[Webinar transcript from discussion with Kenect, EPL Digital, and AttorneySync]
McKay Allen:
We're going to talk about how to nurture clients with email automation specifically. We have our special guests who will introduce in a moment from attorney Singh Sokoloskis who you know in the legal space, especially in legal marketing, we'll introduced him in a moment. My name is McKay Allen. I'm on the marketing team here at Kenect. First, if you don't know who Kenect is or what Kenect does, we are based in Salt Lake City, Utah, just outside of Salt Lake City. And we are a text message platform built for law firms.
McKay Allen:
We help firms communicate more effectively with their clients via text messaging, helps them generate new leads, they put a little text us button on their website, that generates leads at a really high rate. We're seeing an average of about 200% increase in raw leads when people add that text us button, we also allow firms to collect payments via text message, drive online reviews via text message. And as of last week, we launched a video texting platform, that allows you to turn a texting thread into a video text regardless of the phone type you're using, with no software, hardware having to download. You can immediately have a one-on-one face-to-face conversation via text. The texts come into this sort of inbox that looks and feels like an email inbox. You can sign it out to people, have certain people monitor it.
McKay Allen:
And then how specifically do firms use it? Schedule appointments to send appointment reminders, streamline the intake processes, we're integrated with most of the large practice management solutions. And then you can see the other ways, there's a lot of ways to send attachments like photos, videos, capturing leads directly from Facebook and Instagram, that little message button on Facebook and Instagram, can come right into that inbox as well. So, that's what Kenect does. And with that, Gyi thanks for joining us.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Awesome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it seems like a lifetime, I think since June, but we're still here, still talking about how lawyers can use technology and market their practice, and nurture client relationships. So, the 10 seconds about me, I'm still a licensed lawyer, but not practicing. I founded Digital Agency back in 2008. I'm on the board of the American Bar Associations Tech Show. So, we hope to see you there, virtually this year. And check out Lunch Hour Legal marketing, a little plug, that's a podcast that I host on the Legal Talk Network. We talk marketing, a lot of digital stuff. And like I said, I really do enjoy answering questions and helping educate lawyers on these topics. So that's me, let's dive in.
McKay Allen:
Awesome.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, one of the things that I always like to start with is, some data on the topic. I think I'm regularly talking about the Clio Legal Trends Report, the slides from 2019's edition. But one of the things that Clio did, was a surveyed legal services consumers, and asked them things like, "What do you want from your lawyer? What are the things that you look for, when you're searching for a lawyer, that when you're shopping around or talking to different lawyers?" and I think there's so much valuable information in there, but the one that we're gonna talk about today, is this idea of getting a clear understanding of the legal process, and what to expect. And one of the reasons I really enjoy, this conversation, especially with our friends at Kenect, is that, this is a place that Kenect lives, and is the liaison for lack of a better term.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And so, if we go to the next slide, when we think about how clients want to engage with us, it's not necessarily the way that we think about it, or that our marketing people tend to tell us. And so, I'm going to pick on this firm, and I said obviously being in the digital legal marketing space, I'm subscribed to a lot of law firm newsletters. And so, when we think of email and we think of automation, the traditional law firm newsletter is the go-to in a lot of contexts. And so, you see at the October 2020 newsletter headline there, you've from the blank law firm, I have tried to keep the names out of it, so we don't make anybody feel too bad. And then you see it's from marketing at the law firm, and it's got the brand, it's got the logo, and it's got the stock imagery of the city.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And if you take nothing else away from this conversation today, I want you to take away from it, that this just lacks the authenticity, the personalization, a lot of the things that we're going to talk about in terms of, email automation. So, if you're doing this kind of thing, I think it's a great opportunity, to reassess what you're doing. And I'm going to give you some tips to what to do. This is kind of the, "Here's what we should avoid." So, stock name, stock title, stock title sucks, subject matters, stock emails. And one of the things I always talk about too is, this idea of this client journey and putting yourself in the shoes, and then the eyeballs and the mindset of the client. And so, we start with searching for potential clients, performing a search, well that's Google or asking for referrals if that's in real life, or it's on Facebook. And then trying to track and measure people, clicking through to your website, calling your firm, texting your firm, chatting with your firm, emailing your firm, and then making those decisions to hire you.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And we're going to really focus today on the, the connecting, calling, texting section into what we do after that. So, as they're making a decision to hire you, follow up, nurturing in that aspect, and how we can actually automate that in way that actually takes them from that initial surge, into actually signing that retainer. So, the one thing that I always also point out, because I think when we talk about technology and automation, we love the automation and efficiency part. We love that part, "Oh, great. I don't have to send emails out myself. I can delegate that, and we can set up automations." but we forget the relationship, reputation and authenticity part. And so, I've kind of put that, and this slide is just like a reminder that, you've always got a flow from nurturing a relationship, enhancing your reputation, building an authenticity.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
