Consumers are inundated with a wave of marketing messages every day, and it usually takes several online interactions with a law firm before a client decides that they want to work with you. Email marketing is a great way to engage your target audience and keep your referral partners up to date.
Here are seven steps to creating a successful email marketing campaign:
Segment Your Target Audience
Different groups of people will have varying levels of previous exposure to your law firm, so each group should receive emails that are unique to their needs. You should create separate lists for previous clients, prospects, referral partners, and any other relevant groups in your network. Once someone has interacted with you a few times, you can create another list for potential clients who are more engaged. Adding a form on your website for people to sign up for your newsletter will help you consistently add people to your mailing list.
Design an Effective Template
Your email template should be clean and easy to navigate, and most importantly, it should be optimized for mobile devices. Templates should incorporate your law firm’s branding, including brand colors, logos, fonts and other design elements so that users easily recognize your firm’s content.
Create Quality Content
Your law firm may not offer sales or deals like traditional retailers, but your content can still be valuable to your audiences. The content in each group’s emails will need to target their position in the process of becoming a client or hiring you for another case. You can include links to informative blog posts, share a case study, answer frequently asked questions, share relevant firm or community news or provide insight into changes in the law. By giving your audience answers proactively, they are more likely to trust your research and expertise.
Call the Audience to Action
You should include a button in your email with a link to a relevant page on your website where the reader can get more information or take the next step to engage with your firm. Calls to action (CTAs) should be unique in each of your emails. Rather than simply having a button that reads, “Learn more,” you can create a message that makes users curious about the page that you want to lead them to on your website. These CTAs could read, “Defend Your Custody Rights” or “Develop a Strategy for Your Case.”
Engage Readers with Text and Visuals
Subject lines are incredibly important in email marketing because this short line can determine whether or not your audience members open the email. The shorter the subject line, the better — you only have six to ten words to catch someone’s attention. Once someone opens the email, you should continue to keep them engaged with the email’s content by using creative formatting with visuals (photos, videos and infographics) that draw readers into the content.
Make it Personal
You can increase brand awareness and trust by including personal touches in your emails. You can start by including a recipient’s name at the beginning of the email and ending with a signature from an individual lawyer rather than the entire firm. By following these practices, your audience will see your level of care and attention to detail.
Avoid Ending Up in Spam
You can avoid ending up in a user’s spam folder by avoiding buzzwords like “free” or “affordable,” as these words are often included in spam emails. If you created quality content with the strategies mentioned above, this should not be an issue. Another way to avoid this problem is to send each person a confirmation email when they sign up for your newsletter. This confirmation helps to establish your email address as a trusted sender in the recipient’s email.
Now you are ready to create effective emails that will re-engage former clients and assure prospective clients that you can handle their case. If you need help creating an email marketing strategy for your law firm, we can help.
According to Hubspot, legal and government industries have the fourth-highest email open rate of 28 different industries.
CONTACT US to develop an email drip campaign that drives engagement, website traffic, and leads for your firm.
