Introduction
Email marketing for lawyers is an online marketing approach. It is designed to help businesses keep in touch with a large network of people. Furthermore, it is considered to be one of the most effective types of digital marketing to grow a law business. Moreover, it is believed to be more effective at reaching your intended audience than social media channels.
In fact, when it comes to turning prospects into clients, email is almost 40x more effective than social media. Over the past few years, email messages reach their destination inbox 90% of the time in comparison to Facebook messages. If done correctly, email marketing for lawyers can be a key part of your overall digital marketing efforts.
Successful content marketing strategy and strategically executed email marketing campaigns are key tactics to reaching your target audience. When done correctly, email marketing for lawyers shouldn’t take a lot of time or resources. In addition, it typically brings in a high return on investment. A simple marketing strategy should inform the public know about your services and give you an edge over the competition.
Successful email marketing is effective on multiple levels:
- Business development – an important part of creating a “sales funnel” triggered by following up with potential clients.
- Customer experience – improving the experience of potential or existing customers with relevant updates, news and newsletters.
- Increasing customer “touchpoints” – in order to encourage brand loyalty. For example, sending an automated “thank you” email for inquiries or a “meeting reminder” email.
Getting started with email marketing requires three basic elements:
- Email List. A high-quality email list will ensure that you have willing prospects who want to hear from you.
- High-quality content will engage your target audience effectively to take the action you want.
- The right software allows you to get your information out automatically on time to the right audience. Moreover, to track your success rates and ROI.
Here are top email marketing tips for lawyers to help your next email campaign succeed.
1. Define your strategy
Not having a strategic plan will highly unlikely achieve results. As a result, the content of your emails will be less focused and less interesting to your readers. Your audience will gradually lose interest and you won’t achieve your goals.
Therefore, start an email marketing campaign with a very specific goal in mind. For example, keep in touch with past clients or generate referrals from other attorneys. Furthermore, convert prospects into clients etc.
In the stated case, it’s best to have multiple email marketing campaigns running simultaneously. Moreover, segment your email lists for current clients, potential clients for professional relationships etc. To achieve relevance, segment your list into a group of smaller lists based on clients and their needs and interests or locations.
Be clear about what you are hoping to accomplish with each email marketing strategy from the start. Afterward, keep this goal in the back of your mind when sending out emails. Finally, include a relevant call-to-action in every email that will help you achieve your goal.
Your call to action should be distinctive, clear and easy to use. The real purpose of your email is to elicit a response. Therefore, include the “Contact Us” or “Find Out More” button in your emails. If the button leads to an online form, keep that form short and easy to complete.
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2. Provide valuable content
In short, your email content should do one or more of the following:
- Promote your firm’s brand
- Showcase your specialized services
- Keep you at the top of your clients’ minds
- Show that you are thinking about their needs
- Make an offer that clients will find enticing
Your goal with any email marketing strategy should always be to create content that people actually want to read. Especially knowing that the average email open rate for the legal industry is estimated to be only 22.49%.
The best approach is to focus on providing as much value to your email recipients as possible. This can be done through nurture email campaigns. The idea behind it is that it nurtures your relationship with a potential client. In your case, you will send a series of law firm or legal-related email newsletters to your audience.
In contrast, nurture campaigns provide consistent value to the readers and solve their problems. The client may not buy your legal service right away. However, this will result in establishing you as an authority. And when he decides to go ahead with the buying decision, you will be on top of his mind.
Here are a few ways to implement nurture campaigns:
- Answer common questions
Provide basic answers to these common questions. For example, if you are a DUI defense attorney, answer to “What happens to my driver’s license if I get a DUI?’’
- Share your perspective on relevant current events
Share some legal analysis about current events which may be relevant to your clients. That way you will demonstrate your knowledge and position yourself at the forefront of your industry. If you run an estate planning law firm, explain how changes happening to tax policies could affect your clients’ estate plans.
- Break down complex concepts and present them in a simple way
Help your clients understand the law process by presenting complex legal concepts in a simplified manner. As a result, you will establish credibility for yourself in the process. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, explain the process of filing and pursuing a claim.
Types of email campaigns
Email Newsletters
Deliver valuable information relevant to your practice area to clients, potential clients and referral sources. For example, educate them about changes in the law or let them know about events your firm is hosting. Email newsletters are an opportunity to subtly remind people of your expertise.
