There is no doubt that digital transformation has accelerated over the last 6 months within law firms.  At the Virtual Legal Marketing Association conference yesterday it was interesting to find out about how other tech firms are helping to drive that change at law firms. 

I sat in on Introhive's session hosted by Matthew Schmitt from Introhive with Celine Gilmore Director of Client Development at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, Trina Joyce Marketing Technology lead, Clients and Markets at McCarthy Tétrault and Jeff Vigna, Senior Manager, CRM & Data Governance at Borden Ladner Gervais.

In summary, they discussed how important it is to know "who knows who" at your clients from across your firm and have an understanding of how well you know them.  The focus was on how to visualize your relationships and how to maximize your return on investment on the back of having this 360-degree information.

With everyone being forced to think digitally it means that lawyers are really starting to see the value of effective technologies that help to map out and provide access & understanding of the relationships their firm's lawyers hold. In short, they are starting to understand what relationship intelligence is and its true value in growing client experience with their firm.

With proper data-driven intelligence about your clients, you can not only nurture a strong relationship with key clients but also identify where you do not have strong relationships and then make a plan.

Once you have the relationship data you can ensure your marketing hits the spot. 

"Content is king but if you don't understand who you are sending your information to it is a bit of a loss" 

- Sadie Baron, CMO Reed Smith

Celine mentioned that now they have the data on 'who knows who' they can make sure that the right lawyers reach out to the right contacts and ensure they sign up to newsletters, receive blog posts, reports, or videos that will definitely resonate and help drive positive business outcomes.

What was clear is that from sending Christmas cards to the right people to targetting the right contacts at key accounts you need to collect, collate and build a strategy around the data.   

For me, this was brought home this morning when I was talking with one of my client's marketing team and the Marketing Director said that her CFO is now interested in the content they are creating.  The CFO wants to build a link between their new billing tech they have bought with the content that is created and sent to that client.  I believe if you can create content deliberately and share that content strategically on the back of knowing your client billing data and as a firm your relationship intelligence you can really hit pay dirt in 2021!