When Wendy Horn joined Houston-based Bracewell & Giuliani as its director of marketing and client relations, one of the first things she noticed was the way the firm was-and wasn’t-using its customer relationship management software. Of course, most law firms have yet to even install CRM packages-a standard technology in just about every other sales-driven industry. So the fact that Bracewell & Giuliani was using it at all was, to be sure, a solid first step. But in an increasingly competitive, information-centric, Internet-connected world, Horn knew, after 20 years in law firm marketing, that the firm could be doing more than simply managing client contact data; it could be using CRM in sophisticated ways that would generate buzz-and business.
So Horn ratcheted things up. She set the CRM system so that whenever the firm e-mailed clients a newsletter, it tracked which articles were opened by which recipients. This enabled Horn to home in on the topics that were most interesting to specific clients. She would then center her marketing efforts around these hot issues-a client alert devoted to climate change, for instance, or a seminar on intellectual property. The result: The more focused her marketing efforts became, the more phone calls the firm’s partners received. “We’ve sent out more than 500 items this year-newsletters, invitations to conferences, and so on,” says Horn. “At least 10 percent have directly produced work.”
