How Chat, Call, and Paid Ads Drive Conversions For Law Firms

Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 74: The Legal Lead Capture Trends You Need to Know in 2021 with Ted DeBettencourt

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to the law firm growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host as always Jan Roos. And I am here with a good friend of mine, recurring guest Ted to bed and court co founder of jubilees. Ted, how's it going?

Ted DeBettencourt: Awesome. Yeah. And thanks for having me on today again. I appreciate it.

Jan Roos: Yeah. I guess it's been a little while since we, honestly, it's been a long while since our last one, you might've been on two or three years ago,

Ted DeBettencourt: I think it was a few years back.

Ted DeBettencourt: Yeah. It was when we were still a little bit of a smaller company and, just got to get our feet wet out there.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's good always to see the time series too. It's one of the interesting things too. I was talking with most sham sell on his podcast the other day too.

Jan Roos: We've got a really good wind streak as far as getting a great people catching rising [00:01:00] stars in this podcast too. So it's always happy to have the returning guests. But specifically as to what's been going on for you guys recently wanted to talk about the report that you guys got together. So I will not do the justice with the introduction, but could let's let's go ahead and get started by the the report that you guys got together.

na: Sure. So we're in a funny position in the sense that we have data that a lot of that really no one else has except other marketing agencies. And that's. only of their clients. So basically what we do is we track every chat, call, form, and SMS that comes into a law firm. Across a whole bevy of law firms across the country and across a lot of different market agencies that we work with.

na: So with that data, we said, all right we have data here that no one else has, why don't we do something with it? So basically we wanted to put together a benchmark report. So law firms can see exactly how many leads they should be getting. So really [00:02:00] we sliced and diced our data a million different ways.

na: And the kind of main ways we broke it down is we wanted to look at all the data in 2021 and say, if you're a personal injury firm, you're a bankruptcy firm, you're a criminal law firm, you're a family law firm, how many leads should you be getting from paid traffic and non paid traffic? And non paid is everything from organic traffic to referral traffic to direct traffic and organic, yeah, organic Bing, Google ads, wherever it comes from.

na: So we really thought that the two most important things were that. If you're spending a lot of money in Google ads, how many leads are you getting? How many should you be getting? How many of your competitors getting and how many of your peers getting? So we wanted to break it out. So we did that with our 2021 legal lead benchmark report here.

Jan Roos: Okay. That's awesome. And I want to actually take a step out because I did not do the best job of introducing how you guys got this data. So for anyone who's not familiar Juvo leads is my favorite chat company and phone. And I guess how would you guys describe yourselves?

na: We're a lead capture in tracking platforms [00:03:00] specifically for marketing agencies.

Jan Roos: There we go. Basically we've been partnered with Juvo for a super long time. We run all of our Google ads budget through that. I guess it's something that hasn't come up on the podcast a lot recently, but we're working with literally at any given time, a hundred plus firms on, on, on these campaigns.

Jan Roos: But why this is super exciting to me and why it should be super exciting to you, if you like the way I think of your lister is because, it's interesting. Like one of my favorite reports that I get to see every year is the Clio Clio trends report. That's obviously a good one, but two, but like a lot of the things do when I think about the.

Jan Roos: Data that comes in for marketing stuff room to clear response. Lead response report was one of my favorite pieces of data I ever saw. That was a survey that was from the outside looking in. What we have here is literally the proverbial fly on the wall of thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I know what the scale of this thing is dead, but people that are actively spending a ton of money on campaigns.

Jan Roos: And again, our clients are some of those, but there's a lot more people than us that are using the platform. Just as far as, I don't know if there's any big, like [00:04:00] marquee numbers, but like in terms of the interactions that went into the report, if there's like a, do you have anything off the bat as far as the like the total number of conversations that went into this?

na: My conversations, the big number we track is leads. So it's not just chat leads. It's every total leads we're capturing. So we're talking over tens of thousands of leads that we're tracking and distributing to a source. So this is a fairly broad set of data for a lot of

Jan Roos: for the legal

na: world.

Jan Roos: And then the other thing too, is that I think it's a really interesting time to discuss this.