The automation and the personalization, that's a great piece to it, but without the relationship, reputation, authenticity, part of it, they tend to fall flat on their face, they tend to run into problems. And then in fact, you disenfranchise more of your network, than you actually nurture towards becoming a new client. And with that, I want us to talk a little bit about, what we mean when we say automation here, because that's another thing that I think people think of automation, they think AI, they think completely hands off. But, what we're really going to focus on is, deploying technology in which a process or procedure can be performed, with minimal human assistance. But minimal human assistance, Isn't no human assistance. And so, again, as we get into this, and we start talking about automations, I want you to be thinking about the human part.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
I want you to be thinking about, "Yes, we can make some things more efficient, but there's still the people on the receiving end of our emails, and our marketing collateral are still people." And they're dealing with oftentimes really, difficult issues that they're trying to work with a lawyer. And so, while we want to try to make it more efficient, we don't want to lose that completely. And just, you have these blind [cafca 00:09:24] ask, automations, that people are getting hit with, that don't really empathize with them. So, what do we mean, client experience automation? There's three main pieces, that I usually talk about, and go on to the next one. The first is the content itself. So, here we're going to talk about things like the subject of your email, who are the email is from, I pointed out in that newsletter, it's coming from marketing. That's a much different experience, if it's coming from Ugo lawyer, as a human being versus a affirm, and then what's in the message. Right.So, the actual subject line of the email, the content of the email, this stuff matters more than anything else.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And I think that if you're going to do anything with automations, focus on personalizing the content. Don't forget about the sending address, the sending name, the subject and then obviously the content email signatures. The next thing that we're going to talk-
McKay Allen:
Gyi, can I ask a question about this one?
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Please.
McKay Allen:
Yeah. So, this one's an interesting one, because I think in the race to have all these complex, like the automation tools and rules, and like you said, people do lose sight of the fact that the content is really the thing that matters. The subject line, the sending email address, all that stuff matters far more, than the rules you set up for automation. And I do think some people forget that in their race, because the tech is so cool, that I think people forget that the content is what matters. Is that a big problem in your experience as you work with different firms, they want to implement a really robust automation platform, but the content isn't good or isn't wrapped?
Gyi Tsakalakis:
I think that's the biggest issue. Right. So, it's like you said, people get very excited they're like, "Oh, wow. This can do a lot of heavy lifting for me. We can slip some really cool automations here." And this, I always encourage people when you set up an automation, make sure you test it and experience it yourself. Send it to friends and family, or other people at your firm, and get their feedback on it, because, it's the same thing we're talking about, building websites or any other kinds of marketing collateral, you've got to really experience it yourself. If you experienced it just as you, the business owner, or you, the lawyer, or you, the advertiser and you design it in a way that makes it convenient and good for you, you've really missed the point. Right. And so, just because you can do these automations, doesn't mean you always should. And certainly if you're going to do them, you've really got to put the, the client, the potential client, the receiver of these messaging systems, automation systems at the center.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And most of that comes to the content, and that's how we end up getting all of these spam messages and email newsletters, and all this stuff that nobody really wants, because we're not thinking about what is actually valuable from the receiver standpoint.
McKay Allen:
Got it. Yeah. And that, I think you're right there. I think it's a huge issue, and one that in a discussion about automation, I think is great that you brought up.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And then, so this plays into it, the other contexture that we talk about, in terms of automation is knowing where that person is in their journey. So, the messaging that you send somebody, that's in the very initial consideration, they just met you, they've just been referred to you, they just came to your website and subscribed to something on your website, or submitted an email contact, or they texted you or whatever it is, that's a much different stage of their journey, than somebody that's been a client for many years, or is a former client that you're trying to stay in touch with, and the information that you should know, that you should be expected to know about them, in terms of where they are in their journey, that context matters a lot. And so, again, you don't hammer people over the head, with a bunch of messaging when you're just building that relationship.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And that's another part, that I think gets lost in this excitement for automation, is that, we really need to think about these automations as assisting us, in our traditional notions of relationship building, in terms of creating and nurturing, and solidifying relationships. Hopefully you don't walk into the new networking function, and start your elevator pitch, and start handing out business cards and retainer agreements. Right. It's a different step of the journey, in terms of the relationship. And so, it's really important that your automations reflect that too.
