A blog by Professor Ian Cooper for Legal Futures Associate Solve Legal Marketing
Cooper: Emails can be a false economy
Do you send out an email to people who have rung for a residential conveyancing quote? What proportion of them convert into business?
Of course, it is a good thing to email a potential client details of your conveyancing quote. But there is a massive general problem, which is having a seriously detrimental effect on conversion rate results for many firms.
The major problem is that, according to my research, 69% of firms have fallen into a default system of using email as a way of actually avoiding a meaningful and influential conversation at all with a potential client who has telephoned for a quote.
These firms and their call handlers are doing no more than simply taking basic details about the potential transactional before saying: “We’ll get an email quote out to you.” The send button is hit, the email quote has gone. Job done.
Or is it?
Many of the firms who do this actually pride themselves on their efficiency for speeding up and simplifying the process. It might be quicker, but if the results are poor, it is a false economy.
Many firms are failing to realise that this method limits conversion rate success, as no relationship is built with the caller, control is lost the moment the send button is pressed, and it virtually forces the prospect to choose on price.
The shocking truth is that there is a nationwide catalogue of missed business opportunities because of this, with the vast majority of firms seeing the email quote as a purely administrative task. Many firms have failed to realise that it is actually a ‘sales’ letter with a promotional and marketing objective.
So, following my substantial review of this issue, here are the opening three of six key mistakes that many firms make, that need to be addressed if they want to improve their conversion rate of email quotes letters into profitable business.
1. Failure to differentiate – 84% of quote emails sent out contain no information about the firm or communicate any potential benefits of using the firm at all. The only content is merely a list of prices.
This virtually forces people to choose on the cost factor only. Is that really what you want? Ask yourselves, why should a potential client choose you? Then make sure you include some of these reasons in your email letter.
2. Refusal to give a verbal quote – I have already mentioned that 69% of call handlers only want to take the transactional details and send out an email quote.
However, it is also worth noting that when pressed for a verbal quote over the phone, two-thirds of call handlers refuse to do this and use a variety of reasons and excuses such as “It’s easier for you to understand if it is in writing”, or “It takes too much time to run through all the figures and I’m very busy right now”.
3. Lack of the email being personalised – 97% of all the email quotes in my research showed no effort at personalisation at all, other than the caller’s name being inserted into the auto format template of the email quotes system.
We also had many letters signed, for example: “Kind Regards – Conveyancing Team (Name of Branch Office).”
The simple truth is that the more personal the letter, the better. Remember, your prospective clients don’t really want ‘conveyancing’ at all. To them, this is in most cases about ‘moving home’ and that is the biggest single thing in their lives at that moment.
This fact alone deserves some personalisation.
Make sure you look out for the final three points on how to write a well-balanced email quotes letter in the second instalment next month.
Professor Ian Cooper is Britain’s most experienced law firm skills trainer/consultant, and author of the Financial Times Guide To Business Development. To find out more about Ian’s online training course on converting more enquiries, click here.
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