Yesterday, I introduced our new series about email marketing for lawyers and marketing automation.
Today, we’re going to take a look at a program called “Drip.” We’re starting with Drip because it happens to be a tool we use internally at LawLytics. In fact, if you use the form at the bottom of this page to register for our newsletter, you’ll be signed up using Drip.
A Review of Drip for Law Firms
Drip is a marketing automation software that encourages interaction between you and your clients by providing easy-to-use tools on a clean, simple interface. Drip sums up its aims in one cheeky sentence:
“Lightweight Marketing Automation that doesn’t suck.”
Drip’s interface takes a no fuss, no muss approach to marketing automation.
Drip’s Main Features
Here are Drip’s main elements:
- Email sequencing: Drip can take content that you’ve already created (e-books, blog posts, even content on paper) and turn it into a five-day course on the subject of your choosing.
- Opt-In Forms and Capturing Information: Drip provides a number of styles when it comes to opt-in forms, whether you prefer a widget, a form that’s exit triggered or one that’s embedded in your site. No HTML experience required.
- Simple Set Up and A Clean Dashboard: Drip’s set up is basically a few lines of JavaScript that they can even install for you, allowing you to see your opt-in forms, A/B testing and conversions. Their dashboard is simple and effective: you’ll be able to see first-time visitors to your site, as well as who’s opening forms, subscribing and converting. Drip’s dashboard lets you compare these features to each other.
- Action-based tagging: Drip recognizes that not all subscribers behave alike. You’ll have tagging features for subscribers based upon their individual actions. This can boost your productivity by being able to organize your potential clients and interact with them on your terms.
- Tailored emails: Whether it’s a drip campaign, broadcast (promoting new blog posts, for example) or a single email, Drip has a flexible segment builder designed to help you find “just the right group of subscribers to receive your message.” Here, you also have access to the Liquid template system that allows you to create tailored subscriber content.
- Identifying potential clients: Drip uses a lead scoring algorithm, which tracks various factors to assist you in identifying likely potential clients. When you need to focus on one particular group of subscribers, you can sort and filter by lead score to maximize your productivity.
- Subscriber spring cleaning: Drip’s subscriber pruning feature lets you remove subscribers that aren’t actively engaging with your content. This keeps your list up-to-date with only the subscribers who are interested in what your law firm has to offer.
- Making a switch: If you’re using another email marketing system that you’re not happy with, Drip makes it painless to transfer your email address book into their system.
Drip’s Advantages For Your Law Firm’s Email Marketing
If you’ve ever been to a restaurant that has too many choices on the menu, you may have asked the waiter to come back several times while you tried to decide on the best choice.
Once you finally settled on something, did you get the feeling an alternative choice would have been better? When confronted with so many menu items, trying to have a relaxing meal can be torture. I’m almost scared to ask what’s for dessert when I see a menu like that.
If you’ve been in this situation (or one like it), you’re experiencing “analysis paralysis”. Too many choices makes decision-making a disaster. You may feel as if you’ve made the wrong choice. Worse, some people cannot make a choice at all.
Analysis paralysis can be found elsewhere, such as in website or email design. If you’ve got great email content but you’re struggling with design, it may take longer to send your message to potential clients.
Having lots of choices can be appealing at first. But when push comes to shove, many of us have an easier time making decisions when presented with fewer options.
If you struggle with analysis paralysis, you may like Drip’s simplicity. The simplicity of their design all around makes their software easy to navigate and to use. But, they’ve also pared down their email designs to a few choices.
Having fewer choices doesn’t translate into lower quality. Drip’s perspective on topics like graphics is this:
Graphics are meant to add to your content rather than being your content.
Drip’s ease of use and simple, elegant design options let attorneys focus on content quality rather than worrying about email design.
Drip takes responsive design into consideration, which means your clients can read your law firm’s e-mails from any device.
Potential Drawbacks To Using Drip At Your Law Firm
Is Drip “lightweight,” as it describes itself? Yes, to its advantage and disadvantage. Some attorneys will feel limited options for email design are a plus. But, there are lawyers out there who want more bells and whistles when it comes to design.
In this respect, Drip’s lightweight approach might be a disappointment, leading to boredom with Drip’s layout offerings when a lawyer is interested in a customized design for their weekly newsletter or blog post announcement.
The Cost Of Getting Drip
Here’s a sample of Drip’s pricing structure.
In comparison to a number of marketing automation alternatives, Drip’s pricing is very affordable. Yet, there are other systems offering more robust features that, dependent upon your firm’s needs, may or may not justify the additional cost.
Integrating Your Marketing Automation with LawLytics
It can be frustrating to make constant changes to your marketing approach. If you have a marketing automation program that you enjoy using, we want you to keep it. LawLytics is able to integrate any marketing automation software currently available into our software system. You don’t have to start from scratch if you’ve got a system you already love. To learn more about how we can effortlessly integrate your marketing automation software into ours, call us at 1-800-713-0161 or schedule a call with us.
As I continue to add to our “Email Marketing for Lawyers” series, you can access the very latest by checking out our series page.
Drip Email Marketing
Reviewed by Victoria Blute on Oct 28, 2015.
Drip email marketing for lawyers.
Drip is an excellent option for lawyers who want to use email marketing and marketing automation in their law firms.
Rating: 5