McKay Allen:
That's a great point, really good point. And then of course, the key with automation, right, is timing. That's kind of the point of automation, is to do things in the right way and in the right cadence.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Yeah, exactly. And that this is another place where I think there's just so much opportunity for improvement, is in addition to the context of where the consumer is in their journey, the timing with which you're sending these messages throughout that journey, it needs to be very carefully considered. They have an automation system that has a default setting or default trigger, sometimes that you can go, "All, right." and you're sending way more messaging, than you intended, if you have multiple emails in your system, and the system is not scrubbing for duplicates, you might be sending the same thing multiple times to the same person. And a lot of, most of the major automation platforms that we'll talk about, they have delays built in so you can actually say, "You know what, don't send this, set, wait a day before you send the next stage of the automation, or wait a week." And then some of them can be set to a specific date based. So, anyway, the point here is that we're thinking about the timing, and test that timing on yourself, so that you get a sense of like, "Yeah." for this person in this stage of the journey, with this content, this timing is more appropriate.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And the great thing with a lot of these tools too, you can get the feedback, because you'll see things like, open rates, click through rates and unsubscribe rates. And so, let that, let those data points be informative to, "Hey, you know what, we noticed that when we sent this message to this segment of our list, this quickly, we got a higher unsubscribe rate. Maybe we need to reconsider how pretty good we were sending it." So, those are the big three content journey timing. And then, now that we have those contexts, what are all the different things that we can automate via email? And the number one that we'll talk about, I'm gonna just read these off, and then we'll dive into some of them more specifically. But responses, nurturing of relationships, sending retainers, getting retainers signed, that's a big one, payments, review requests, explainers, documenting and helping people understand what the process is you can do. That's something that you mentioned that sounds like it was a recent thing with Kenect, and be able to do a video kind of overview.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
That's fantastic. Scheduling signatures, and then we'll somehow dive into these date based ones, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and just some general check-ins. So, the first one is response, and time and time again, we hear the biggest complaints from our potential clients, clients, colleagues, referral sources, family, friends, there's responsiveness. And so, automating response is probably the easiest thing you can set up, whether it's just an email auto responder, I think a lot of us are familiar with vacation auto responders on email. But every single time that somebody fills out a form on your website, or is in that stage, or they're trying to reach out to you. My suggestion is that, you should looking at a way to create a fire off and auto response, to acknowledge that you've received the message, even if you're not answering their question, especially with the new clients, you're nurturing a new relationship, that immediate response, saying, acknowledging I got the message and setting their expectation for the next step of the followup is, really helps stop their search. And it's a great experience from someone that's just reaching out to you.
McKay Allen:
That's a great point.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Yeah. And we see this all the time is that, one of the biggest mistakes that law firms are regularly making, Clio Trends Report, most of the major surveys that they do of legal services consumers, most of the sources of malpractice claims, most of the sources of grievances have to do with this follow-up responsiveness, and an email auto responder is a great way to start that. And again, people, sometimes they don't even know, it's like a black hole. They send you an email, and they don't even know if you even received it, and you you're adding to their anxiety. And so, putting an auto is an automated autoresponder for emails, is the easiest thing to implement. We'll walk through some of the steps to that. And again, it's a huge opportunity. It's competitive advantage. It sounds silly, but because so many lawyers fail here, just being quicker with your response, can be a huge competitive advantage to winning that business.
McKay Allen:
So, how big of an issue is, is this? And I think there's a big misconception in the industry, and you'll tell me if I'm wrong. But I think attorneys assume that their clients, are choosing them based on their skill or their credentials, or how good of an attorney, and how good of a firm they are, when in reality, it's often just the first firm who gets back to them. Is that an overstatement, or do you think I'm correct there?
