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With ContactsLaw's CRM features, it is possible to create mass mailouts for marketing and client communication purposes. Mailouts build on the existing document building features; thus, mailouts may contain dynamic content and can be tailored to each individual addressee.
 
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Each mailout has a workload which may consist of creating/printing/sending a document or making a telephone call. Documents can be created interactively (using tasks) or non-interactively. If installed, the ContactsLaw Daemon can be used to perform the mailout autonomously and at a chosen time of day.

Mailout types

Mailouts can operate in the following modes:
  • Contact list - A contact list is used to send a specific document or create a task for a large number of recipients at a time.
  • Opt-in - Contacts manually opt-in to receive a series of documents/tasks according to a schedule. Commencement dates are staggered depending on when the contact was enlisted in the mailout. Due to their autonomous nature, the ContactsLaw Daemon must be installed in order to use this type of mailout.

Contact list mailouts

The process for conducting a contact list mailout is as follows:
  1. Create (or re-use) a referral source for tracking the effectiveness of the campaign.
  2. Create a document template for the mailout. Templates may be e-mails, faxes or letters; in each case, they must be built and sent, whether that is a manual or automated process. The principal restriction on templates used for mailouts is that they must not require any additional information beyond the addressee role.
  3. Create a contact list to determine who will receive the mailout. You can re-use existing lists.
  4. Start the mailout activity and fill in the items from points 1-3. Decide how you wish to conduct the mailout; you can choose to create documents or telephone calls.
    • If creating documents; choose whether to print, save or send the documents. You may be able to schedule the batch to run in the ContactsLaw Daemon.
    • If creating tasks; review the estimated size of the workload and, accordingly, assign an appropriate number of members. You can also use staggering to distribute the workload over a number of days.
  5. Commence the mailout, optionally generating a list of the contacts who will be targeted. (You can retain this list for future reference and as a record of who was contacted, since contact lists will change over time.)
  6. Depending on the options selected for the mailout, the operation may remain in-progress for a period of time until all tasks/documents have been processed. You can monitor the progress of the mailout from The Practice CRM tab.
  7. When all tasks have been completed (or otherwise removed from the system), you can mark the mailout as having completed.

Opt-in mailouts

To conduct an opt-in mailout:
  1. Create (or re-use) a referral source to associate the mailout with.
  2. Start the mailout activity and select 'opt-in'.
    • Describe the mailout and its purpose.
    • Add one or more items to the schedule; as with contact list mailouts, you can create/send documents or make telephone calls. For each item on the schedule, specify the time between the completion of the previous item and the commencement of the next item.
  3. Commence the mailout. The workflow for the mailout activity will end with the mailout still in-progress.
  4. Use the mailout opt-in activity to enlist contacts in the mailout. The schedule will run autonomously to completion (unless the contact opts-out during the period).
  5. You can monitor the enlistment and responses for the mailout from The Practice CRM tab, and inspect the progression through the schedule for individual contacts from the contact CRM tab.
  6. When the campaign has concluded and you no longer wish to allow new enlistments for the mailout, open the mailout and mark it as completed.

Scheduled tasks

If the ContactsLaw Daemon is used to generate documents for a mailout, be aware that some document formats cannot be used:
  • Outlook mail templates (.oft)
  • Legacy Office 97-2003 formats (.dot, .xlt, .ppt, etc)

These formats require the corresponding Office applications to be installed, which are not typically present on the application server computer.

As an alternative, consider using the HTML e-mail format or the current Microsoft Office formats, which can be generated without the need for the Office applications.

Recording responses

You can record a contact's response to a mailout using the mailout response activity. ContactsLaw assists in this process by prompting you to record a response when creating a file whose primary client was previously included in a mailout.

Recording responses is vital to evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign, ensuring that contacts who opt-out of future mailouts are processed correctly, as well as identifying problems such as return-to-sender.

Evaluating performance

As soon as a mailout commences (i.e. even before the process is complete), you can begin to track and monitor the effectiveness of the campaign by viewing the list of referral sources. When a mailout leads to the opening of a new matter, its referral source will be recorded as the 'origin' of the file. Note that each successive mailout decreases the conversion rate for its campaign until new business is generated, even in cases when the same contact is contacted more than once.

See also