Many people might have not realized the power of email marketing. In our generation today, people are always on their phones and computers, and having an email address is essential for both work and personal reasons. Hence, marketing through sending emails have become widely popular, and it is considered to be highly effective for businesses and entities.
Law firms have slowly transitioned to online marketing, most especially email marketing. However, not all law firms and lawyers realize the benefits of it. Most legal offices still rely on referrals and word of mouth. With that, they need to realize that email marketing is the mix of online and personal.
In this article, you will learn how email marketing is effective and efficient for law firms and lawyers. You will also discover proven and tested email marketing strategies that are effective in the legal industry. Let’s get started.
Why should law firms use email marketing?
There are tons of benefits and advantages that law firms can reap from email marketing. Instead of using the traditional way of marketing, such as referrals, going online is more efficient and convenient.
When clients, both old and potential, need to ask something from a law firm, the easiest and best way to reach them is through email. However, that is not how email marketing entirely works. It is a type of strategy where law firms and lawyers can connect to both existing and new clients through automated email.
When a firm tries to connect to a client about a certain service they offer, they can simply make a template email and send it all at once to all of their clients and prospects. This way, they get to save more time and money, instead of contacting people one by one.
Making an automated email is easy, and it should all be well-written enough to provide important information that clients and prospects need to know about the firm. All emails used for email marketing should be informative, engaging, and educational to whoever they intend to send it to. By this, they can reach the right people all at the right time with no hassle.
How is email marketing effective for law firms?
Email marketing is effective on many levels. Here are just some reasons why it is a marketing strategy law firms should invest in:
An advantage for business development.
Through email marketing, you get to offer and introduce the services your firm offers to clients. The emails will be the way for you to reach out and get leads. When clients ask you about the services you offer, business will start from there.
However, for law firms, not many of them in the market have a stable lead system. Most law firms lack to follow up with their prospects and clients. Hence, the sales funnel opportunity that they get from email marketing is not used to its maximum capacity.
It is important for law firms to realize that in order for them to get more clients and prospects is by engaging and building a connection between them and their people. Email marketing ensures that you get the most relevant leads that can help you stay in business.
Customer experience.
When clients and prospects receive emails from the business, they tend to feel appreciated and valued. Email marketing is not only about sending automated emails to all of the business’ clients, but it is also a way for businesses to keep in touch with them.
As for law firms, email marketing is indeed an advantage and a great help for them to stay in touch with their clients. Whether their clients are old or new, sending them emails from time to time about a certain service offer from the firm will make them think they are remembered. And it is a huge point in customer experience.
Encourages loyalty.
Sending an automated email that shows your firm’s appreciation towards your client is a huge score to ace when you’re aiming for customer loyalty. A simple “thank you” email after they scheduled a meeting with your firm will encourage them loyalty.
One of the reasons why law firms fail to have loyal clients is because they tend to communicate poorly with them. Put a little effort and keep in touch with your clients and prospects from time to time. Design your automated emails personally so your clients will not feel less valued.
What are the three key elements of email marketing?
There are three key elements that law firms should know about email marketing. Here are those three:
1. Email list. This email marketing element focuses more on your prospect list. Make sure your email list consists of highly-potential clients, and they should be willing to hear from you from time to time.
2. Content. When making your automated emails, it is a must that you should be able to address the services you offer to your recipients. Engage in a high-quality and well-written email, and make sure your statement will make them email you back. You can always say “Get in touch?” or “Schedule a free consultation today” at the end of your message to encourage them to contact you.
3. Software. This element is indeed the most important one among the three. When it comes to email marketing, software is necessary, or else sending out emails will be hard without it. It is essential for law firms to find a reliable software that will help them send their emails to the right audience. At the same time, the software will also help you stay on track with your ROI and success rates.
Email Marketing tips for law firms
If your law firm has just started to market your services online and you chose email marketing, your first few tries can be tough to handle. However, here are some tips for law firms to follow when starting with email marketing.
Start with a goal.
When it comes to email marketing, the most mistakes people tend to make is they don’t have a clear plan or goal of what they want to happen. A strategic plan is essential when you decide to do email marketing. It serves as the backbone of the marketing strategy, and without it, you don’t have a clear path to go.
Law firms and lawyers who engage in email marketing tend to throw every single contact and prospect they can into their email lists. As a law firm, you need to ensure that the updates and emails that you send to your email lists are relevant for them and are sent at the right time.
If you keep sending emails irrelevant to your email lists, success rates are most likely to be low. Hence, when starting an email marketing campaign, you need to have a goal in mind for you to achieve. Or else, everything that you paid for—the stress, money, and time—will all go down the drain.
The best tip to follow when making a strategic goal for your firm’s email marketing campaign is to arrange your email lists. You need to divide and arrange your contacts whether they are old, new, for professional purposes, and more.
It is important for law firms or any businesses that engage in email marketing to arrange their contacts and the email they send in its proper places. If a new client receives an email that is relevant only for old clients, the email won’t do anything in your ROI, since you sent it to a new one. With a proper email segment, it will be easier for you to stay organized.
Your email content should be valuable.