Jan Roos: And this was something that we'd spoken about a little bit on the pre call. I think the world's changed a little bit, and I think that's probably not a super unique opinion, but what do things really look like on the other side of 2020, right? That crazy we all had. And it's cool because this is all data that you guys collected from 2021, right?

na: Yeah. So we ideally wanted to do this in early 2020 and then, COVID hit and like everyone else we're saying, okay, what's going to happen with the world. And we didn't want to pull the 2020 data just because we didn't think it would [00:05:00] be a fair representation or say, If we held it, we use this to hold out to lawyers.

na: Here's how many leads you should be getting. How does this stack up with what you're currently doing? It doesn't really affect us all that much, but sometimes it really puts the feet to the fire, to the marketing agency they're working or if they're not using chat, that's the leverage we have there.

na: You're not getting that many. Here's why. Here's what some people are getting. Here's what our other law firms are getting. But if we did that in 2020, we were just afraid it wasn't going to be representational of what a firm would do. Not during COVID. So we really wanted to hold off until to do this until 2021.

na: And we're hoping to keep doing it, ongoing every year, just to see how things are turning that way. One thing I can say is from our 2020 data, things are going up. Across the board and in all metrics we saw, we did see a little bit of a dip in May, a little bit. And we were nervous about that, but June's been blowing that out of the water, so we're pretty excited.

Jan Roos: Okay. Yeah. That's really interesting too. Cause it's I was thinking on some level, it was like I [00:06:00] feel like there's going to be a lot of long vacations this summer, a lot of people owe that to themselves, but okay, that's really interesting. And just as a starter I know this could be a pretty broad question, but what were some of the most surprising things you guys found when you sat down and crunched the data?

na: Great question. Far and away. The biggest surprise was. The conversion rate variance by practice area. And by that, if you're using and paid ads specifically, so if you're running the highest percentage of conversions are coming from bankruptcy. So if you're running a bankruptcy law firm, let me pull up the data here specifically, If you're an average site, you're pulling somewhere in between 20, 25 percent of leads are converting, and that's ridiculously high.

na: And that kind of made us scratch our noggin a little bit. And then you compare that to a PI firm and that number is significantly lower. So if you're middle of the pack into the PI firm, you're pulling much lower. You're pulling. [00:07:00] About six and a half percent. So 22 and a half percent for bankruptcy law firms on average versus six and a half, and that's a conversion rate.

na: So that means if you're running a paid campaign and PI, and you get a hundred visitors to your site, that means about six and a half on average will convert into leads, whereas if you're running a paid bankruptcy campaign, generally Google ads, big ads, 22, 23%. Or, 23 out of a hundred will convert into a lead.

na: So that's a huge variance for us.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's fascinating. And you're actually reminding me of another thing. This is like one of those things. I had this on my sales tax for probably five years, but I don't know if you recognize this one. There's this old word stream report where they were trying to do the but the thing is that it didn't go more granular than legal, which was the tough thing too.

Jan Roos: And it's it's funny a lot of the times. And this is something that we usually will talk to people about in the course of, evaluating, or it makes sense to work together or not. But not a lot of people have access to this for themselves even. What else it was, we got the high and low with bankruptcy.

Jan Roos: How did a criminal and family end up rounding out that [00:08:00]

na: criminal family were fairly similar to each other and not too much difference. Family was a little bit higher than we thought it would be, especially in the paid search. So about how we, and bear in mind, we work with a lot of agencies. So if you pull numbers off of a random family law site, off of random PI bankruptcy, criminal site, and the internet, if they don't have a good agency or they're trying to do it themselves, they're probably going to be lower.

na: So we work with a really, a lot of really good agencies that do. Pretty incredible stuff from a conversion perspective. So our numbers are probably going to be higher than what some people might say, or what some firms are used to. So there's a caveat there in terms of family law versus criminal law, we break down all the data into three buckets.

na: So there's the good, that's a top 33rd percentile, the middle 33rd percentile and the bottom 33rd percentile. So the middle 33rd percentile and family law paid search is about 10%. So if you get a hundred. Paid clicks to a family law site, [00:09:00] 10 of them should convert into leads on average. And then for criminal, it's fairly similar.

na: It's about the same. It's about 11%. And that's the middle of the pack. If you're really good at criminal law, running paid search, you're converting about 17, 18 percent of your clicks into lead. So there is some variance there. Whereas with family law, the variance isn't so much. The really good ones are converting about 6%.

na: The middle of the pack is varying about 6%. The really good ones are only can bring about seven, 8%. So it's a little bit harder to convert a lead into a from family law than it is grim.