Gyi Tsakalakis:
I think the sentiment of what you're saying, is very true and it plays out in the legal trends report. I would say it like this, I think skill and experience, they do matter, but the thing is, consumers have a really hard time differentiating between, lawyers from a skill and experience standpoint. Maybe if you're a very sophisticated consumer, right, you're general council of a major corporation, or you've worked with lawyers in a specific issue for a very long time, you might be better at identifying subject matter expertise. But in the consumer facing practice DUI, or personal injury or your criminal defense or bankruptcy. I say in sophisticated, and that's stands to be condescending, but people that have not had experience working with lawyers, it goes exactly what you said, which is, they want a lawyer that is skilled and experienced, but they can't really tell but what they can tell, is they can tell how fast you respond, what your bedside manner is, or your client service follow-up process is.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
They can tell if you seem to empathize with them, and seem to care about them, and your follow-up is a big part of that. We run into this all the time where, I talk to lawyers and they'll say, "Oh, if they want to hire me, they'll get ahold of me, and I'll leave a voicemail." and I'm like, "That's just not how people think." And again, some people get away with it. If you're well known as the only person who does what you do, that's great, great place to be. But if you're a DUI lawyer, that's an incompetitive markets, and you're not the go-to person. There's really most, especially in local markets, there might be a handful of actual go-to people and everybody else, it's these types of things that people are making those decisions on.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, I think it's both, but I think like you had mentioned, the place that lawyers spend a lot of time and money, on the branding and the marketing positioning, which is makes sense in terms of trying to demonstrate their knowledge, skill, and experience in their expertise, but they don't invest the same resource in the followup process, in the client experience process, the customer service process. And so, that's a huge opportunity, and the great news is that, you can do this for really affordably, it's not the same thing as a comprehensive branding marketing exercise to be able to put a followup process in place.
McKay Allen:
Got it. That makes sense.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, here's an example of an automation. This is active campaign, there are a bunch of platforms for automation, there's, HubSpot, or a key which used to be Infusionsoft, Law Maddox, there's variety of automation type of platforms that, I just think this example from active campaign, fairly affordable, it's not legal specific, but it's what we use in our business right now. And again, it gives you a general sense of what some of the automation options are. And so, the first thing is, is like what triggers the start of the automation? So, for the responder we're really talking about, either somebody sends you an email, or they fill that with form on your website. The autoresponder is anything that captures their email, whether it's, even if they send your email via text or they send it via live chat, anything that captures their email. The email auto responder can be triggered to set up from really anytime you collect that email.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And then the one that I always say is just the, send the, thank you for contacting us. And if you go to the next one, that'll give you a sense of what that looks like for what we do. And again, this is not a hard sell. This is just an acknowledgement saying, "Hey, thanks for contacting us." So, some people will say, "Thanks for reaching out, thanks for connecting." Email signature. I also like to, this is another thing too, from an automation standpoint, and more of it as an email thing, but put some other information in that signature, that signature should work pretty hard for you beyond just sending your email and your contact information. If you have content marketing that you're doing, if you have blog posts or you got a podcast, some times you're active on social media, it's a great place to say, "Hey, let's connect on whether it's LinkedIn, or wherever you like to hang out."
Gyi Tsakalakis:
But again, you're acknowledging the contact, you're inviting them to connect with In other ways, you're demonstrating your knowledge, skill, and experience through some of the content marketing activities that you're doing. And if you do it this way, you haven't even had to do anything. This is just, when someone reaches out to you via email, it fires this off, and so again, slows their search down, lets them know more about you, is a great place to put in your signature, just kind of an introductory link to like a YouTube video, that just kind of introduces yourself, talks about what your firm does, why you're uniquely qualified to help the people that you do. Really, really powerful stuff.
