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Although choosing marketing strategies for your small law firm can be overwhelming, one of the most potent and budget-friendly choices is email marketing. If you think of email as old fashioned, think again: 75% of small businesses count on email as their main source of gaining clients, because it works. Done correctly, email marketing for law firms can be an ideal component of an overall marketing plan. Here is a guide to help you examine the potential of email marketing for your small law firm, along with several things to consider as you get started.
Email Marketing: What is it?
Email marketing is essentially contacting clients and potential clients through email. The content may vary from a regular newsletter to a short piece of useful legal information, or any issues that matter to your contacts. Emails can be sent with varying frequency and in a variety of ways including drip campaigns, newsletters, webinars, and special offers.
Reasons for Email Marketing
Email messages reach their target 90% of the time with minimal effort. Compared to other law firm marketing strategies, email marketing is cost-effective and the metrics are easy to track. Email marketing can be used to build your brand, share pertinent updates about your law firm, and promote your services. Email marketing works on many levels, such as:
Developing Your Business
Email marketing helps you reach out to potential leads and nurture established relationships. Emails remind your clients, colleagues and contacts that you exist, so they can utilize your services or refer others to your law firm.
Connecting With Clients
Thank you emails and meeting reminders are fitting ways to interact with your clients. The number one complaint clients have with their lawyers is poor communication. Sending a message to touch base, offer helpful information or say “thank you” are excellent ways to stay connected.
Updating and Educating Clients
A regular email newsletter or article can inform your clients, give updates about your law firm, or alert them to changes in local laws and other relevant information.
Go with a Goal in Mind
If you decide to use email marketing, it is crucial to begin with a plan, because sporadic, random emails will probably not trigger positive results. Perhaps you just want to stay in touch with past clients, gain referrals from other professionals, or give a reason for potential clients to contact you. Whatever your goal, keep it in mind as you construct your email marketing plan. To achieve several goals, you may need to launch different campaigns: one for prospective clients, one for past clients, and one for professional relationships and colleagues.
Find Your Target Audience
Once you have a goal in mind, combine it with your ideal target audience. If you do not match the right email to your ideal audience, whoever receives your messages may simply unsubscribe or file them under spam. However, when you have a goal in mind and match it with a strategic pool, you can get results. Targeted emails can turn up 18 times more profitable responses than general emails sent to a general audience, so start compiling a list of email recipients, including recent clients, website visitors, business associates and social media contacts.
Choose Your Email Provider
Choosing an email marketing provider will streamline the process, so pick one with a stellar reputation. Companies like ConvertKit can send out messages to thousands of contacts. Other top companies for law firm email marketing include:
ConvertKit <—my preference!
MailChimp
MailGet
GetVero
Campayn
MPZmail
Pure360
Groupmail
TargetHero
Sendloop
Vision6
Emailit
Successful Email Marketing for Law Firms
Consider these tips to optimize your email marketing plan:
Stay Concise
Since most people spend under one minute browsing an email newsletter, skip any preliminary chatter and get right to the point. Be kind to your readers and keep their attention by creating short blocks of text, alternated with occasional images. Use short sentences and steer clear of legal jargon. If you have more to say, leave a link to a longer article located on your law firm website.
Focus Your Message
Since you are directing marketing emails to your target audience, focus on their needs directly. If you are sending to colleagues, focus on your request for referrals, or announce an update in your law firm. If directing messages to prospective clients, you can illustrate legal how-tos or discuss regional issues.
Be Mobile-Friendly
Since 25-75% of your audience will be reading your emails on their mobile phones, confirm that your text and images are optimized for mobile use. Use a responsive template which is legible on any kind of device.
Provide Value
We all get more emails that we can read thoroughly, so make yours count. Try to create valuable content that will answer common questions, give helpful advice, or discuss current events. Simplifying legal concepts for people will help individuals understand their own legal issues better, and you will establish your firm as a helpful and credible source in the process.
