Law Firm Email Marketing 101

Did you know that 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers? If you’re not doing the same, you may be missing out on a huge opportunity to bring more business to your law firm. This blog post will explore email marketing and share best practices to help you craft an impactful strategy.

What is Email Marketing? 

Email marketing is a direct marketing tactic that uses email to communicate with existing or potential clients. In the context of a law firm, attorney email marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:  

• Providing updates about your law firm 
• Converting prospects into new clients
• Sharing valuable resources, such as blog posts and videos

Benefits of Email Marketing for Lawyers

There are many reasons for investing in law firm email marketing. Below are a few benefits of this approach: 

Increases touch points with existing and former clients

Even when you’re not actively working with your clients, you want to maintain a relationship with them. Attorney email marketing gives you a chance to touch base with people consistently. So if a client or their acquaintance needs your legal services, your law firm will stay top of mind.

Saves time and money

One of the best things about email marketing for lawyers is that it can be largely automated. For instance, you can set up an email campaign that automatically sends a welcome message to everyone who fills out a client intake form on your website. Not only does this save you time and money, but it’s also scalable as your business grows. 

Attracts new business

Email is also a great way to convert prospects into clients. By sending emails that add value and demonstrate your expertise and experience as a law firm, you’re increasing the chances that someone will seek out your services down the road. Branding your law firm through email marketing can help you establish a strong and recognizable presence in the industry. 

5 Best Practices for Your Law Firm’s Email Marketing Strategy

If you don’t currently have email marketing strategies for your law firm, the best practices below will help you get  started: 

1. Build an email list

The first thing you want to do is build a robust email list. This is essentially a database of email addresses from all your clients that have been shared with your law firm. How do you collect this information from people? Here are a few ideas: 

• Use organic or paid social media advertising to attract prospective clients.
• Have a client intake form on your website asking for contact information.
• Host webinars or in-person events where attendees share their email addresses to sign up.
• Manually collect email addresses from people you meet at networking events.

Once you have enough email addresses, you’ll want to segment them into separate lists. For example, you can have a list comprising existing clients and another specifically for prospective clients. 

2. Create automated email marketing campaigns 

It is a time saver to create automated email marketing campaigns. But before launching one, ask yourself these questions: 

• Is this adding value? Get clear on the purpose of your attorney email marketing campaign. For example, are you trying to educate people or share an update about your law firm? If you’re having a hard time verbalizing the goal of an email, then it may not be worth sending. 
• Is this going to the right audience? You also want to ensure you’re targeting the right audience with your email marketing campaign. For instance, if you’re sending a welcome email, you should omit your existing customers from the list. 
• Is this message engaging? Finally, make sure the emails you write are easy to read, concise, and well-structured. Focusing on these three elements will increase the chances that people read the messages you send.

3. Diversify your email tactics

Try to diversify the types of emails you send to improve your engagement levels. Here are a few examples of messages you can send out to your list: 

• Welcome emails 

Sending a message that introduces your law firm, lawyers, and services to new or prospective clients is a powerful way to get engagement. Studies find that more than 8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many opens and 10x as many clicks as other email types.

• Educational emails 

These messages are focused on providing value to the recipient, whether by sharing an interesting article to read, breaking down a challenging legal concept, or answering frequently asked questions. For instance, if you’re a personal injury attorney, you can share a blog post about the five things to do first in a car accident.

• Update emails

You can also present updates about your law firm. For instance, let’s say you hired a new lawyer who brings a unique specialty to your services. This would be a great time to provide an introduction. Similarly, events like moving to a new office location or hosting an informational session for new clients are reasons to reach out with an update.

4. Be thoughtful about cadence 

More frequent emails don’t necessarily lead to more engagement. If you’re unsure how many times you should be emailing people on your list, use this survey as a benchmark. According to their findings:

• 33.3% of marketers send weekly emails 
• 26.7% of marketers send emails multiple times a month
• 13.3% of marketers send emails once a month
• 13.3% of marketers send emails multiple times a week
• 13.3% of marketers send emails daily 

Notably, 63.3% of survey respondents also said that they reduce their email frequency for subscribers who are disengaged. We encourage you to start with a cadence that feels right and then see how your email marketing campaign performs. Depending on what you’re seeing, you can adjust your cadence accordingly.

5. Track performance

Create powerful email marketing ideas and strategies by tracking your performance. Specifically, most marketers pay attention to these metrics: 

• Open rates: the percentage of people who open your email.
• Click-through rates: the percentage of people who have clicked on at least one link in your email.
• Bounce rates: the percentage of people who didn’t receive your message because it was returned by the mail server.
• Unsubscribe rates: the percentage of people who have chosen to opt out of receiving your emails.

According to Mailchimp, here are the benchmarks for the legal industry: 

• Email open rate: 22%
• Click-through rate: 2.81%
• Bounce rate: 0.52%
• Unsubscribe rate: 0.22%. 

It’s also essential to use an email marketing platform that can provide you with the analytics you need. Thankfully, there are tons of options out there to choose from, such as Mailchimp, SendGrid, and Sendinblue. Select the product that works best for your company’s needs. 

Use These Email Marketing Strategies for Your Law Firm 

In today’s digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business looking to succeed. This involves various aspects such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, and content marketing. In addition to effective content marketing strategies, utilizing Google Ads can also boost your online presence and drive traffic to your website. *right after new sentence added in second link

Law firm email marketing is a must-have for anyone looking to grow their business. Use the best practices outlined in this article to craft an impactful strategy today. Want more ideas to grow your law firm? Check out our comprehensive guide to marketing for law firms, as well as our post about Google my Business for Lawyers.