One of the most powerful and cost-effective marketing tools at a lawyer’s disposal is one that many firms don’t often consider, Email Marketing.

When executed properly, email marketing is a highly targeted and personalised strategy for firms to remain top of people’s minds and build relationships with clients and prospects.

5 reasons why law firms should use Email Marketing

  1. It is Cost-effective – the cost of email marketing can be much lower than any other form of marketing
  2. Top of mind advertising – It gives you the opportunity to speak directly to your customers in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them
  3. Referrals – is sent from an existing customer to a friend or family member. It’s personal, welcomed, and best of all, highly effective in growing your customer base
  4. Its traffic that you control – reach the right people at the right time by controlling and targeting who receives your email
  5. Capture leader earlier – email marketing can further qualify leads, so your sales team is not wasting time on bad leads

Creating an Email Marketing campaign

Create an email list

The first step in developing an email marketing campaign is to build an email list. This will help you define your audience, target your content towards this audience, and gain new clients. There are two ways of building a list of email recipients. Pay for a list of contacts or build it yourself. Building your own list helps you to target your audience which means a higher rate of lead conversion for your firm.

There are different ways that you can use to build your list:

  • Current Clients
  • Previous Clients
  • Those who have come to you with questions or for consultations
  • LinkedIn Contacts
  • Social media contacts

However, having the resources from which to build your list is only part of the challenge. The real goal here is to make every email that you send out count. Every time you send out an email you need to ask yourself -how likely are each of these people to open an email from you? This should be a major factor when deciding to add a contact to your email list.

Think about the subject

The subject line of your email is very important. It will determine whether the recipient decides whether it’s worth a read. If the subject line isn’t attention-grabbing, the rest of the newsletter essentially no longer matters. Focus on the best service offering which features in your email or choose the subject of the blog post which is highly topical that week.

Creating strategic content

Now that you have people to whom you can send your emails, it is time to consider the content that will go inside them. The key is to choose content that will be meaningful and valuable to each person who opens it. You want people who receive your emails to look forward to reading them, so your content needs to be relevant, engaging and not give off an air of being a sales pitch.

Any content that is meaningful and provides value to your audience is appropriate to use. A few ideas include:

  • Your Law firm’s newsletter
  • Articles related to a specific need your clients’ needs to be addressed
  • Snippets of free legal advice
  • Relevant video content
  • Special event notification
  • Any content that solicits interaction between you and your client, for example, an invitation to meet and greet, free consultations or free answers to legal questions via email

Picking your email provider

You have many options available when choosing an email provider.

Mailchimp, if you aren’t using it already, is one worth checking out. They offer a no-charge service for recipient lists that are under 2,000 subscribers. Mailchimp is also accessible across multiple devices, so you won’t be chained down at the office when you work on your email campaign.

Creating your first campaign

Once you set up your free Mailchimp account and import your list of recipients, you’ll need to create your email campaign.

Click on Campaigns and then select ‘Regular Campaign’ since you’ll be sending emails to the same group of recipients on a regular basis. From there, MailChimp will walk you through the rest of the setup process quite easily.

Selecting a template

After you’ve set up your initial email campaign, you’ll need to choose a template for your message. The template you select will determine how your email ultimately looks so don’t take this decision lightly.

Certain components are important because they build your audience’s trust in you and your law firm, which is essential to building and generating leads that turn into clients.

Your email should include these elements:

  • A headshot of employee – People are less likely to contact you for legal advice if they don’t have a face to associate with your law firm
  • Call for a free consultation or another prompt that makes it easy for them to contact you
  • Quality content-Make sure that it has value for your targeted audience
  • If it is an introductory email, include a list of legal specialities and acknowledgements

Writing the body of the email

The next step to getting your email marketing campaign underway is to write the email you want to send based on the content you chose earlier in the process. Write your email so that it’s digestible and understandable for people who don’t work in the legal profession.

Remember that the goal of your content is to get new clients and generate referrals that will produce new leads.

Scheduling your email campaign

You want your recipients to receive your email at a time of day when they’ll be most likely to have time to read it. Think about how your ideal clients spend their day and identify the time when they’ll be able to invest a few minutes into reading your message.

Being consistent

You don’t want to be a one-hit-wonder with your email campaign. For your overall email campaign to succeed, you need to make sure every message you send is consistently valuable and relevant to your audience.

 

How FireTap Marketing can help

FireTap Marketing has a department dedicated to working with law firms. We have developed our expertise in the legal industry, through building a team of marketing experts who have worked within or for the legal sector.

We understand how law firms operate, the terms you use, your target market and the delivery of legal services. As a result, we get up to speed fast and work for and alongside you to develop successful marketing and advertising strategies to benefit your firm.

If you have any questions regarding Email marketing for your law firm or business then be sure to speak to our digital marketing experts on 020 3911 9715, hello@firetap.co.uk or make an online enquiry here.