Peer to Peer: ILTA's Quarterly Magazine
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/1397188
42 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 Alexander Kotler is the Chief Marketing Officer of RubyApps and is a growth-oriented marketing leader with 20 years' experience building businesses from the ground up. Known for translating strategic objectives into a cohesive, effective, and scalable go-to- market infrastructure, while leveraging expertise in omni-channel marketing, demand generation, marketing automation, and brand management. Gordon Braun-Woodbury is a Consultant for Calibrate Legal. He is a veteran B2B marketing and communications executive with over 30 years' experience in the professional services sector. processes do so only in niche practices; few, if any, use sales enablement tools on a firmwide basis. Based on entrenched law firm cultures, we predict slow progress in the adoption of sales enablement tools in the industry. 5. Marketing automation is underutilized, particularly given resource constraints Finally, we noted that 25% of firms are not leveraging marketing automation. Marketing automation is an efficiency driver, enabling teams to automate the sending of marketing content and capture critical information and trigger ongoing processes and workflows. Whether it's to send an automated email to a prospect that has downloaded a gated piece of content or to initiate the start of a workflow to enroll an interested party in a particular offering, marketing automation can help resource-constrained teams to lighten the (manual) load while simultaneously increasing engagement with clients and prospects. Parting Thoughts While the legal sector and particularly the marketing and business development area, has traditionally lagged behind other verticals, we believe the issue lies not with talent or awareness. Legal marketers and business developers must be empowered to leverage technology that can accelerate growth and drive efficiencies. Technology on its own, though, is not the solution. The empowerment of decision-makers, plus prudent decision-making around the right size and fit technology, is the key. In addition to the findings of this study, which we hope will help legal marketers and business developers to make the cases for crucial mar-tech upgrades, we are pleased to share the 2021 edition of the RubyLaw Legal Marketing Technology Stack. In addition to mapping out the prevalent systems and brands in use by firms, it includes a blank stack for practitioners to visualize their stacks and identify opportunities to plan for enhancement. As we look to future iterations of this study, we recognize that we have previously solicited input from a select group of third-party experts, mostly marketing leaders at Am Law 200 firms, for feedback on the design and evolution of the legal marketing technology stack. This is the first year that we have conducted our survey; in 2022, we will report a year-over-year change to assess how firms have adjusted. We will also plan to address how best to distinguish the extent of systems integration in the data. For instance, respondents may be using a single solution for both Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Enablement or two separate solutions. We currently cannot determine if there is integration between the respective systems, but we will aim to remedy this in 2022. We hope that legal marketers, and the firms they represent, will utilize this study in conjunction with the 2021 edition of the RubyLaw Legal Marketing Technology Stack. We hope they seize the opportunity to leverage marketing technology to work more efficiently and effectively; create engaging, personalized experiences for key stakeholders; and carry the sector forward into a new era. ILTA F E A T U R E S