McKay Allen:
That's a great point. And I like that it's not even like a super hard sell. It's just a greeting and, "Hey, here's some content." which is cool.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing, I mean, I talk to lawyers all the time about this, and I try to encourage lawyers not to be so afraid of the word, sell. Let those face it, it's a competitive market. There are a lot of lawyers out there. And so, I think the negative connotation with sell, it's the aggressive part of the sell. So, we're gonna use the word nurturing, but nurturing is selling. I mean, you're trying to nurture somebody from an initial, whether it's a referral, or they looked you up and saw you on Google or they, clicked on an ad. Nurturing them from that initial experience to a retainer, it is sales. And so, as we talk about the buzzword here that you always search for online called, lead nurturing. You can go to the next slide. And in an automation process, so, here's an automation, the are nice things, in a lot of these platforms. They have kind of their default recommendations for a seven step, followup process.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, they built in some of the timing, that they've seen work across their data set. There's a lot of best practice information on this. And you'll have to figure out what makes sense for your practice and your systems. But essentially all we're doing here, this is the first email, so, they reached out. I usually like to nudge people towards scheduling something. So, a lot of these, you can have the automation built in with a Calendly link. So, excuse me, they have a request for a consultation on your website. I also think you should put that consultation scheduling request right on your website. But folks that, they're not ready to schedule that appointment, they want to sign up and and an email you, put that in your automation. So, whether you're putting your email, signature, or maybe your first email is, "Hey, thanks so much for reaching out. We received your message. Let's schedule a time to talk."
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Put that Calendly or Acuity scheduling, whatever that scheduling tool that you're using, put that right in your email, and then have a process for follow-up. So, whether you do another one a day later, or two days later saying, "Hey." And again, a big part, and we talked about this at the start, is personalizing it. So, it shouldn't feel Like just this faceless automation, that's trying to prompt you for a schedule. Personalize it, use the mail merge fields, use the name fields and make it a reflection of your personality. If you tend to be a little bit more on the lighthearted, jovial, joking side, put some of that personality into these emails. If you're not, if that's just not who you are, that's fine too. But find ways to personalize it, and let your own personality come through. There's an example from Law Maddox, again, most of these platforms, they have a bunch of different entry conditions, so, whether it's, they texted you, emailed you, clicked on your website, fire off the email, automated, it's built in some delay. In this particular case too, I wanted to show that a lot of these tools also have conditional logic.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, depending on what, uh, the receiver of the email does, whether they click on something or whether they fill out a form, or sign a retainer, you can have the automation take different paths. And this is what we talked about earlier on, where a lot of lawyers are starting to build these really complicated automation maps. I think that's great. But if this is brand new to you, the simplest one is just do this initial seven touch lead nurture, where it's, "Thanks for connecting. Let's schedule a time to talk." with a couple of follow-ups, build in some of that content marketing too, maybe you say, "Hey, if you haven't had a chance, you can watch this video on us talking about how we help people, or watch this, read this blog post on, ways our clients communicate with us." Start to lay out that process, the more information without selling, where you're just educating, you're just describing the phases of the representation, you're just answering some of those frequently asked questions that you get in a very general way.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
That's a way to nurture someone from, they just reached out to you too, "You know what, I'm ready to have a consultation. I'm ready to hire you, somebody that retainer or greeting." So, this is from Mailchimp too, so, I'd like to kind of give a variety of platforms. Mailchimp actually has a lot of great automations, very affordable. If you don't have that many contexts in your system, it might be the way to start because they do offer free version of it. And then they have a lot of great documentation too. But the other one, beyond just the basic leader dream, when you're talking about people that are at a little bit different stage of their journey.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, whether it's, former clients is the most obvious ones, the former clients, is probably the biggest untapped resource or new business in legal, that the lawyers that have figured this out, they're turning, the personal entering contact, is that they're turning that one time representation, into a longer term relationship, through email lead nurturing. And I'll tell you, I see it all the time where, if someone's a former client, and you just send an automated happy birthday, just reaching out to you on your birthday or just reaching out you on some other kind of date based events, maybe it's just like happy 4th of July, happy Halloween.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And the response becomes, "Oh, hey. Thanks for sending me that email." I've meant to reach out to you because I've got a referral for you. That kind of longer term nurturing the email on a birthday, on a specific date, a holiday, recurring dates. Those emails are really great way to stay top of mind. And again, you're not selling, you're just connecting, you're just staying in touch. Nurturing those longterm relationships, is huge opportunity to re-engage people that you've had a relationship with in the past.