Strive to aim your newsletter at the specific needs and interests of your audience. Customize your newsletter for your list segments—especially if you have different practice areas. Build each newsletter around the links you want readers to visit. Give readers a summary, then give them a clear link to learn more, download a resource, etc.
Put important links at the beginning because mobile readers, in particular, are less likely to click links that are further down. Use images that enhance the content of your emails. However, don’t rely on images to convey key information, because some email clients may block images entirely.
Keep your message in the body of your email. Get right to the point, because on average, people spend 51 seconds with an email newsletter. Finally, use a responsive email template so it is readable on any display and make sure your emails are mobile-friendly.
Drip Campaigns
Drip campaigns are a form of email marketing automation. If done well it can help you improve the quality of your engagement with potential clients. And as a result, increase the number of clients who eventually hire you. An automated campaign requires a trigger. For example, offer a free e-book download, webinar, or something else that your potential clients would find valuable.
To get your e-book or sign up for your webinar, a visitor to your website fills out a form with their name and email address. Then you can automatically add them to the relevant segment of your list. Your email marketing software will verify their email address. Afterward, you can start your follow-up sequence by sending them the thing they requested.
After that, you should continue to follow up. For example, if someone downloads your “How to Start a Business” e-book, send a series of educational emails related to starting a business. You might give them a link to schedule an appointment with you. With a targeted drip campaign, you can increase the chance that a one-time website visitor eventually becomes a client.
Law Firm Email Marketing Template
Contact Form Confirmation Email
After someone contacts you from your website, send a confirmation email immediately. Ideally, this should be automated. The confirmation email lets potential clients know that you got their submission. Moreover, it makes it likely that they will wait for your call instead of contacting another lawyer in the meantime. In short, a confirmation email should communicate:
- Thank you for contacting us.
- We will get back to you as soon as we can.
Your confirmation email can be as simple as this:
Hi [First Name],
Thank you for getting in touch. A member of our team will give you a call shortly. We look forward to speaking with you.
Best regards,
[Your Name]Here is an example of a more targeted confirmation email:
Hello [First Name],
Thank you for getting in touch regarding your auto accident. We will get in touch with you shortly.
We know this is a very difficult time for you. You probably have a lot of questions and are trying to figure out how to get back on track after your injury. We will work with you to help get the compensation you deserve, but in the meantime, here are a few resources you might find helpful:
– Check out our lawyers’ profiles.
– Download our guide to the auto accident lawsuit process.
– See the awards our firm has received.
– We look forward to speaking with you soon.
[Your Law Firm]“Win The Client” Email
Over the next few weeks, send emails that educate, engage and encourage the potential client to get back in touch with you.
Here is a sample educational email:
Hi [First Name]:
I thought you might find this article interesting. It’s an article our firm recently published about what to do if you are injured and can’t work. [link]
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.
—[Your Name]
You should probably also send follow-ups geared towards reconnecting, like this:
Hi [First Name]:
I just wanted to reach out and follow up on our last conversation. Do you have a few minutes to talk about your matter? You can call me at [phone number] any time, or we can use email.
—[Your Name]
Reengagement campaign
To reengage with potential clients, consider an automated re-engagement campaign to remind potential clients that you are still around and available. A re-engagement campaign should start with a recent piece of great news to share. You can periodically update this email so that it is relatively current. Here’s an example:
Hi [First Name]:
I know it has been a while since we spoke last, but I wanted to share some great news with you. Our firm was recently selected as an Awesome Law Firm in family law for the year. We are honored to receive this award, and wanted to share it! Here is the full announcement: [link]
—[Your Name]
Consider sharing awards, verdicts, media appearances, committee memberships, articles published in major publications, etc. Once you reopen the dialogue, you can follow up with a casual email to check in and see if they saw your first email.
3. Keep emails concise and focused
It’s important to keep your emails short and focused. According to Constant Contact data, emails with 20 lines of text have the highest click-through rates. Therefore, keep your body content down to a maximum of 150 words. Moreover, use bullet lists to accentuate key points and keep paragraphs short.
In addition, include other media assets like photos or videos whenever possible to make the content more interesting. Furthermore, attach a link to a full article or blog post including a text snippet in the email body. This is an excellent way of keeping emails short, and it also helps drive website traffic.
