In the modern world, there are still law firms that have a very distrustful attitude toward email marketing; however, the figures tell us that this strategy is one of the most effective. So, for every dollar invested in email marketing, the company can get more than $35; that is, it is not surprising that the marketing management of four out of five companies considers email marketing as the main way to attract a new audience.
The advantage of email marketing is that, over the years of its use, theorists have studied in great detail the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy. This allows us to use it as efficiently as possible and without money losses. It is worth mentioning that email marketing is not limited to just communicating with the client. This tool is designed to motivate customers to take certain actions, increase awareness of the target audience about the company’s services and enhance the degree of loyalty.
In this review, we will talk about the reasons for the effectiveness of email marketing, present helpful tips, and discuss the top five best strategies for developing each component of email marketing in your law firm.
Effectiveness of Email Marketing
Several strategies work for some firms but are not suitable for others. The uniqueness of email marketing is that this method is used by both small companies that have just opened and sharks in this industry who have been on the market for many years.
Proper operation of email marketing can bring you the following advantages:
- Upgrade brand awareness. Surprisingly, many firms cannot succeed because they simply miss potential customers who may not even know about the existence of the company. To prevent this, it is necessary to introduce email marketing on an ongoing basis so that future clients of your law firm are always aware of the services provided and the opportunities that you can give them.
- Increase communication level. Banal phrases of gratitude and wishes can set customers up in a positive way; they will remember your company and will most likely turn to you again because successful interaction and increasing the level of loyalty are based on respect that you can show through email marketing.
- Building a reputation. In emails, you can show your legal knowledge and ingenuity, which will be appreciated by the client. Moreover, with the help of email marketing, you can effectively notify about upcoming events that your company arranges, provide information about the latest news and carry out an HR campaign.
- Formation of the working staff. Continuing the last thought, it is important to say that young lawyers who have recently graduated from university are constantly looking for work, so they are very actively monitoring social networks in the hope of finding a suitable vacancy. Your email message can instantly attract the attention of a young talent who can soon become a good employee for your company.
Overall, as we can see, the competent use of email marketing can give an impetus to the development of your law firm in many areas; it remains only to determine how to build a strategy.
The First Steps Of Email Marketing Development
Many people are wondering where to start for email marketing to work as efficiently as possible. The answer is quite simple; it is necessary to observe three basic principles. First, create an email list that will include only those people who will be potentially interested in legal services. It is not necessary to put everyone on the mailing list, as this can irritate people. Secondly, think through the content. The text that you publish should have an instant effect and attract the attention of customers so that they do not close it after reading the first couple of sentences. In this situation, you may need the services of a professional content maker.
Finally, it is very important to work with technologically advanced software which will not fail at the most crucial moment. Now that you are familiar with the basics, we can proceed to the analysis of each of these components of email marketing.
Email Marketing Strategies
To make your strategy as efficient as possible, you need to work through each of the three steps presented above. In this regard, we have prepared for you five of the most popular and proven practices for the development of email lists and content, as well as we will present platforms to which we recommend paying attention.
Top-5 Building Email List Methods
To receive a new subscriber for your newsletter, you need to use ingenuity and a creative approach to arouse the interest of a potential client.
In this aspect, there are many different practices, but we have chosen the following:
- Invitation to subscribe. A very straightforward, however effective way. In this case, the most important thing is to make an invitation in such a way that the client wants to click on the “subscribe” button.
- Presentations and webinars. All clients like to observe the application of legal knowledge in practice; therefore, to attract the attention of the audience and contribute to their staying with you, you can invite people to a webinar or presentation where you will talk about relevant things, e.g., the legal aspects of real estate registration.
- Access to resources. An analog of this method has proven itself well in communication with students when the university provides access to closed electronic libraries in exchange for subscribing to their newsletter. In the case of law firms, you can act the same way.
- Subscription to legal online books. A free subscription is a cherished wish for any person, and when a subscription allows you to receive useful information, it doubles its demand.
- Tips sheets. Before the client decides to subscribe to your newsletter, you can provide him or her with a useful service, thereby showing that customer orientation is your priority. One of the ways may be to send a guide, for example, for registration of insurance or documents for house owner property.
After you pick one of the strategies, you need to work out the design of the form, and here we recommend not to oversaturate the page but to provide only specific information so that in a couple of seconds, the client understands what he can get in return for a subscription. In addition, we recommend alternating methods every few months to stay relevant.
