6 years ago we sat down at Passle and made a commitment to our clients by founding our Client Success Team & Program. Our goals were to help our clients execute their thought leadership strategy quickly and easily, and ensure their return on investment from subscribing to our service in the long term (years). We are committed to embedding ourselves into our clients' teams, providing regular feedback and showcasing industry best practices. 

Back then Client Success Teams were a rarity. I am extremely proud of what we have built with the help and guidance of our clients. Over those years, 2 components have made both of these goals easier to achieve: 

1. The technical development of the Passle platform - Working with a brilliant in-house development team means that every few weeks our software becomes even better
2. Our focus on the Legal and wider Professional Advisory Sectors - Focus on specific - and unique sectors - has enabled us to build a team that truly understands our clients. This has shifted our position from being "another vendor" to becoming an extension of our clients' Marketing & BD teams 

We massively value the relationships we've been able to establish with new/existing clients and continue to place a tremendous emphasis on customer service & success.

A highlight of this journey was brought to life last week by spending time with Taylor English at their #OneTED All Attorney Meeting in Atlanta.

The Taylor English (TED) Story

Since launching Passle mid-pandemic (January 2021) Taylor English are now in a position where Passle powers all of their thought leadership. Passle content features across all 200+ of their attorney bio pages; is leveraged for all forms of content types (video, podcasts, press releases, long-form, short-form, and everything in between); and is used to power the content across the firm's ancillary businesses (The Election Law Group and t|e General Counsel ). In total, the lawyers and marketing team have created almost 1,500 pieces of thought leadership published via Passle in 20 months. 

This did not happen overnight. Similar to most of our clients, the goal when launching the pilot program with Passle was to see if we could make it easier & more efficient for TED's attorneys to develop client-relevant and authentic insights. 

Starting with a small pilot group of around 20 attorneys, they excelled in generating content and driving visitors to the Taylor English website. Not only did the Passle process make life easier for the attorneys, but it also rapidly reduced the amount of time involved in the governance and review stages for thought leadership. The TED Marketing Team are able to turn around content requests consistently within an hour. 

Fast forward to today, the platform has been introduced to all of the departments across the business (beyond the legal teams - Recruitment, People, etc) and has the support of TED's senior leaders.

Leadership & The Wider Marketing Team

All of this has been the result of very deliberate planning and execution. Karen Wilcox (Director of Marketing) has assembled a team that draws on external partners for guidance and support with the firm's marketing strategy (for more check out Karen's CMO Series Podcast here).

It has been amazing to be part of this brilliant collective who all bring different perspectives and expertise to the table (Relish Marketing, Lucie Content, Totally PR). An example of this was sitting down with Karen and all the other external partners back in December last year to plan TED's new websites. Together we delivered 3 websites in 6 months! In my mind that is the power of vendors acting together as partners with excellent client leadership.

The emphasis on marketing as a core pillar of the firm's growth strategy was highlighted when Name Partner Joe English, participated last week in the firm's marketing strategy meeting. This again included Passle (Empowering TED lawyers to publish thought leadership more often and more effectively), Relish Marketing (Web/Brand), Lucie Content (PR/Digital Media/Video) and Totally PR (Communications). Having this level of support and engagement from the firm's senior leadership makes it so much easier to drive and implement change at scale.

The Pinnacle of Client Success

Last week spending 2-and-a-half days of unfiltered time with a client definitely helped us truly grasp an understanding of their business today and where they want to be tomorrow. Importantly for me, that time has helped us as a Client Success team to redefine where we want to get to with all of our clients. TED has definitely reached Gold Standard status.

We have always insisted content marketing is a marathon and not a sprint. That said, it's nice to know we're in a position now that feels much closer to the finishing line than when we started!