Law Firm Marketing 101: Email Marketing

Law firm marketing is comprised of a lot of different activities.

There are a lot of different ways to reach potential clients.

One of those ways to reach potential clients is email marketing. While email marketing can be great, it’s often a daunting task for lawyers. Even if a law firm plans to outsource its marketing, understanding the basics of what email marketing is, current best practices, and some ways that lawyers can use this marketing technique is extremely beneficial.

Scratch that, its outright necessary.

Let’s be real – nothing is worse than trying to hire someone if you don’t understand the basics of what you want. So, whether you plan to keep your email marketing in-house or partner with a talented agency, this article will give you the information you need to understand the basics of email marketing.

What Is Email Marketing?

At the most basic level, email marketing is contacting your clients, colleagues, and potential clients through email. This could be with a newsletter, a “drip campaign” that provides useful information on a topic your audience wants to know about, or essentially any contact you have with your audience through email outside of providing status updates on their matters. Email marketing often entails you showcasing your knowledge to stay top-of-mind with your audience. And its a staple of law firm marketing.

Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Email Marketing Both Is and Isn’t

Remember Schrodinger’s cat?

The experiment was used to point out a problem with a particular something applied to quantum theory. The cat both was and wasn’t alive. Well, email marketing for lawyers both is and isn’t easy.

It’s easy in the sense that there’s a lot of information out there to help you get really good at it…if you have the time and inclination to do so. Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone who gets your email will bother to open it, read it, and follow through by calling your office or clicking a link. So, email marketing both is and isn’t easy. It’s easy enough to send out an email, but not necessarily easy to get someone to do what you want them to do.

For lawyers, there’s also another not so small caveat that must be addressed when it comes to email marketing (or law firm marketing in general). That is, legal ethics.

Do you know what you can and can’t do and say in your jurisdiction? Make sure you check out the website for your local bar association. Read the rules and make sure that you follow them. If you’re not entirely sure what you can and can’t do after reading the rules, look for ethics opinion articles from your state bar. When it comes to law firm marketing, it’s very important that you stay out of trouble.

Email Marketing Best Practices

Like every other aspect of law firm marketing, email marketing has its own unique set of best practices. And those best practices can change. There are some hard and fast email marketing best practices that won’t ever change.

The main one being: don’t spam.

You could use an opt-in for people who sign up for your email list to help prevent accidental spamming. Make sure you have your law firm’s physical address at the bottom of each email as well as a (working) unsubscribe button.

Here are other best practices your firm should follow on your email marketing endeavors.

1. Use a subject line that compels people to open your email

You know what gets your attention when you get an emailed newsletter. Some options include using your recipient’s first name, capitalizing on local or national news stories (where appropriate), and alluding to information that callers ask about on a regular basis. There are a lot of great fill-in-the-blank email subject templates available. Don’t try and “trick” your reader to open the email though. You may get away with it once, but you won’t forever.

2. Stay away from certain words.

There are certain words that trigger spam filters. One of those words is “free.” Depending on the email provider used, words like “affordable,” “discount,” “why pay more?,” “cards accepted,” “avoid bankruptcy,” “eliminate debt,” “eliminate bad credit,” and the likes can mean that your email goes straight into the spam filter. So, think carefully about your subject lines (and what you say on the inside).

3. Know the best time to send your emails.

There are studies available that can provide you with the best days and times to send out emails. If you’re using software like Constant Contact or MailChimp, you can set it up to send out your emails at the very best times.

4. Provide useful information.

It doesn’t take much for people to mark your emails as spam or unsubscribe. You don’t want that. You want people to look forward to what you’re sending. So, provide useful information. This likely sounds obvious, but really think about the content you send to your database. Think about the things you’re asked most often as a lawyer. How can you turn that into something that people will want to read and then that makes them want to call you to set up a consultation or refer you to a friend of theirs? Encourage recipients to forward the email to people they know if they think the information they’ve read is valuable.

5. Use images.

Images help break up the monotony of long newsletters. Even if your content is incredibly important or entertaining (as it should be), its simply hard to read long, dense paragraphs of text that look like a newspaper. Give your content room to breath.

6. Make sure your newsletters are optimized for mobile view.

Nothing will turn off a potential reader faster than opening an email newsletter only to see that it’s not optimized for a mobile device. If your reader has to pinch to zoom in our out, they likely won’t bother. Most email marketing software will handle this for you automatically, but make sure you don’t overlook this important step.

7. Clear language and short sentence structure are important.

Consider your audience, their knowledge level, and the time they have to devote to reading email. Use easy to understand language to help keep your readers from unsubscribing. Use short sentences to help readers stay focused.

8. Always use a call to action.

Your call to action could be as simple as calling your office to set up a consultation. It could be to visit your website. Whatever it is, don’t forget about it. Remember, email marketing is marketing. You want to direct the readers to the next step.

Easy to Implement Email Marketing Ideas for Lawyers

It’s likely that you’re going to go the newsletter route for your foray into email marketing. You could:

• Repurpose your most-read blog posts. Summarize the blog posts that have received the most traffic. You could even link back to the original article so that your readers can learn more.
• Answer frequently asked questions. We’ve touched on this idea a couple of times, but it bears repeating again. You could even have a column exclusively devoted to explaining certain legal concepts.
• Things going on in your community. Even if it’s not something you plan to participate in, your readers may be interested. Book fairs, health fairs, county fairs, whatever it is, your readers may open more of your emails if they know they can rely on you to get information about their community.
• Changes in the law that could affect your audience. These could be big changes or little changes. You could even host a free seminar to discuss the changes and list the seminar date, time, and location in your newsletter.
• Provide industry news. Your newsletter doesn’t have to be all about you and your law firm. Set yourself apart as an industry expert by providing curated stories related to the industry you serve. Google News, as well as law news sites, is a great tool to help you quickly find articles you can use in your newsletter.

You Don’t Have to Do It Alone

There’s a good chance that you have enough on your plate when it comes to running your law firm. This article didn’t even cover the concept known as return on investment. For email marketing, it’s what you’re getting back as a result of creating and maintaining an email marketing campaign. We also didn’t get into more complex ideas such as segmenting your email list or growing your email list. Why not? Because we know you only have so much time on your hands.

The good news is that you don’t have to take on any aspect of law firm marketing alone (and that includes email marketing). Hopefully, you understand some of the basics of email marketing and can begin the process of finding the best possible partnership to grow (and engage) your audience!