Jan Roos: Yeah. It's interesting too. There's something that has been coming up a lot recently because I've been thinking about a lot of this stuff and kind of connection to the estate planning, which is like the length at which people take to make a decision.

Jan Roos: And it's funny because I think bankruptcy has one of those things situations where that's the throwing in the towel moment for the person typing in bankruptcy attorney, Brooklyn or whatever happens to be. So I think those people are probably a little bit more, but if you think about it too, the people who are clicking on a divorce attorney site, maybe it's [00:10:00] the first time their spouse ended up raising their voice at them and make it be like a harder situation to convert.

Jan Roos: One of the things I find surprising is the personal injury stuff being as low as it is. But I also think too, as far as the situation, we've definitely seen this at some times. And there were a couple of months, speaking directly to COVID, we had some campaigns that were super weird.

Jan Roos: And I think it was people who were like, bent over a barrel financially, trying to like, scare up some cash and thinking about what businesses did I stub my toe on the last couple of months? Oh, I just shouldn't pursue that car. I said, but that's super interesting.

na: On the flip side with COVID coming out of COVID, if people are driving less to work.

na: What was down for us not only on the PI, especially the motor vehicle accident stuff, is the crim firms that were DUI focused. If you're driving less on the road or working from home, you're less inclined to get a DUI and less inclined to get in a car accident.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

na: Not great for those industries, probably, safer roadways but in those industries, they definitely took a hit.

Jan Roos: This is a funny one too. We ended up having a situation where we onboarded a DWI firm in I think it was probably February or [00:11:00] March of last year, and we were really concerned about that because we thought people weren't driving, but these guys were in Houston and I'll tell you this, people were still drinking.

Jan Roos: Interesting. Okay, cool. Now, as far as I want to also highlight this for people who are a little bit less familiar with how your guys platform works. So one of the things that I really like about Juvo is that it's able to get everything in one dashboard too. And if you think about it, if you situation where you have one call tracking software, you have a chat software or someone else, and you have finally something else that's happening with emails, it's hard to be able to pull these absolute numbers just because, it just takes a lot of deduplication.

Jan Roos: It's hard enough to get these things from your own reporting, let alone when you have that extra step of putting all this stuff together, I say this for somebody who puts reports together as part of the business it has for a lot of years. So I know for a lot of law firms that are out there it's a bridge too far.

Jan Roos: As far as how things work I know one of the things that's interesting that you mentioned earlier was what the effect is when people end up getting chat into the mix. So can we talk about some findings that you guys have from that?

na: Yeah, great question. [00:12:00] So what we originally wanted to do was pull strictly chat versus non chat.

na: Cause we have A fair amount of clients that we work with that either are just chat, no call and form tracking, or some only use us for call tracking or just form tracking, whatever. We didn't have a statistically significant amount of data to be able to say, if you use chat, you get this much percent of leads versus not chat that many leads.

na: But we did have some pretty good data that isn't it less than a hundred use us for not chat. So we didn't have, we didn't feel comfortable pulling it. But what we did see across the board. For clients that use chat, we had two pieces of data that was cool. One clients that use chat, get more leads.

na: Across the board, we're about 35 percent more total leads. So the net win of chat is about 35 percent on average. It varies per industry in per practice area and how the firm works, whether it's a free consultation or paid or, and all that things, but that's generally the litmus of when you put a chat [00:13:00] on it's a quick 35 percent more net leads.

na: And we know it's more net leads cause we're always running case studies and trials and a B test. And we did one a few months back for a big bankruptcy client where, the client basically said, Ted Allen, I like it, but if you're just taking away my phone calls, what's the point? Why am I paying you money for this?

