Based on a fully composable DXP architecture we have crafted a personalized and award-winning B2B news and information hub with an outstanding user experience for Noerr, one of Europe’s leading commercial law firms. The Noerr hub offers business clients convenient access to experts who can meet their needs from a pool of more than 500 lawyers as well as legal and market information of relevance to them. The outcome; Noerr is registering record numbers of website visits and leads, they significantly boosted their brand awareness and efficiency through marketing automation and easier development.
Noerr had a clear vision: They wanted to demonstrate digital quality leadership through the depth and breadth of content and a truly unique digital business experience, and they were ready to use all technically necessary to achieve that goal. Using the newest Sitecore solution available, we developed a legal news and information hub with an outstanding user experience. The Noerr hub is based on a fully composable DXP architecture ready for composable business and technically state-of-the-art, using Sitecore 10.2 (headless), marketing automation with Sitecore EXM, a modern Microsoft Azure cloud hosting, microservices, and integrating multiple, real-time data sources like CRM, document management, and a HR solution. This makes it possible to power a multi data model-based experience in a seamless way.
The result is a relevant, and contextual digital B2B experience in real time. Noerr.com offers business clients a WCAG 2.1 A compliant and convenient access to experts who can meet their needs from a pool of more than 500 lawyers in Europe and worldwide as well as legal information of relevance to them, using different channels like news, thought leadership, the highly personalized newsletter (customers have 4.2 million options to personalize their content), and live-webinars. With a smart automation solution from Sitecore® Email Experience Manager (EXM) and the CRM, Noerr was able to significantly minimize the marketing effort for the creation, organization, personalized application and tracking of events.
The solution is highly flexible, efficient, easy to use, and it allows the Noerr marketing team to achieve value-driven business goals. By delivering the experience that matters most to their clients, Noerr registered a significant increase in page views and page views per visit. In addition, the solution we build is used as a single point of truth for gathering information to create pitches. Being fully headless, frontend deployments can be carried out independently of the backend, allowing faster changes, fewer risks, less coordination, and an overall faster time-to-market. And on top: Noerr.com is one of the best looking, best user experience B2B websites, adapted from a new brand design, with special motion design effects and a tailored business imagery. Our design team used a very flexible atomic design, so each piece of content (like buttons etc.) can be changed only once centrally, and is updated automatically everywhere on the website.
Finding experts made easy
A law firm is a people business. The newly developed, technically sophisticated, but yet easy-to-use expert search eases the task for searchers when it comes to finding the right legal expert with just one click. Once the experts have been identified, the corresponding CVs can be downloaded with information on the person’s skill sets, career, languages and selected publications. Thanks to the user-friendliness of the Sitecore solution, the Noerr experts can update 90 % of their data and CVs independently, which is a huge time saver.
Personalizable news hub
Another highlight is the personalized newsletter “Insights”, which we have developed using the Sitecore Email Experience Manager. Clients and interested parties can compile their own individual newsletter from 21 legal fields and sectors with 4.2 million variations. If their interests shift, their personal news can be adjusted with just a single click in the settings management. The Sitecore Email Experience Manager automatically compiles personalized newsletters from editorial contributions by the law firm’s practice groups.
“Our newsletter service is very well received by our subscribers, which is also demonstrated by the outstanding KPIs. Being able to manage the website and email marketing from one single technical solution saves us time and offers deep insights into the customer journey. Macaw’s Sitecore expertise has enabled us to realize our requirements quickly and professionally.” – Michael Kaupp, Digital Marketing Manager at Noerr.
Marketing Automation
Noerr offers 100+ professional and social events every year to inform and retain its clients. The effort involved in communication and organization was always complex and time-consuming for the marketing team. The editors had to take care of event page, newsletters, personal invitations and had to manually enter the acceptances and/or rejections into Noerr’s internal CRM. We created an automated process based on the Sitecore® Email Experience Manager (EXM) and with Noerr CRM as the data source. Various e-mail templates are linked to the content of the event and are automatically sent to the selected recipient list in the individual marketing phases: invitation, confirmation and reminder are generated without any further manual work for the Noerr team. The corresponding event data is documented directly in the CRM and is available for further personalization. In addition, it is easy for the editors to set up appropriate event landing pages. The automated event solution has significantly reduced the time and organizational effort for marketing and increased the user experience for the clients.
Crisis Center: Well informed throughout any world crises
The repercussions of the COVID19 pandemic and associated political measures have raised ad hoc existential as well as unprecedented legal questions for many companies. At the same time, the pandemic has fundamentally changed the rules of the game in the field of personal relationship management, which is otherwise of such existential importance to law firms, overnight. In response, Noerr has developed, with our support, the highly frequented digital Corona Crisis Center, which keeps clients and interested parties throughout Europe informed about current developments and legal issues. From blog articles to special newsletters and a bilingual executive summary as well as brief overview all the way to a connected platform for live webinars, the Center is a compact information hub on topics, contact persons and events. Content is provided by the Noerr Corona task force, a team of 50 lawyers practicing in a wide range of specialist fields, producing high-quality content by means of structured editorial processes.
Results
- Over 1.2 million visits at noerr.com (up 44 % year on year)
- More than 330,000 Corona Crisis Center visitors
- 5,000+ attendees of live webinars
- More than 1,200 new contacts/leads
- Significant improvement in the Google SEO ranking
- Numerous positive reports in the press
- Awards, e.g. the German Prize for Online Communication (dpok) in gold and Annual Multimedia Award 2021 in silver
Noerr is carrying on with its tried-and-proven communication strategy at the Ukraine-Russia Crisis Center, as Russia’s invasion and the ensuing economic sanctions imposed are once again facing companies with numerous challenges. Issues relate to sanctions law, corporate law as well as M&A, contract law, export control law, anti-money laundering law and other fields of practice. The Noerr Task Force provides digital and personalized answers to all these developments.
“The need for legal information has skyrocketed overnight due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and has continued to soar over the last few months. In 2016, we laid the foundations for modern digital market communication with our new website and established a customizable newsletter, our own webinar portal and much, much more. This put us in the absolute digital rider’s seat, enabling us to react autonomously and, above all, on an ad hoc basis with our Corona and Ukraine-Russia Crisis Center.” – Michael Kaupp, Digital Marketing Manager at Noerr.
