Legal

The Client
Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin is a San Francisco-based law firm representing entities and individuals across a comprehensive range of practice areas. The firm had used simple format, plain text and image based emails in the past, but last February decided to step it up a notch with something more sophisticated when they engaged Concep’s Campaigner program.

The firm was drawn to Concep because “We were impressed with the direction Concep was taking their product in terms of authentication, white listing, and email best practices. Concep stays abreast of legislation and changes in technology and adjusts its product accordingly, while other suppliers do not,” said Client Information Manager Jessamy Field.

The Solution
With an Email Marketing System or EMS like Campaigner, Jessamy is equipped to contend with such sticky areas as image blocking and detailed recipient preferences. Image blocking, prevalent in many email clients such as Outlook, means that unless the recipient chooses to download the images, they will not appear in the email. One way to work around image blocking is to incorporate “above-the-fold” design – this is the area the recipient sees within the preview pane when he or she opens the email, without scrolling down.

Another advantage of using a dedicated EMS is that emails will be delivered as a multi-part message. The recipient will receive a plain text version in his or her Inbox if the email client cannot accept or render HTML correctly. When constructing a plain text version, Jessamy uses a personalized message and introductory text enticing the reader to follow a link which will take him or her to a web-hosted version of the email. This way, the reporting functionality (opens, clicks etc) of the EMS can still be utilized.

The Result
Howard Rice primarily uses email marketing campaigns to stay front of mind with existing clients by informing them of changes in the law and positioning the firm’s attorneys as thought leaders. The Howard Rice marketing coordinator communicates with her Concep representative as much as 5 times per week, to ask questions such as “How do we put video into an email message?” Because the firm has an EMS, it can create email campaigns that are as sophisticated or as simple as needed. The Concep support staff also helps with more day to day matters such as figuring out why a particular email is getting bounced.

Another advantage of an EMS with full service provider is the sophisticated reporting functionality that it offers. Howard Rice assesses the effectiveness of each campaign by reviewing how much material is accessed from each email and what kind of response the communication elicits. It also tracks how many emails were delivered, how many were opened, and how many were undeliverable.

Using the interactive features of Campaigner, the firm can ask clients ahead of time what types of information they might like to see in an upcoming campaign. This helps the firm target its audience more precisely. The clients actually then look forward to receiving the particular email in their inbox.

By meeting preference requests, Jessamy is able to achieve a higher rate of readership. Through Campaigner, the firm offers a link to a subscription page, which is a more robust method of managing user preferences and unsubscribe requests. The firm sees a tremendous return on investment in terms of increased readership and response rates.

Before engaging Campaigner, Howard Rice was communicating 80% with hard copy brochures and mailers. Now, the firm estimates that 80% of its communications are electronic, and this has been a huge cost savings in terms of postage and production.