na: And I said, Hey, you make a great point. Why don't we prove it to you? So basically what we did is we, Did an AB split test where we did the call on the form tracking for a hundred percent of his traffic. And then on 50 percent of the traffic, we serve chat. And basically with him, the 50 percent that got chat, that percent got a 59 percent more leads.

na: That's above and beyond what we normally see. Hence, we wrote it up as a case study. We're generally about 35, 40%, but we were able to show him at the end of a 30 day period. Here's how many leads you got without chat. Here's how many you got with chat. Is it worth it to you? He goes we're not talking about a little amount of leads.

na: I think [00:14:00] the group with chat was about 170 leads and the other group was like a 120 ish, I have the case study on the, in the report. So chat is net beneficial in most cases. And that's why we exist. The other cool thing about chat that we see specifically is when a chat lead comes in, it is a hotter lead.

na: So a chat lead has been fully vetted, meaning we make sure it's not a bad lead. What a bad lead is depending on the particulars of the firm. But let's say you're a criminal law attorney. Okay. When were you arrested? Are you currently in jail? Do you have an attorney? These are just some of the minimum qualification questions we ask for lead.

na: If they say, The wrong answer, we say, I'm sorry, I don't think we're a good fit. So that means when a lead comes in, a chat lead has been fully vetted compared to a phone call, which could just be anyone kicking the tire or a form submission would not counting spam. We don't count spam in our in our data, but not counting spam, that lead hasn't really been vetted that much.

na: So what that translates into chat [00:15:00] leads convert into cases at the highest rate compared to other leads. So for example, In our dashboard, and not everyone does it. Some do. Some people mark what leads convert into cases. And what we see on average is that chat leads are the highest method by which leads convert into cases.

na: For example, a chat lead comes in, it has a 1 in 4 chance to become a case, whereas a phone lead is 1 in 6 And a form lead is one in seven. We have the pull full data under the charts on the report. It's a better lead because it's already been fully vetted and they're expecting the call and they know what they know, what they're getting into.

Jan Roos: Yeah. That's super interesting. And I don't want to speculate too much, but like one of the things too, and I'll just say this as somebody who uses the platform, it's like, it's not a question in us. It's if there's ever a situation where you have a client that's not converting are they on chat?

Jan Roos: Like we make it a default. It's because it's just, it's You know, cut and dry in our mind on the other side of this, but pretty much if I bet to speculate to I think the qualification is such an important [00:16:00] thing, let me just take a little aside too, because this is something that comes up when we're talking about sales training and stuff, there's always the line that like, I know it's easy to tell when you're on the phone with somebody.

Jan Roos: Somebody like, okay, how much more like rope do I have in terms of questions? I can continue asking when you guys are working through, and this is another thing that you guys do, which is fantastic. It's every, all the chat scripts that you guys do is custom to make sure it actually fits something that works the business, but what do you guys recommend as what's too many questions, what's not enough.

Jan Roos: Do you guys aim for a sweet spot?

na: Yeah, great question. So it really depends on the firm. So the right answer is, for your legal listeners, it depends. It depends what the firm wants. So if the firm has a very narrow set of practice areas or practice area, they know exactly what a good client is. So they're going to have usually more stringent and rigid.

na: questions. So for example, if the firm just does bankruptcy, they want to make sure we're in the state and depending on the state, we're in the right county in town. Some firms only work in, certain counties from there. [00:17:00] There's other qualification questions. Do you have a home repossessed?

na: Do you own a home? Are you facing garnishment for bankruptcy clients? We could get fairly specific on the flip side. There are firms that are generalists. They'll do some PI, some bankruptcy, some crim. For those, we just basically confirm the state and the location. Those chat leads where we have less qualification questions, don't turn into clients at as high as a rate because a lot more shaft comes through.

na: Whereas when we're asking five or more qualification questions, those leads convert into cases at the highest amount. And for most of those that's in the bankruptcy and the family law stuff.

Jan Roos: Yeah, it's like impossible to have a split test for this, but I would imagine like part of the difference between the one four and the one in six is that a couple of those four a couple of those six might've called up and hadn't qualified.

Jan Roos: So they're going into the total lead bucket. I'll also say this too, based on that Clio, Trends report that I was referencing earlier. It's I know that the email leads are the toughest one for people to close. If you realize, and this is it's an [00:18:00] important psychological thing.