Maintain Best Practices
As in everything else, your law firm must uphold best practices in email marketing. Always allow your recipients to opt-out of emails and place your law firm address on every email you send. Avoid words and phrases that may trigger spam filters, such as free, eliminate debt, discount, “why pay more?”, or cards accepted.
Include a Call to Action
The overall point of email marketing is to connect personally, so make sure every email contains a specific call to action and direct them to the next step. Your call to action could be a link to visiting your law firm’s website or calling your office.
Check Your Results
After launching your email marketing plan, be sure to check your results and adjust your strategy accordingly. Some marketing systems, such as ConvertKit, gives you basic analytics. Numbers matter, because they tell you if you are reaching your goals, or if you need to tweak your strategy. Two important metrics to measure are the open rate (the number of recipients who actually opened the email) and the click-through rate (the percentage of those individuals who opened the email and also clicked a link within the message).
Consider Integrating
Because both can be powerful tools, consider integrating email and social media in your marketing plan. They both have strengths, and they can be united to drive awareness, build your brand, and expand your reach. You can combine these two powerful forces by encouraging followers to subscribe to emails and including social media excerpts in your emails.
Tips for Effective Email Marketing for Law Firms
According to WebsiteBuilder.org, email marketing is 40 times better than social media marketing at helping companies gain customers. This highlights the importance of effective marketing for all businesses, including law firms. To gain a better understanding of email marketing for law firms and how to do it more effectively, consider the tips below.
Personalize Your Emails
Many businesses forget to personalize their marketing emails, leading to bland, untailored emails that the recipients rarely read. To send effective law firm marketing emails, make sure you personalize them to your target audience. Doing this gives you a better chance of capturing the attention of potential clients, as they feel more valued. You can do this by including the recipient’s name in the first line of the email, in certain areas of the email’s main body, and the email’s subject line. Alongside this, consider sending the law firm marketing emails from a personalized email address, as recipients often read these more than emails from a more corporate-like email address, such as info@lawfirm.com. For instance, you may want to include your name in the first half of the email address.
Write an Attention-Grabbing Subject Line
Perhaps the most crucial part of a marketing email is the subject line. It is vital that you get this right, as it is the first thing that your potential clients see, and it might be your only chance to convince prospective clients to open and read the email. To do this, ensure the subject line demonstrates to the reader that you value them and that reading the email can be beneficial.
A good way of doing this involves immediately presenting the possible client with an opportunity to save money or gain helpful information. You can also use the subject line to advertise a new legal service that may interest the recipient. Just make sure when doing so that you do not mislead the client and use clear, straightforward terminology. Many online tools can tell you whether your subject line is likely to enter the recipient’s spam folder, so it is a good idea to use these to improve your chances of the recipient reading the email.
Be Mindful of Links
Another helpful email marketing for law firms tip involves carefully considering the number of links you use in an email. While including links in these emails is important, having too many may result in some email filters treating your marketing emails as spam. In your marketing email, include a link in your call to action, a link to allow the recipient to unsubscribe to the mailing list, and a link to view the email in a web browser. You may also include links to your social media channels and website but think carefully about adding any others.
Respond to Replies Immediately
If someone responds to your law firm marketing email, make sure you reply as quickly as possible. This gives you a better chance of converting the lead into an actual client. Try to reply ideally within an hour and definitely within the same day.
How Law Quill Can Help You With Your Email Marketing
Email marketing for law firms is a robust way to communicate with clients and promote your business goals. When you start with a solid plan, email marketing can deliver cost-effective, quality results for law firms of any size and service. Start by considering your goals and examining your ideal audience. Find a service and method that works for you and then explore the results and alter your plan until you start seeing positive results.
If you need content for your emails, consider starting with your blog posts on your website. Having a weekly blog post on your law firm’s website allows you to have something to visit with your email list about every week. We would welcome the opportunity to visit with you for free regarding your law firm website’s content, and how we can take these tasks off your plate! Schedule a free visit with us by scheduling a quick phone or zoom call at your convenience on our calendar today. You can also email us at support@lawquill.com.