4. Pick the right email marketing service
Proper marketing services need to have automation that can send personalized and targeted bulk emails. Also, it should be able to manage your contact list, segment users into groups and provide reliable analytics. At the core, email marketing software needs to:
- Maintain lists of contacts
- Have an email builder with templates you can work with
- Send emails to your audience
- Send basic automated emails
- Track performance
Standard email marketing software does just that. Here are a few commonly used examples to consider. For example, start with using Mailchimp for your email newsletter. It’s free up to 2000 contacts and has generated email designs. It’s one of the most popular email services and it also provides track leads and monitors growth.
There are also other service providers like Constant Contact, Aweber, Autopilot which have their own features as well. Therefore, consider doing your own research and decide on the one that meets your law firm’s goals.
5. Measure your results
An important step during email marketing for lawyers is measuring your results. Hence, have in mind to measure your results and adjust your plan accordingly. Most email marketing software will provide you with analytics. Consider analyzing two important metrics to measure whether or not you are achieving your goals:
- Open rate: the percentage of recipients who actually opened the email
- Click through rate: the percentage of those people who opened the email that also clicked a link inside
Open rate
The open rate is a good indicator of how compelling your subject lines and email topics are. Also, understanding where the email will reach will help in increasing the discoverability of emails. Some factors to consider would be things like spam complaints, the volume of emails, email content and so on.
Click-through rate
The click-through rate is a measure of how engaging your emails are. If readers click through, they are definitely interested in what you are writing about. Use these metrics to find out what kinds of content your audiences like to consume. Afterward, adjust your email marketing strategy accordingly.
6. Optimize emails for recipients
Just like websites, emails have to be mobile-friendly too. And according to researches, 46% of email recipients are opening emails on their mobile phones. Therefore, it’s imperative to test your emails on mobile and tablets along with the Desktop. Furthermore, consider technical limitations and best practices when it comes to email service providers. For instance, in Gmail attachments cannot exceed 25MB.
Also, it’s recommended to have a maximum of 100KB in HTML size to have easy deliverability and no display issues. In addition, mobile data is dependent on network coverage and may be slow in certain areas. Consequently, it may end up ruining the experience of mobile users when the email doesn’t show up properly.
Here are a few email service providers who have mobile-responsive email templates:
7. Grow your Email List
The most effective way to grow your subscriber list is to capture contact details in exchange for providing free content. Also called “lead magnets”. They are designed to draw your target audience in with valuable content. Furthermore, they demonstrate your expertise on a topic and provide valuable help to your target audience. All while enabling you to capture their details.
Give your prospects a reason to leave you their email address. The best way to do that is to provide a free asset that would help solve a problem for your users. As a result, it will help you build authority and trust. The free content could be a PDF, video series, or webinar in the area that you specialize in. If your expertise is real estate law, the free asset could be “Legal things to consider when buying a new house.”
When deciding what to offer, think about the following types of questions:
- What does my target audience want to know?
- What are they searching for?
- How can I help them with a problem?
- How can I provide something that is of high value?
Something of value that helps your target audience out with a problem. For example- eBooks, guides, worksheets, white papers, newsletter subscription, presentations etc.
Conclusion
Email marketing for lawyers is one of the best ways to market to people who are already in your network. For example, keep them up to date with the latest events happening at law firms. It can help you maintain strong relationships, drive repeat business from existing clients, generate more referrals etc. Consequently, email marketing for lawyers can be an effective way to motivate potential clients and referral sources to reach out.
This handy and cost-effective tool helps you reach out to your target market from any given location. There are several other benefits that your legal business can earn through email marketing for lawyers:
- It requires a low operation cost.
- Connect with people quickly and efficiently.
- Drives a higher conversion rate than other communication mediums.
- Builds credibility in the market by offering real value to the subscribers.
Accordingly, email marketing for lawyers is one of the best options for a law firm looking for clients. In many ways, it is proven to be an ideal platform for legal businesses to broadcast their message.
In addition to immediate views and actions, this marketing approach helps you build and maintain brand awareness. Hence, integrate email marketing strategies into your existing marketing approach to generate leads quickly. If you want to learn more about similar topics, we recommend reading SEO Tips for Lawyers and Law Firms.