Email Marketing has become a powerful tool for most businesses, and law firms are no exception. According to research, the average ROI for email marketing is around $42 per $1 invested. This makes email marketing the highest ROI-generating tactic in the digital marketing space. In this post, we will show you why email marketing is vital for advertising your law practice and how you can use it to attract more clients.
Why Should You Consider Email Marketing?
Generally, most businesses and law firms use emails to reach out to clients. However, email marketing is a structured technique that allows you to connect both existing and prospective clients with automated email sequences. A series of well-structured emails containing informative and engaging content to your target audience is a powerful client acquisition strategy. Many things make email marketing effective. For one, it helps you build and maintain leads and subsequently build your law business. For another, it helps improve customer experience as you’ll be the first person they’ll reach out to if they need your services since you have proven yourself as an authority in your area of expertise.
Here are the elements of an effective email marketing strategy:
- A top-quality email list earns you willing prospects who want to learn from you.
- Top-quality content allows you to keep your audience informed and motivated to act.
- Ideal software allows you to automate these emails at the right time, monitor your progress, and track your ROI.
So Which Email Strategies Can You Use to Build Your Email List?
You can’t market your law firm without an email list in place. Therefore, the first step is to create an email list by providing free content or lead magnets to obtain contact details. Lead magnets enable you to demonstrate your expertise and prove that you are an authority in your niche, allowing you to win over your target audience by capturing their contact info. However, before you avail of this content, they must sign up to give you access to their contact details. These questions should inform your decision when creating lead magnets:
- Which info is my target audience looking for?
- How can I answer their burning questions?
- How do I provide short, informative, and engaging content?
These questions will enable you to provide your target audience with something unique and helpful. It helps you focus on the audience’s needs and concerns, not your objectives. Examples of lead magnets to use include but are not limited to:
- eBooks: You can provide informative legal resources via an eBook.
- Guides: Can be about anything, a guide to divorce proceedings, how to get through a trial, etc.
- Downloadable Worksheets: these could include checklists, surveys, etc.
- White papers: an in-depth report on any legal topic.
- Subscribe to our newsletter: The best of them all. Always include this button on your website to build a robust email list.
These are but a few examples of building your subscriber list with locked content or easy-to-download helpful resources. Each of these lead magnets must be designed with your specific target audience in mind. Also, remember that not everyone on your email list will take action, let alone pay for your legal services.
Your target audience is precisely those who are looking for the kind of services you offer and are looking for relevant information to make informed decisions. They are in the researching stage before contacting a lawyer. The lawyer they’ll reach out to when they need a specific service has consistently proved to be an industry expert, knowledgeable in their area of expertise, and definitely has the client’s best interest in mind. That lawyer should be you.
Creating Engaging Email Content for Your Email Marketing
With everything in place, your next step is creating unique and informative content for your target audience. These emails, also called newsletters, may be sent on a daily or weekly, or even fortnightly. While you are free to choose your preferred frequency, consistency should be essential. Here are a few strategies for achieving this:
Restructure Top Performing Blogs
You may have some previous blog posts that received considerable traffic. Summarize the blog, highlighting the essential points, then link it back to the original piece and invite readers to learn more.
Answer FAQs
Think of the questions clients tend to ask often. Purpose to answer as many of these questions as possible. This way, you not only engage and build a rapport with clients, but it sets you apart as an authority in your industry and helps you build your customer relations.
Support Community Events
As a legal expert, you are a respected member of your local community. Sponsor local events occasionally and feature them in your emails.
Provide Info on Legal Trends
Emerging legal trends, new regulations, and other issues that affect your target audience need to be highlighted. Include your expert opinion to express your support, concern, or recommendations.
Feature Your Firm’s Recent Happenings
Your readers are curious to know more about your law firm apart from the legal stuff. They’d be interested to see the goings-on at your firm and the behind-the-scenes. Find relevant off-the-record newsworthy topics to share with your readers. For example, introduce a new partner, highlight that award you won, share that news feature in the dailies, etc.
Share Industry-related News
Depending on your area of specialization, be a resource center for industry news. Keep your readers up to date with the current happenings in your specific industry, such as new legislation or regulations, etc.
Incorporate Images and/or Video in Your Newsletter
Your readers are naturally visual creatures. We all love an informative piece with visually appealing images or better yet video. Using relevant images and/or video that add value to your message not only makes the content easy to read but also keeps the readers hooked to it.
Make Your Content Mobile Friendly
Most people use smartphones instead of desktops, and the chances are that your readers will be reading your newsletters on their mobile devices. Therefore, you want to optimize each campaign for mobile devices.
Email Marketing Software for Law Firms
Using the right email marketing strategy to market your law firm is one of the many steps. Another essential step is working with reliable email marketing software, especially those designed for law firms. This will not only make the process less tedious but will be more effective and efficient in the long run. Furthermore, you need a separate professional email account for your email campaign; otherwise, you risk being blacklisted if you use your personal account. The ideal email marketing software will help maintain a list of email contacts, send essential emails, measure success, automate emails, track results, etc. Examples of such software you can use include;
- AWeber
- Mailchimp
- Constant Contact
- Campaign Monitor
- Hubspot
Conclusion
The above tips are an excellent strategy for any growth-focused law firm seeking to monetize its email marketing campaigns. It is a smart way to boost your law practice. Email marketing helps you reach out to existing and prospective clients, build a strong relationship, and maintain a community of loyal supporters. You can create this effective client acquisition strategy, or you can outsource the services to a reliable email marketing partner like LawBillity to save time. Once fully established, the system will automatically do everything for you even if you are not around. This makes email marketing a cost-effective approach to building your law firm. Another approach is to try our LawBillity time and billing software free for 14-days and see how it will help you improve productivity and profitability!