Top-5 Creating Content Practices
Constant notifications via email are a great way to attract the attention of the audience; however, for further visits to your law firm’s website, it is necessary to generate exciting content that will be of interest to the three groups, namely, existing clients, prospects, and colleagues.
To achieve this, we offer the following options:
- Insert links to popular articles. When releasing a new blog post, always add links to your materials that have the most views and readings. This way, you will encourage people to consume your content.
- Keep in touch with the audience. Readers always ask questions, and, at the same time, they want to receive answers from qualified specialists. In addition, practicing lawyers are always aware of what questions people are most often interested in. In this regard, under each new article, you can place a section of frequently asked questions that will cover such issues.
- Provide information about legislative changes. Laws are constantly changing and being updated, so a working and family person simply does not have time to track this update. For readers to remain active participants in your blog, you can create a separate column in which all information about the changes that have been made to the legislation will be published, and we assure you that this section will become one of the most popular.
- Insiders about your company. People always want to know what is going on behind the scenes of a lawyer’s work, and you can provide them with such content. Publishing interviews with your employees, videos about the life of the company, or news about changes within the legal structure will help attract the attention of readers of your blog.
- Share the content. There are many branches of the legal field, for example, medical, educational, or sports legal aspects. So that a person does not get lost in the flow of news on different topics, you can create sections for each theme. At the head of the list will be the legal field in which your company specializes, and after it, you can place all the other blocks.
Of course, do not forget to take care of people and issue congratulations on the eve of big holidays, for example, Christmas or Thanksgiving. Such a simple gesture can set the reader up in a positive way, and he will study other material that you have previously published.
Best Email Marketing Software
You can analyze the list of the target audience and come up with interesting content, but you will not be able to implement anything if you do not have technological software, which is an integral part of email marketing. There is a huge amount of software used by global law firms; however, we will single out two of the most reliable, namely, AWeber and Constant Contact. These programs have an intuitive interface and will not let you down at the most crucial moment.
Email Marketing Useful Tips
We have introduced you to the basics of email marketing; however, like any business, email marketing has certain features that not all law firms know about.
To make email marketing even more effective, we have prepared a list of valuable tips which you can apply in practice:
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Adapt your content and email newsletters to smartphones
Most people use computers for work and phones for reading the news and watching videos on the subway or train. Accordingly, your website or legal blog should be optimized for a smartphone so that readers can consume content not only from laptops.
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Don’t oversaturate the blog with content
If you publish three or four news stories every day, then people will not have time to consume content, and this will lead to the fact that, sooner or later, they will unsubscribe. The main point of your blog is to bring interesting material that readers will appreciate not for the volume but for its usefulness.
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Add hot buttons
The main goal of any marketing is to encourage the client to take some action. In this regard, in one of the parts of the text, we recommend placing buttons with a call to action, and then people will know what to do after they finish reading.
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Leave contact information
At the end of each news, provide contact information on all social networks and resources in which your law firm is represented. Also, if the material is dedicated to some person, for example, a real estate lawyer, then you can attach information about the contacts of this employee. This will help keep you in touch with your old and new clients.
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Add pictures, graphs, and charts
A solid text without illustrations will not be interesting to the reader. You have to saturate it with something more fascinating than black letters on a white background. Insert photos of your office, and employees, visualized data about the success of a law firm, and much more. Such a solution will contribute to a simpler and more fascinating understanding of the content.
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Give preference to a personalized approach
Modern programs have the function of personalizing emails when in each letter, you address and thank a particular person. This simple method turns out to be very effective because people see that you are not sending a letter to the general mass, but personally to this client.
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Generate the unsubscribe function
The main goal of email marketing is to expand the customer base, but in this case, it is also important not to become a source of spam for a potential client. You can not start keeping people on your blog, so you need to add the unsubscribe option, and then readers will see that they have freedom of choice and that you are trying to make their life more convenient. The essence of this option is that if it does not exist, then people will most likely look for ways to unsubscribe, and if you enable it, then with a high probability they will not use it. This is a paradox that will play into your hands.
All in all, in the era of widespread use of social networks, email marketing is one of the most effective and affordable ways to attract new customers and increase the loyalty of regular ones. Competent use of email marketing will help you establish a strong relationship with people, improve communication and promote legal services provided by your company.