A person who has an email and uses it regularly tends to receive tons of email on a daily basis. With that, you need to make sure that your email’s content is valuable enough to stand out from their inboxes. Your main goal for email marketing should always be to make content that your email list recipients will want to read.
It might be simple to think that writing an email with good content is easy, but it is actually the hardest part in email marketing. As a law firm, you need to maximize the opportunity you can get leads and clients through your emails by making the content interesting and relevant to the one who receives it.
Provide as much value in your content for your readers as much as possible. Here are some ways you can do so:
- Answer common questions and inquiries. There are questions where some readers have in common. For law firms, the most common questions would be “how can I book an appointment” or “how much should it cost for me to process a divorce?” Stuff like that should be addressed immediately in your emails, whether it is an answer to their inquiries or just an update.
- Share your opinion on current events in the industry. You can share your perspective in a current case or event that is related to legal matters. Your legal analysis will also leave an impression to your readers that you are knowledgeable about the field, and will make them think you are a professional. A good example would be if your expertise is about real estate planning, you can share some thoughts about how taxes work and what tax policies are most likely to happen to your client’s property.
- Make it simple yet relevant. When it comes to talking about law topics, everything seems to get more complicated as you analyze it. When doing email marketing, it is your job to make it easier for your readers to understand terms, situations, and cases in your email content. Break down complex concepts into smaller ones and present them in a simple and understandable way.
Your emails should focus on one thing.
In email marketing, it is essential to keep your emails concise and focused. People are always busy in their own ways, and most of us have short attention spans. When we receive emails on our phones, we tend to disregard it, or just open it and not bother to read it. Thus, your emails should be kept short, but has to have all the necessary details and information.
When writing legal or law-related topics, lawyers tend to write long content. When marketing via email, law firms and lawyers should keep their email’s content short, or else your email marketing strategy will not work.
Keep your paragraphs shorts yet concise. Instead of writing an eight-paragraph email, make it down to three instead. It is also helpful to put images and links for them to check out. Avoid writing an email with merely just words. Be creative as you can when writing your emails, but make sure to not get sidetracked.
Also, another pro tip in writing emails for email marketing is linking some of your blogs or helpful websites that are relevant to the topic you are talking about. You can add some text snippets from a text. This is a great way to keep your emails short but full of information.
Measure your results.
Once you’re getting the hang of writing emails and sending it to your email lists, the next thing that you need to do is measure your results and ensure everything is working according to your strategic plan.
When measuring results, an email marketing software will be able to help you keep track of what is going on and adjust your plan according to the results. There are two important things that you need to check when you’re doing email marketing: the open rates and click through rate.
Open rate is the percentage of people you sent an email to who opened the email, while the click through rate is the percentage who opened the email and clicked the links inside the content email. Both of these numbers matter especially when you want to achieve your email marketing goals.
What email marketing strategies should law firms and lawyers keep in mind?
There are tons of ways for law firms and lawyers to market their services, and email marketing is far by the best way to do it. Since we live in a society where advanced technology is everywhere, law firms should engage themselves and transition from traditional word of mouth to sending out emails to their networks.
Sending emails with free content is another excellent way to grow your email and subscriber list. These contents can be eBooks, free guides, white papers, blogs, newsletters, and more. Such are called “lead magnets,” wherein they help draw people from your audience to click on your emails.
If you own a law firm, here are some strategies that you need to do when building your email list and constructing your email content:
eBooks
There are a lot of books you can find online that discuss law or anything about legal matters. If you have a favorite law book that you want to share to your readers and email recipient, you can send them a copy or a link to where they can get and read the said book.
Guides
Guides are essential to anyone. For law firms, they can send and share a guide to their email recipients about helpful guides in legal matters.
Cheat Sheets
Cheat sheets are mostly posted on a website’s homepage. This can be downloaded by the recipient if they find the email interesting. Cheat sheets contain items to fill in such as the recipient’s name and email address. Once people sign up for this, you now have a potential lead to add to your list of prospects.
Subscribe to our newsletter
When people subscribe to a website’s newsletter, they will receive emails from that specific website on a regular basis. Newsletters help recipients to be updated on what is happening in the industry, and provide news about law related topics.
Newsletters are also a great way to gain people in checking out your law firm. You can add a “Subscribe to our newsletter” section on your website. This way is also more effective than waiting for people to come to your law firm office for a consultation.
When creating newsletters, here are some tips you can keep in mind and apply:
- Promote your most-read blog posts from your website and mention it on your newsletter, especially if you send it to new prospects.
- Address to frequently asked questions.
- Promote and start community events that encourage engagements.
- Give advice about law related cases and topics.
- Provide news about your firm’s services and achievements, as well as law-related news.
- Use images and videos for a more amusing content.
Resource libraries.
Just like eBooks, resource libraries can also help you make your email marketing strategy successful. In drip campaigns, you will always see resource libraries at the end section.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is truly the best way to market to your clients, whether it’s new or existing. Keeping people in your network is not only essential for businesses, but law firms and lawyers as well. As a legal service provider, your aim is to keep your clients informed of necessary legal information for all their needs. This way, you will maintain a stable and continuous professional relationship with your clients, and your reputation as a law firm will strengthen.