Start the New Year Ahead of the Curve with CRM

2023 is nearly upon us, and with the new year comes new opportunities and connections. For law firms, these new opportunities and connections often come in the form of new clients. But the end of the year is also a busy season for personal and professional lives, too.  

It’s easy to feel like the holiday has opened up a floodgate of potential clients looking for a new firm. On the other hand, you may feel like all of your leads are at someone else’s holiday party—or that your competitors are networking more than your firm is. No matter which one is the case, you need a strategy to come out on top during the most chaotic time of the year. 

What’s the best way to get ahead of the curve for all the clients coming your way? 

A legal CRM can make a huge difference in how you handle your client relationships. Not only can it provide you with the tools and resources to stay top-of-mind with your existing clients, but it can also reduce new client administrative work, leaving you with more time to enjoy the holidays. If you’re interested in learning more about how legal CRM software can set you up for success in 2023, this blog is for you.  

Keep your leads warm  

Just because the temperatures outside are falling doesn’t mean you have to let your leads go cold too. When you implement marketing automation tools in your legal CRM software, you can remain the top choice for your clients by ensuring that you’re always the first firm they think of when they need legal services. 

Email drip campaigns 

The key to being your client’s first phone call is ensuring that your law firm is at the forefront of their minds. This can be difficult as the new year brings about many new changes for your clients as well—they may be juggling distracting changes in their professional or personal lives.  

If you want to avoid falling off their radar, consider putting a custom email drip campaign to work for you. With the drip format, you can guide your prospects through the process of becoming new (or repeat) clients through a series of emails tailored to their needs or concerns.  

Popular types of drip campaigns include (but aren’t limited to): 

• Welcome campaigns 
• Post-consultation campaigns 
• Re-engagement campaigns 
• Retargeting campaigns  
• Lead nurture campaigns  

Text messaging campaigns 

Everyone is spending more and more time on their phones, so even though your email might get buried in a crowded inbox, you can still reach prospective clients via text message. Despite the fact that your leads may have shopping and decorating to do during the holiday season, nearly 98% of the text messages you send will be read.  

Therefore, a CRM with automated text messaging campaigns can be a tremendous asset to firms looking to keep their leads warm as they transition into the new year.  

Reduce your administrative workload  

Does your work schedule have you spending more time in the office than Ebenezer Scrooge? If so, you can ditch the bah-humbug attitude and embrace the holiday spirit by letting your CRM reduce your administrative workload.  

Eliminate manual data entry 

Few things are as tedious as data entry. While these tasks are are a necessary evil, you don’t have to let them stand in the way of you and your goal of leaving the office on time for once. Instead, you can use your time more wisely and focus on billable hours while your legal CRM software takes over data entry.  

For example, Rocket Matter’s built-in legal CRM auto-populates information from client intake forms into its legal practice management software. This process saves you time twice—once when you don’t have to enter the data by hand and a second time when you don’t have to fix any input errors! 

Create reports more efficiently 

To see how successful you’ve been at turning leads into clients, you’ll want to track the progress and create reports based on the data. Unfortunately, this takes away time you can spend making more connections. Your CRM software, however, can allow you to visualize where your leads are in your sales pipeline at any time, reducing the mental effort it takes to track them.  

Your CRM can also provide you with valuable reports that give you insight into productivity, high-demand practice areas, new client sign-ups, and more.  

Increase your availability to new connections 

One surefire way to secure more leads than your competitors is by being constantly available, but let’s face it—that’s not really feasible. Even if you spend more time in the office than at holiday parties, other matters can distract you from making those new connections. Fortunately, your CRM software solution can make you available and responsive—even when you and your competitors are both ringing in the new year at their office party.  

Automate follow-ups 

Gone are the days when you would have to spend hours playing phone tag with a prospective client. CRM software allows you to automate a response every time you miss a call or email from a lead. Don’t worry—these won’t be tacky, generalized follow-up messages. With the right software, you can personalize all of your responses so that they feel like you are directly addressing the person on the other end of the email or phone line. 

Use custom intake forms online 

You no longer have to sit down with your clients in person to gather their information. Nor do you have to train staff on the complexities of client intake! 

Instead, you can use a CRM solution to send out an online intake form. These can be completely customized to fit your practice area and case type, so you always gather the information you need. What’s more, smart client intake forms adapt the questions to the answers provided by leads, helping you eliminate potential clients who aren’t the right fit for your legal practice.  

Create new budgets for marketing and business development 

A new year is about more than just new clients. It’s also the time to look at your current budgets and make adjustments for next year. On the CRM side of things, you’ll especially want to focus on your marketing and business development spending. What you discover through the use of these tools will affect how you can retain and add clients throughout 2023.  

Assessing marketing spend 

Your marketing budget has a significant impact on your reach to prospective clients. If it looks like you haven’t implemented sufficient emails, ads, or other campaigns, you may choose to increase your marketing budget for 2023.  

Increasing business development strategy 

If, on the other hand, you previously spent so much on marketing that you have more clients than you can handle, you may want to bump up your spending on business development. Looking for better ways to serve a greater number of clients could mean increasing your staff or adding additional attorneys. Your CRM can provide the data that supports your law firm’s decision-making processes. 

Start the new year off right with Rocket Matter’s legal CRM tools 

There are many ways your legal CRM software can support your practice, so don’t let this busy time of year put you behind the curve. You can stay on top of everything and still enjoy the season using a CRM solution like Rocket Matter.  

Our legal practice management software has all the tools you need to manage client relationships in 2023 and beyond. When you take this software into the new year with you, you can enjoy efficient features such as:  

• Automated workflows and reporting 
• Customized online intake forms 
• One-click electronic signatures 
• Email drip campaigns 
• And more! 

Try a demo today to see for yourself just how easy it easy to start the new year off on the right foot with CRM tools.