McKay Allen:
That's a great point, especially being able to automate that, and just do what it wants is powerful stuff.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Exactly. And that's the thing people always will say to me, "Oh, I do handwritten holiday cards." I'm like, "That's great." Do that too, but as you grow a network, you've been in practice for a long period of time, how many holiday cards can you write a handwritten note to? How many thank you handwritten notes can you write? How many happy 4th of July, emails do you want to write? And that's where the automation comes in. So, again, it's a balance. The key is, I'm really helping on the personalization authenticity, part of it, but let's not kid ourselves here. The big part of this, the part of the reason that lawyers and business people use automation, is because it does allow you to scale efficiently, just so important that you remember that authenticity and personalization part.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And so, which brings us to personalization. Again, I'm a huge advocate of very personalized subject lines, happy birthday is a great one. Depending on your personality, I know that there's been some different research on this, but experiment with things like emojis, in your subject lines, some things that help pop out. Make it a little bit more fun, especially if you're talking about happy birthday or happy Halloween, there's a ghost emoji, there's balloon emojis for happy birthday. But make it more personal for them. Don't make it feel like, I mean, a traditional law firm newsletter. Really easy to implement though, then again, this is from Mailchimp, then you show them that you have different options here. Obviously you have to collect their birthdays, so, this is usually the easier one if put through a list of former clients, because you might have their birthday information, so, you can fire that off.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Otherwise you can have a list, and this is another thing too, that we used spend a whole day talking about, a list hygiene. But you want it and I'm assuming that these are people who have opted into receive messaging from you. If you don't have their birthday, but they signed up for something, a lot of these tools also have prompts, where you can go and say, "Hey, if you'd like to receive a birthday message from us, click this link and add your birthday." or some people try to even incentivize it and say, "Hey, if you'd like to receive Starbucks coffee or an Amazon gift card on your birthday, or enter into our birthday giveaway type of thing, enter your birthday." And so, nudge them to enter their birthday information if you don't have that from... Separate subject, really today, I just want to kind of talk about the concept of automating something like a birthday message.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
So, that was really it. The final thing that I'll say, is a little bit more advanced, that's also practice area specific, is the idea of sending something that's specific to their issue, that they hired you for. So, one might be the anniversary of an expungement on a DUI or something like that. So, in criminal defense context, you want to be a little bit more careful with these, because obviously sometimes people don't want to remember this kind of stuff. But I think I've seen it executed in a way, after you have that report, and these are people if you've represented them, and you have this kind of relationships with your clients, a lot of them are going to appreciate that kind of acknowledgement of an email on some anniversary, if you help them through a child custody situation, you help depending in your outcome of that situation.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
That's something that might be extremely personal for them, and really does help nurture that relationship. Again, I say that, this doesn't mean, go fire off an email to remind people that their car accident, or of their arrest. But I do think that these contextual emails based on some anniversary of the representation, are also and like a final, really powerful date based email automation that I've seen work. And I'm happy to send them examples of those, if they want to follow up with me, shoot me an email. I'm pretty active on Twitter @GyiTsakalakis, just like it sounds, but usually if you just started G-Y-I, you can find it. And Yeah. Thanks again for having me, and I don't know if you have any questions or [inaudible 00:34:31]-
McKay Allen:
Yeah. There's a few here, one of the questions that I think people are... Well, let me put it this way. At Kenect, and we experienced the same thing, the more specific your offer is, or the email that's about, that you're sending, the more you have to be concerned with your list hygiene and making sure it gets to the right people, and I'll give you an example. So, Kenect we do some educational webinars and occasionally, and we try not to send those to our customers, because our customer success team has their own, customer product training stuff they send to. But it's usually not a big deal, if a webinar like this, right, goes to a customer for Kenect. That's great. We don't have an issue with that. But if I were to send an email that says, "Hey, get a demo of Kenect." and I mean to send it to prospects, and for some reason, customers are getting in that. That's annoying to them. Right. So, I think the only thing I would add, and there's some questions around content here is like, if you're having really specific emails about maybe, like you said, the DUI or whatever it was, make sure it's getting to the right list, because the last thing you want is for that to go to somebody who didn't have a DUI, that was your client.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Hundred percent
McKay Allen:
So, the more specific the content, the better your list hygiene has to be, is kind of my point.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Absolutely. And I say a good list hygiene in general, and I know there's a lot of lawyers out there, maybe listening to this, that are maybe or like, purchased list or they've got, lists that aren't opt in. And I really think you'd do more damage to your reputation, and your quote [unquote 00:36:10] brand, doing that kind of stuff. So, opt in is key, what we're really talking about here, are not emails that are designed to do a hard sell, or push for a free consultation. And so, the list hygiene, in terms of who's on the list, the part of the list that you can segment, these tools they have things in there, that can send conditional emails based on even the engagement with emails. So, if you've got somebody on your list, who hasn't opened an email, or say, you're sending a monthly email out and they haven't opened an email from you, in six months, 12 months, you might send them an entirely different message.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And that goes into that personalization, and where they are in their journey, and the timing aspects, and the content that you would send them. But so important to be getting that feedback. We talk about this in the ad space all the time. It's got to be relevant messaging. And so, if you're sending a message to somebody out, that's on a list, like you said, God forbid you send something that, puts them on the defensive or makes them uncomfortable, that's the kind of thing you really want to avoid. And so, the work around there, because I think you can get very sophisticated in your automations. The work around for me is that, for the people that have signed up to receive messaging from you in general, put them on a friends of the firm type of list.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
And so, that way you know, those are the people that you can send the, assuming that you're in the US, maybe you send them a happy 4th of July, happy labor day, happy new year, those are the really soft touch, or just the emoji with the waves say, "Hey, checking in, and in hope everything's good with you." but for those more general friends of the firm lists, you want to keep it extremely general, and not get into the specific issues of it. But that's why segmentation is so important, list hygiene is so important, and conditional logic in your automations that triggers different content, at different times, depending on where they are in that journey.
