Why you should be upgrading your CRM system

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are software tools which help a professional services firm track communications to and from clients. They contain a record of the client’s contact details but also show all subsequent interactions by members of the firm with that client.

They are like a phone book and database combined but provide far more functionality than older tools like Excel or Access because they automatically capture interactions with contacts on your database.

There are many CRM options out there: Zoho and Salesforce to name two of the better-known ones as well as legal-industry focused CRMs like InterAction. There is a lot of opinion about which ones are best, which is not the scope of this article.

What is important is to get a CRM if you do not have one and then add marketing analytics to that. Or if you have a CRM, then upgrade it with a marketing analytics/automation package. Why?

Because these packages can give you detailed insights into how your marketing is performing. From analysing what individual clients have been reading from your firm’s content to identifying sources of new users (google or social media?) or enabling you to create landing pages for events you are organising (and automatically capturing data into your CRM), automation tools empower marketers to achieve a complete picture of marketing activity and results.

You don’t need to rely on web developers, IT professionals or agencies. You can create email alerts, newsletters or microsites yourself and then see exactly who from your marketing list or database viewed what, and what action they took (eg to fill in a form or request a call or a meeting).

For clients that have downloaded a report or clicked on an article, you can set up workflows using easy-to-use scheduling tools which will automatically send further content on similar topics to that client (or prospect).

The system we use and recommend, HubSpot, offers you a CRM/database with the option of adding marketing tools. Through it you can link emails of lawyers to the system and then capture a complete history of dealings with all of your different clients automatically. Or you can limit it to capturing all the information from marketing emails only. It is flexible and customisable.

A CRM stops the firm looking unprofessional because you know when one of your colleagues last spoke or emailed a client and therefore you, as marketers, don’t end up spamming clients with the same material that another team has already sent.

And the best bit—and why the market has changed—is that HubSpot CRM is free. You can now install a professional database for your law firm and it will cost you and your colleagues nothing for the software. And HubSpot have guaranteed it will always be free.

While this all sounds too good to be true, Lextel has made this a pleasant reality for several law firm clients who expected to have to sign up to monthly subscription fees.

You can import your data into HubSpot (it can be direct from another system or just imported from Excel), and we can then test and clean up the data.

It can then be used to give you a full insight into how the firm is interacting with that client through email, video meetings or phone calls (and even in-person meetings if you add notes from these, which you can do through the handy phone app).

You can of course use it only for marketing purposes and track how clients are reacting to email newsletters or event invitations. Because it is free, you can add it into a system where you may already be paying for a CRM for the wider firm, but it means you have a system dedicated to marketing and business development.

While law firms have traditionally had to pay for CRMs by user license, HubSpot disrupted this for all businesses by charging nothing for its CRM and the basic tracking and email marketing tools which comes with it.

HubSpot makes money by selling add-on services eg for Sales Departments (not needed in commercial law firms who are not selling through telesales), for Customer Services (more for a product than a service company so again not needed for law firms) and for Marketing (which is where law firms could and should invest).

You can do what newsletter marketing software Mailchimp does without paying a subscription to HubSpot but your emails will carry HubSpot branding and the number of marketing emails you can send is limited, which is why we advise clients to pay the entry Marketing Hub fee of US$50 a month which gets you a suite of advantages and the removal of the HubSpot logo. But you don’t have to and if you are just looking for a decent CRM to record and store client data and interactions then this is a great option.

If you don’t have a CRM then HubSpot is a good option to organise your data and assist you to manage client relationships. Not only is it easy to use and manage, given there are no fees the risk is very low in testing it and rolling it out to as many staff members as you need.

Even if you do have a CRM, it is worth considering HubSpot for its marketing tools alone because it integrates with the best-known CRMs on the market. For an idea of which firms are using which marketing systems, you can click here on my post on how to measure your marketing.