Jan Roos: That person was able to speak with your firm in the moment and get some sort of an engagement. So it's a foot in the door more than a lot of people realize. So I think there's a couple of really powerful factors that like could be behind those numbers. I can always speculate.

na: Completely agree with you.

Jan Roos: Yeah,

na: we talk about one thing that we're big on that we talk about is especially in the forms speed to lead it. One thing that hurts speed to lead is if you only have their email address, because if they give you an email address and they don't check their email, it's hard to get in contact with that person as fast as possible.

na: So we always, we have a few different tools and methods, and there's a lot of companies out there that all they do is help law firms Get in contact with their leads because they know if they get in contact with their leads faster They're going to have a higher conversion rate from a closing a lead into a case

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jan Roos: And to also circle back to one of the things I forgot to mention, it was just like it's really crazy. If you look at that example, when we had the firm that was doing the split test, it's we talk about these numbers like conversion rate, and that doesn't [00:19:00] mean obviously with marketers, this is something that we talk about all the time, but putting this in the dollars and cents for someone, you don't have to have PhD in data science.

Jan Roos: To look at if your leads, if you're getting a 59 percent more leads, your costs are getting cut by half, right? So either twice as much on your spend or half as much spent. Like I just, that's why this stuff always blows me away. That it's not something that's more top of mind for a lot of people,

na: I loved it. Cause for that case, I in particular, we had fun showing the data off and just saying, okay. If you're spending X, not only you're getting more leads, your cost per lead went down a lot, even though you gave us money. So their CPL went down drastically. What you get someone 59 percent more leads that's gonna.

na: Do that a lot.

Jan Roos: So that felt pretty good. Yeah. And it's interesting too, just this whole concept, it is a little bit, I won't say harder, but there's a lot of things you have to do to get this done, as far as like a conversion rate perspective. And it's not really obvious in the same way that people can point to, okay, cool.

Jan Roos: Hey, you spend 10 times as much as Google, right? Three times [00:20:00] as many articles for your SEO rankings, that kind of stuff too. A lot of the, in my opinion, like the traffic stuff is easy to measure. But, we're really talking about efficiency at the end of the day and whether somebody wants to make sure that they're running lean with their marketing or just be able to have more dry powder for scaling up, depending on what kind of direction they want to go.

Jan Roos: It's it's such an important factor. Following up on that a little bit too. So I saw that you guys did a lot of segmentation between the paid search and the non paid traffic. Yeah. What were your kind of, any interesting findings from that?

na: Yeah, a few things with paid in particular, there's a lot more variance between the good and the bad firms in terms of conversion rates.

na: So for us in paid search, the only thing that we, the numbers we cared most about is we had a lot of firms that were converting like two or 3 percent from paid traffic, and then we had a sizable amount that were 20 percent plus, and that makes sense if you think about it, because this variance in. Ad management quality.

na: So there's a lot of [00:21:00] people out there that are spending money in Google ads, but if they're not on top of their agency, they might not be getting a good bank for their buck. And I think that data showed that to be the case here. Whereas with. paid ads, non paid traffic. And that's, referrals, search, directs, every other thing that doesn't involve directly paying a giant company that varied less.

na: So basically if you're getting a lot of traffic versus if you're not getting a lot of traffic, your conversion rate won't change all that much, oddly enough. And we couldn't figure out at first. But a lot of the sites that had the highest conversion rate in organic and non paid traffic, we couldn't figure out why their conversion rates were better.

na: And then it made sense to us when we thought about it direct, meaning someone typing in the name of your firm and going to your site converts at the highest percentage as opposed to organic search. So if you run a small firm and the only way that people know about you is typing your name into Google.

na: And that shows up as a direct search, that's going to convert pretty highly. Whereas if you're running a [00:22:00] giant organic campaign, you might be getting a lot of traffic, but it's not, it's going to drown out the direct conversion rate traffic. So a lot of the bigger firms that are driving tons and tons of.

na: Leads from organic, you might be getting a hundred leads a month and you're getting a good traffic, but it's not converting quite as high as some of those little firms.