McKay Allen:
Only one question left. Who would you recommend firms get to help them with this? Because if I'm an attorney, I'm thinking, "That's awesome, love it. I don't have time or know how to do this." Do you hire somebody? And I know there's a lot of answers, way to answer this depends on all sorts of factors, but what do you generally recommend? Are there consultants you should start with? Is there an agency that you recommend starting with? How do you guys think about this, as attorney think helping firms?
Gyi Tsakalakis:
Yeah. So, this is something that we do assist with, but to your point, the bigger question is, "How does this fit into your overall marketing plan?" And so, if you're a firm that has thousands of contacts, and you need a lot of help with segmentation, and automation building, but, if you have a lot of context, and you think this is a great opportunity, you might invest in having a full service, whether it's an email marketing agency or digital marketing agency. So, a lot of the digital marketing agencies do offer this, on the other end of the spectrum, if you're like, "Look, this is new to me. I'd love this concept. I'm not ready to allocate a huge budget or resource to this." start with the real, and you can do with the basic ones yourself.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
I mean, I think in a weekend, you can knock out the autoresponder, off of an email contact form. I think you can knock out the seven step follow up email, really basic stuff. Because again, it's not that complicated to get the basics down. Right. Especially if you're just talking about, the inbound stuff, date based, setting up using Mailchimp, or some other platforms we talked about, just to set up the recurring, happy new year, happy 4th of July type of email [link 00:39:59]. We're not talking about very sophisticated marketing copy here, and we're not talking about very sophisticated technology. It's literally, you fill out the template that you want to use, you couple different steps in there, you load your list in, and you schedule the automation, and it goes off. And so, that's everything in between. So, I just think that, the big thing if you're going to be doing on your cellphone, is to make sure you test those automations on yourself so, that you get a sense of what they feel like.
Gyi Tsakalakis:
But otherwise you can get, there's freelancers, that help with email marketing copy all the way to... A lot of the platforms even offer it themselves, for like, Law Maddox, for example, they offer an onboarding help package themselves, Hubspot offers onboarding. And so, they'll help you build the automations as part of your signup.
McKay Allen:
That's great. Awesome. Well, Gyi, thank you again, really a pleasure having you and, great wisdom and the best practices as always. And I love how you showed it from different platforms, because there's more platforms out there, than I think people can keep track of. So, the ability for you to jump through and talk about each one, is really important. So, thanks again. We really appreciate it. Any final thoughts for everybody before we jump off?
Gyi Tsakalakis:
No, I would encourage people, if you've never done the email automation thing, right now I can tell you the trend that we have seen in light of a pandemic, and a lot of other factors going on, email is a place with a lot of attention. And so, if you've been doing a lot of marketing or advertising, client development stuff and networking, face-to-face stuff, a lot of those opportunities are available right now, depending on where you are. And so, this email, we've really seen an uptick in the performance of email, and the interplay between email automations, and whether it's video content, or social media content. This is a great time to be making those investments now because your audience is there.
McKay Allen:
Love it. Thanks again. And everybody, thanks for taking the time out of your day, to join us.