Frequently Asked Questions
What is TM Touch®?
TM Touch is OTB’s powerful prospect, client, and staff communications add-on that is totally integrated into Time Matters. There is no additional hardware or software necessary for you to purchase.
What does it do?
TM Touch sends out messages (emails and/or texts) to your prospects, clients, and staff without any intervention by you or your staff. The emails are customizable by you, and can merge data in Time Matters, so they are personalized. No more having to manually send the regular emails that you should be sending every day. Instead, as you use Time Matters® in your office TM Touch monitors the by-product of your use, sending dozens or hundreds of emails based on events or conditions that exist in your Time Matters data.
What types of emails are sent?
There are several categories of TM Touch emails:
- Appointment Confirmation – while you should still be making appointment confirming calls, TM Touch will send an email the day before your appointments. You can even send different messages based on the Event code
- Prospect Management – most importantly, follow-up emails are sent periodically to prospects that no-showed at their initial appointment (“No-Shows”), or showed but indicated they weren’t ready to retain your firm (“Hire-Laters”). The pattern can be adjusted for each firm, but by default about 10 emails are sent out over a period of a year in an effort to get the prospect to come back in to retain the firm. If you make outgoing calls from leads you receive from your own website, or from a third-party lead provider, TM Touch can send out up to 6 emails over a 7 day period in an attempt to convert that lead to client.
- Campaigns – emails are sent to clients:
- When their case is opened (Welcome Email);
- At important mileposts in the case, such as executing estate planning documents, filing suit, etc.;
- When their matter is closed.
- At any other point where there is a change in the Time Matters database that can be recognized by a logical rule.
- Next Step Progress – if you are using our Practice Area Templates, or a similar workflow system in which each case progresses through a series of steps based on the area of practice (PI, Family Law, Elder Law, etc.), an email can be sent when a case goes from one step to the next.
- Billing – if you are using Billing Matters, twice each month an Overdue Balance Due email is sent to clients whose accounts receivable aging status is 90 or more. Plus, a list of these cases can be emailed to the managing partner or responsible attorney at the same time.
- Internal Staff – Reminder or notification email or text messages can be sent to your firm’s attorneys and staff based on rules applied against the Time Matters data. Examples include a list of all deadlines in the next 30 days, all new cases opened yesterday, all records added yesterday that have not been billed, and so forth.
- Tips & Hints – TM Touch can be configured to send out regularly scheduled emails to your prospects and/or clients with tips and hints about their particular area of need (how to collect medical bills for PI clients, where to store wills for estate planning clients, etc., or just life). These can be sent out at a period selected by you, and can be sent to prospects and/or clients. They are a great way to “soft market” to prospects so that when they reach the “tipping point” and become ready to hire a lawyers, you will be on their mind. They are also designed to improve the attorney-client relationship so that they have a better customer experience and will be more likely to refer others to you.
Can recipients respond back to the email generated through TM Touch?
Email recipients can respond back to the email. You will designate the “Reply To” email address to which you want reply emails to go. Text message recipients will not be able to text back.
Are the emails sent through our firm’s server?
The TM Touch email server was developed by OTB Consulting, and resides and works on the Microsoft SQL Server that works with Time Matters. Emails from the TM Touch server are required to be routed through an account with the leading bulk email server provider under OTB’s control so that we can provide you with email metrics (email counts, and delivery and open rates); can be sure that your delivery rates are maximized; and can protect your firm’s domain from being inadvertently tagged for spamming.
What cell phone providers have been confirmed with the email-to-text capability?
Text messages are sent as emails. This is a function that all cell phone providers support. Once you have determined your prospect or client’s cellular provider, using Google it is easy to locate the email format that needs to be used to email a text to a cell number.
Can TM Touch be used to auto-generate snail mail word docs?
No. At this time we are sending emails only since this is an email server that we are offering.
Does TM Touch have any reports?
TM Touch provides two types of reports:
- Email Type Reports – these reports show you the counts of the different types of emails that have been sent for specified date ranges.
- Email Result Reports – these reports show your delivery, bounce and open rates, as well as your “email reputation.” This enables you to see the effectiveness of your communications.
Is there anything else like this on the market?
The closest thing we have seen to TM Touch is InfusionSoft, a web-based sales and marketing software built for small businesses. Our system is priced in a very similar fashion, but we have a huge advantage over InfusionSoft – TM Touch is built directly into Time Matters. That means that you only have to work with one product … there is no need to import and export data, or develop a data bridge between the two products. More importantly, because TM Touch is built directly into Time Matters, it can recognize events and conditions for which an email should be sent far better than InfusionSoft.
What is the Return on Investment (ROI)?
There are a number of ways to calculate your return on investment:
- Land new clients. Using the appointment confirmation emails, or the No-Show and Hire Later follow-up emails, if you land just one client, your investment for the entire year may be recouped, and from that point on you are making money. Honestly, if you don’t think the system can land you more than one or two clients per year you should stop reading, TM Touch isn’t for you.
- Increase referrals and client satisfaction. Every time we look at reports with our clients, one thing always stands out – client referrals are without a doubt the best way to get new clients. Prospects that are referred by an existing client almost always set an appointment, they are far more likely to show for their appointment, and they retain at a higher rate. But, getting more client referrals relies on having satisfied clients. What better way to build a base of happy clients than to make sure you are constantly in contact with them – client touches is what we call them – without having to manually do anything? From the minute they contact you as a prospective client, through to discharge, and then even after discharge for as long as you want.
- Better communication and fewer phone calls. The Campaigns and Next Step emails ensure that your clients are promptly and timely kept up to date as to where their case is at each significant stage of the case. This results in fewer calls from clients because you are communicating with them automatically. If you are doing this now, you will save significant staff time. If you aren’t, then these are the types of emails that drive client satisfaction and all the positives that come with that.
- Improved firm management. Many attorneys and staff work outside the office and are used to practicing law on their smartphones or tablets, which don’t support Time Matters very well because of their smaller screens. Using TM Touch to capture the important Time Matters information each person needs to do their work outside the office extends Time Matters across all of the different platforms that today’s mobile users utilize.
What does it cost?
There is a one-time installation charge that varies based on the types of emails and text messages you want to send, but the average is $2,500, plus a monthly fee of $250 billed via ACH automatic debit to your checking account. If, at any time you decide you decide you don’t need TM Touch, let us know and we will turn it off. There’s no long-term contract involved.
What is my next step?
If you are ready to get started, give us a call. We will send you all the paperwork and documents to get the process started. If you need more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at 919.677.1415 ext. 102. We’d be glad to answer all the questions you have.
