The electronic way to boost marketing ROI.

• Author: Green, Anthony
• Position: CRM BRANDING INITIATIVES - Return on investment

MANY FIRMS ARE FINDING WAYS TO SOLVE THEIR MARKETING DILEMMAS WITH FEWER RESOURCES BY GOING DIGITAL, and the benefits of implementing a digital marketing solution ultimately go well beyond just sending emails.

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As law firm marketing budgets continue to shrink, in-house marketing teams must be increasingly cost conscious and strategic with any investment commitments. Now more than ever, the return on investment (ROI) on marketing efforts must speak for itself when making purchasing decisions and allotting valuable firm resources.

Firms looking to partner with a company to implement a digital marketing solution are wise to take much more than just technology into consideration. The relationship should add value with a reliable and knowledgeable team that understands the technology as well as the unique needs of law firms. Implementing software as a service (SaaS), an externally hosted software solution, negates many of the complexities inherent to an email marketing program. It allows the marketing and business development teams to function effectively while asking little of the IT department.

"Law firms are different from corporations," says John Buchanan, chief marketing officer of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin P.C. "We have different needs and different challenges."

A firm-wide email marketing initiative can actually inspire more effective use of branding. It is amazing how many firms aren't leveraging their branding, which probably cost thousands of dollars and countless hours to develop. If a law firm has a branding scheme in place, it should be used consistently, across all offices and practices. Not only does this keep the branding consistent, but also it saves the firm valuable resources and money because the IT and/or creative departments do not have to be involved each time a practice group sends an email. Additionally, the CMO does not need to worry about approving every communication, because all teams are working from the same template structure. For example, the implementation of a digital marketing program helped Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP enhance the potential of its branding.

Implementing the new branding required changes that were simply overwhelming under the old electronic distribution program. With the new SaaS solution, making the change to the new branding became much more manageable and more members of the team are proactively working with the system because it is easy to...