and their key features.
Marketing Automation for Law Firms
According to statistics, 97% of consumers use the web to research local products and services. So it’s not surprising that more and more legal firms are looking for marketing automation software to help them reach out to their clients and potential clients online.
Marketing automation aims to drive repeat business from happy clients and acquire new clients through referrals, word-of-mouth, and content marketing. When done right, marketing automation helps businesses in any industry build stronger relationships with clients that last for years.
Marketing automation software helps streamline this process. It organizes client information into a central database, so it’s easy for your team to access client profiles and see their stage in the sales funnel. You can also automate email communications with your clients and set up intelligent email campaigns triggered by specific actions taken by the client like clicking a link or visiting your website or based on a specific date or time frame.
Why Does Marketing Automation Work for Lawyers?
Lawyers should consider using marketing automation because it’s a great way to automate repetitive tasks such as following up with potential clients and tracking how each lead moved through your sales process.
For example, if someone visits your website looking for information about a car accident lawyer austin but then leaves without contacting you directly – an automated email message could be sent out reminding them that they were interested in getting more information about personal injury and car accident services at their firm.
If they don’t respond within 24 hours, another message might be sent asking if they still need assistance with injury compensation and provide contact details again just in case they lost it before signing up (or forgot).
Marketing Automation Software Tools
If you are a lawyer, you know how important it is to market your services. Law firms place a significant emphasis on marketing their firm and its lawyers. But law firms don’t have time to go all out in the marketing field with all the other tasks they have to do (appearing in court, doing paperwork, etc).
That’s why marketing automation software can benefit any law firm.
Here are some of the best marketing automation software tools for lawyers:
MailChimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms for a reason – it works.
Law firms can use MailChimp for all of their email campaigns to drive traffic to their website, spread awareness about their firm, and more.
Law firms can save time and money by using MailChimp’s automation features. Mailchimp will send emails automatically whenever you want so you don’t have to worry about sending an email at a certain time. Plus, if a client opens an email from your firm, Mailchimp can automatically send another email to that person after they open your first email. This way, your emails are going out regularly without you having to be there every step of the way.
Key Features
- Features an Analytics Dashboard
- It lets you create multivariate campaigns
- Offers A/B testing
- Comes with tracking and reporting tools
- Provides real-time tracking data
- Ready-Made Email Templates
- Social Sharing
HubSpot
HubSpot is a marketing, sales, and service platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. The software helps transform the way attorneys do business. Suppose you are a solo or small firm practitioner looking to streamline your operations and free up time. In that case, HubSpot’s CRM is an excellent option. The platform offers more than just contact management with its ticketing system and knowledge base.
If you have an in-house team or run your marketing through an agency, you know how important it is to align sales and marketing teams around the same goals. HubSpot allows you to track what content each lead has interacted with so you can better tailor your email communications.
Key Features
- Contact management – With HubSpot Pro, you can easily manage your contacts and accounts, create email templates, and log meetings and calls.
- CRM software – The built-in CRM software keeps all of your customer data organized in one place so you can easily access it when you need it.
- Integrations – You can integrate your email marketing campaigns with your CRM software to easily align your marketing efforts with sales activities.
HubSpot offers a free version of their CRM software for up to 1 million contacts and unlimited users for companies looking to launch their first marketing automation platform or switch from another CRM system.
Marketo
Marketo is one of the best marketing automation software tools for lawyers. It’s a flexible tool that allows marketers to create and execute programs through email, social media, and mobile.
It helps you to create interactive content. For example, you can build landing pages that capture leads from your PPC campaigns. You can send automatic emails to those leads using templates and track the results of your campaigns. This way, you can learn more about what your audience likes or dislikes about your emails, so you can improve them over time.
The main drawback to this tool is its steep learning curve. Marketo requires some marketing automation expertise to get the most from it.
Key Features
- Marketo’s most vital attribute is its ability to integrate with Salesforce CRM software. This integration allows you to keep track of your sales pipeline, measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities, and pinpoint areas that need improvement.
- A/B testing
- Channels (web pages, emails, landing pages) where conversion rates can be measured.
- Automate actions based on lead activity – such as sending an email or adding a lead to a list.
- Assign leads to specific campaigns/automation programs.
- Assign leads to specific campaign/automation programs based on activity.
- Create lead scoring rules based on activity and profile data.
- Use lead score triggers to assign leads to different sales teams (or other automation programs).
- Marketo allows you to track the performance of your campaigns and identify bottlenecks in the buying process.
Pricing starts at $895 per month for 500 contacts (unlimited emails), and increases based on the number of contacts you want to reach.
Customer.io
Once you’ve got your content marketing strategy in place, you’ll need to be able to deliver content to your readers and convert them into clients (or at least leads). Email marketing is the best way to do this.
Customer.io is a startup email service provider specializing in sending highly targeted emails to small-to-midsize businesses. I don’t know that I would recommend it for large law firms, but it scales well. It is also effortless to set up and use, which is essential if you or your employees are not tech-savvy.
Using customer.io will help you automate your email campaigns, which can be as simple as sending out a weekly newsletter or as complex as sending out customized content based on user actions within your website.
For example, let’s say someone subscribes to your newsletters and downloads an ebook about malpractice law. You could then create an automated campaign that sends the reader more information about malpractice cases when the reader hasn’t returned to your site in 30 days (or some other predefined time period). This automation will help maximize the return on investment of your content because you are delivering information that people are looking for.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an excellent option for small- and medium-sized law firms. It offers a basic marketing automation tool that allows you to build email campaigns based on your firm’s goals and objectives.
It is one of the most used email platforms by small business owners, with more than 600,000 users worldwide. Constant Contact enables you to create professional email newsletters with ease. You can create your own templates from scratch or use templates from their library.
Pricing starts at $20 a month for up to 500 subscribers, but you can use Constant Contact free for 60 days to determine if it’s the right fit for your business.
Pardot
Pardot is a marketing automation tool built within Salesforce CRM for B2B companies. Pardot helps businesses attract leads and drive more conversions by creating personalized email campaigns, landing pages, and automated workflows. Pardot’s top feature is its ability to score leads based on engagement. This feature allows Pardot users to identify and engage their highest quality leads quickly.
Key Features
Pardot is part of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud, making it easy for users familiar with Salesforce to begin utilizing Pardot immediately.
Pricing: $1,250/month (annual contract) or $1,500/month (month-to-month contract).
Takeaway
The marketing automation software market is very competitive. Still, a few programs stand out from the rest in terms of features and ease of use. If you are a lawyer who is searching for an SEO, social media marketing, and lead generation tool to help your practice grow, then you should consider trying some software tools mentioned to meet your needs.