Jan Roos: That's really interesting. A couple of things that kind of tease out on that too. So it's this is also something, the converse rates good as far as the direct thing, but sometimes too, like it shows to one of these, like tiered approach type things that like, if the highest stuff is direct, unfortunately, there's not a ton of ways to move the lever on that outside of running, a huge like radio or billboard campaign or something like that.

Jan Roos: But it's interesting and this is, I'm realizing something in the course of this conversation that kind of explains a previous episode. And it was actually what I was saying before. It's like having a traffic mentality versus a conversion mentality, and I'm starting to realize.

Jan Roos: The people who run SEO campaigns for the traffic, they might not necessarily have a huge benefit for the conversion [00:23:00] optimization, if that's what the numbers are saying, right? It's they're coming to you from some piece of content or something like that. I think the design's probably less important and then, something where whatever you're paying 85 a click or something like that, right?

na: Yeah. Cause if you're an SEO. Only agency to some extent, you have less control over the conversion rate. You just know more and more traffic gives you more swings at the back. Whereas if you're running, the PPC guys and the firms are really looking at that, you only get so many swings. They're only going to pitch so many pitches because those pitches can be at, a buck 50 for a click, depending on the practice area.

na: I don't know what mesotheliomy is nowadays, but for a while, there was, it was well over a hundred.

Jan Roos: Oh yeah. It's crazy too. Like personal injury stuff too, as well. It's we've got a campaign running in New York right now. And it was funny. This is actually somebody who we've been working with for a really long time.

Jan Roos: We used to shoot for like 25 percent conversion rate on a 30 to 50 click. And it's pretty damn hard to get clicks for less than a hundred, 150 bucks right now. But that's a whole different conversation. Yes. Okay. [00:24:00] Super interesting stuff. Yeah. That's a huge, I feel like something just clicked in my brain there, but it actually does it explains a lot that I thought was more of a choice, but I guess it's one of these interesting convergent evolution kind of situations.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome.

na: Yeah, if I don't mind throwing this out there. Like you said, we work with a lot of agencies and, Yeah. We had to put a big caveat in this report to double and triple check our bankruptcy numbers here. Cause we do work with you and we do have a lot of clients in that space.

na: And we wanted to make sure our numbers were right. Cause we didn't think the top third of bankruptcy clients really converted at about 30 percent or 28. 2%. Bankruptcy clients. But what we saw is that when we pulled your clients out of that top third went down about seven points. So kudos to you and your team for converting at that high.

na: And, I never talk about what sites I can not talk about what sites are in this data. But I will say we had to double and triple check our numbers because we frankly couldn't believe it.

Jan Roos: Thanks, Seth. I appreciate it. And a huge shout out to anyone that knows, anyone [00:25:00] on our team to to Mark, Jason, Tatiana, a lot of people that are going into these numbers too.

Jan Roos: It's interesting too. And it's, Funny because it's something it's a sword that we've been sharpening for a super long time, but, just over the years it's really been our mantra from day one to maximize this stuff. And then it's just just getting to the end of that.

Jan Roos: It's, this is really how the focus is and then what kind of leads to that. But yeah, I gotta say too, as far as. The focus on the bankruptcy stuff too. It's a great market to work into. I think right now is a fantastic time for people to be hopping in it. We'll see what happens after the the tap gets shut off for kind of a lot of the social programs that are in there, but no, it could be a really interesting year for bankruptcy, but yeah, no, it's awesome.

Jan Roos: And I'm like, of course, having all the different channels is far like super helps to, like I was saying before, like in the chat in there. So it's like a super important thing for moving the needle on that. All right. Awesome. So as far as any like parting shots, like as far as, how things have been trending, do you guys expect things to go more towards any, do you guys see any moves?

Jan Roos: I guess I know this is the first time we've run the report to this extent, [00:26:00] but did you guys see a shift to chat or phone or or forum just based on, the kind of stuff that you guys had through any numbers that you didn't publish on this? Yeah. It's been trending.

na: Yeah. Cool. One forms are going down chat had state.

na: We thought we'd see a big uptick in chat and we'd be able to say, Hey, chats are bigger now than ever. It's pretty much held relatively similar to 2020 phone calls. It was the biggest beneficiary of people submitting less and less forms. I know if, we don't have data from 10 years ago, but I know 10 years ago in the form submission world, those were, people just wanted forms and phone calls weren't as big to track that was Pre call tracking days, but forms are getting bigger.

na: So forms will continue to shrink out just because people want answers. Now, phone calls are great, but a lot of people are hesitant to pick up the phone and actually make the call. That's a lot of work. Chat is the quickest way to get a quick response to your question. So our hopes and what we're seeing is that phone calls, we keep going up and eventually chat and SMS will start coming [00:27:00] up.

na: We thought this was going to be the year that SMS was going to start being 20 percent of the chat leads, but we're still only floating around 5%.

Jan Roos: Okay. That's super interesting. And I think. I would think intuitively that like people having been around more would lead to the emails being more responsive, but I also just get the feeling that email again this isn't like the donut don't quote me on this front page, really, but I feel like the shine's been going off of email for a little bit.

Jan Roos: It's I think the whole build a funnel drip campaign, your way to riches kind of thing is, Coming harder every single year. You see the open rates going down. The, deliverability filters are getting tighter and tighter. And I think just from personal perspective, it's chat's been on the way up for a while.

Jan Roos: It's I think it was like the adoption was probably lower before because people weren't sure whether it's real, but I think it's a lot of sites have this right now. People are used to doing it. Yeah. I would probably imagine this kind of tending. It's you've got the, there's people, you'd have to put a gun to their head to get them to order a pizza, let alone, talk to an attorney about the [00:28:00] pending divorce that they have.

Jan Roos: So I can understand why that's going on, but that's a really interesting takeaway. Like I wouldn't have expected the form stuff to be going down, but that's super interesting.

na: We're seeing the same data on us. So we're in a very small sub market of the chat room. So the big chat players, intercom drift, those are great.

na: Do what yourself chat solutions, software, where the chat plus the service. A teeny niche within the chat room. And every year we're seeing more and more companies using drift, using that. I was on Lowe's the other day. Now I can even, instead of having to go into Lowe's and talk to, one of the guys in the blue vest, They have a Lowe's assistant chat, which is pretty familiar.

na: It's just seeming to be on more and more websites. And I know the big thing that we're seeing is now a Facebook messenger is now offering your chat. So it seems like more and more people and companies are getting into this instant response marketing. And we like it because, we're just riding the coattails of that.

na: So every time we see drifts HubSpot, one of those chats on a service. It's on a site. We just know more and more people getting [00:29:00] familiar with that technology and more comfortable using it.

Jan Roos: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I think it's it's obviously tough. You don't have the age of everyone that's like growing, but it probably was one of those things I would say a couple of years ago, people like, yeah, sure.

Jan Roos: It's great for the. Yeah. College kids who are like doing this all the time, but like I've been there. My mom uses chat probably won't say how old she is but okay, awesome stuff. All right. Yeah, Ted, this is super helpful. So I definitely want to get the link to this report in the show notes.

Jan Roos: So anyone who wants to look at this data more specifically, again, we have a lot of really segmented stuff. It was not BS ing about how excited I'm about having this data for the first time, but we'll have it in the show notes. If anyone's interested in learning a bit more about you guys, what's the best way to reach out?

na: www.juvoleads.com. And yeah, and there's a big link on the, there'll be a big link on the homepage, you'll see, law report 2021. So check it out, see where your firm compares to the firm's. Your peers in your competition and see how you stack up.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. All right, [00:30:00] Ted, super appreciate you guys doing all the effort and putting this report together.

Jan Roos: I think it's super important stuff and also super appreciate you coming on the podcast to let us all know about it. And for everybody else, we will be back with you guys Tuesday at 8 AM Eastern on the law firm growth podcast. And one more shout out. I have to do this for Jenna, who runs the podcast. I don't have, if I want to, but sign up for the email list.

Jan Roos: We will also have a link for that in the show notes as well. Thank you very much, and have a great week.

Narrator: Thank you, Jan. Thank you for listening to the Law Firm Growth Podcast. For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to casefuel.com/podcast. Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.