Email Marketing For Law Firms: 14 Must-Know Tips For Success

It’s no longer a secret that email marketing for law firms is effective. Law firms are turning to digital marketing to find new clients.

While SEO, social media, and even traditional marketing strategies have their places, email marketing has proven to be a cost-effective way for law firms to reach and engage their target audience.

If you plan to leverage email marketing to get new clients for your law firm, read this post from start to finish. 

Here, we will discuss the impact email marketing can have on law firms and actionable tips law firms can implement to get positive results from their email marketing campaign. Read on!

What Is Email Marketing For Law Firms?

Email marketing for legal firms is a digital marketing strategy where law firms use email to reach and engage existing clients. 

It is a powerful and effective strategy law firms can implement to promote their legal services, share valuable content, and build solid relationships with their audience. 

How are email marketing campaigns for law firms managed? Firstly, managing email campaigns is the same for every business. 

Managing email marketing campaigns involves the use of relevant software or email marketing platforms. With these platforms or software, marketers can create, deliver, and even track emails with ease.   

Platforms and software used in managing campaigns do more than tracking emails. They boast features like contact management, email templates, analytics, automation, and A/B testing that allow marketers to optimize their email marketing campaigns.   

Law firms that channel their efforts into email marketing never regret their decision. That’s because email marketing is highly versatile and cost-effective. It’s a strategy law firms of all sizes can implement to engage and deliver value to subscribers. 

Billions of people open their emails every second. So, there’s a high possibility that your subscribers will read your emails. 

Implementing effective email marketing strategies is highly important. That’s why we’re creating this post in the first place. 

However, if you’re too busy to manage your email marketing campaigns or know how to go about it, hiring an email marketing expert will make sense. But if you have the time and energy to kick-start and manage your firm’s email campaign, you’ll find the tips on this post valuable. 

How Beneficial Is Email Marketing For Law Firms?

Why should a law firm invest in email marketing? What are the benefits the marketing strategy renders? 

Email marketing can offer your law firm a cost-effective, targeted, and measurable way to connect with potential and existing clients. Your law firm can benefit massively from this digital marketing strategy. 

Now, let’s discuss the benefits email marketing can offer your law firm. 

1. Email marketing fosters targeted communication:

Email marketing is an effective marketing strategy that offers something flyers, billboards, and other traditional marketing strategies can’t provide your law firm. It lets you reach a specific audience that is interested or has used your legal services directly.  

Through segmentation, law firms can construct emails to address the specific concerns and needs of diverse practice areas. This will make a firm’s email messages more impactful and relevant to the target audience. 

Actionable Tip: The content of your email newsletter has to be top-notch. Hit the nail on the head, and ensure your email messages are valuable. 

2. Improve your law firm’s credibility:

Potential clients will find it easier to recommend and even hire you when they find your law firm credible and trustworthy. As you know, trust is the foundation of business success. Once prospects trust you, it will be easier for them to do business with you. 

Consistently sending informative emails to potential and existing clients establishes your law firm as a thought leader in your practice area. Sharing case studies, industry updates, and insights into legal matters will make your target audience start seeing you as an expert in your niche. 

People want the best lawyers to manage their cases. They know they stand a better chance of winning their court cases when they have a competent lawyer representing them. With email marketing, you can convince potential clients that you’re the right attorney for them. 

3. Email marketing is cost-effective:

When you compare the cost of running an email marketing campaign and a traditional marketing campaign to the results both strategies produce, you’ll have more reasons to embrace email marketing. 

Email marketing is a cost-effective digital marketing strategy law firms can implement to achieve their marketing goals. Building an email list is inexpensive. 

You can reach a wider audience via email marketing without emptying your wallet. That’s how inexpensive and effective email marketing is. 

4. Build solid relationships with existing and potential clients:

Email marketing isn’t just another digital marketing strategy for law firms to acquire new clients. Instead, it’s a strategy capable of allowing your legal firm to build robust relationships with your target audience. 

By consistently sending industry updates, event invitations, and insights into several legal matters, your law firm will continue to reside in the minds of potential and existing clients. Whenever your existing clients need legal services, they’ll remember and reach out to you. The same goes for potential clients. 

So, email marketing will put your law firm in the minds of potential and existing clients. Inviting potential and existing clients to various events hosted by your law firm can take your law firm’s relationship with them to another level.

5. You can measure results: 

Unlike traditional marketing strategies, email marketing allows you to measure the results. Email marketing platforms provide important data that can help you assess the performance of your email campaign. You’ll get important data like open rates, engagements, and click-through-rates.

To achieve optimal results, you need detailed information about how your email marketing campaign is performing. When you understand the strategies that work and the ones that don’t, you’ll know where to focus your attention. 

Ways You Can Optimize Your Email Marketing Campaign For Law Firms

Email is and has always been a crucial part of professional marketing since its invention. Though email marketing best practices and tools have evolved, it’s still one of the most effective strategies to connect and build solid relationships with clients. 

The evolution of email marketing has changed the game for marketers. Now, strategies that worked a decade ago don’t work today. Users have now gotten savvier and more attentive to the email messages they receive. Now, many have learned the act of filtering emails. 

Unfortunately, most prospects don’t open some emails. When it gets into their inboxes, they delete them and move on. So, in order to ensure your email gets to your targeted audience, here are tips that will help you optimize your email marketing and help your law firm achieve the targeted goal.  

1. Make it easier for prospects to join your email list:

In email marketing, numbers matter a great deal. A law firm with more subscribers may likely get higher engagement than one that has fewer subscribers. So, numbers are important in email marketing. 

But how can you increase your email subscribers? Offer prospects several opt-in opportunities. In other words, give visitors more opportunities to sign up for your newsletter. 

2. Write killer email subject lines:

Do you want your subscribers to open and read your emails? Then, write killer subject lines. Your email subject line is the first thing potential clients or subscribers will see before opening your email.

Create a good first impression with a top-notch subject line. Give your subscribers a reason to open your emails, read, and take action. 

Here are some tips to help you write powerful subject lines:

• Make your email subject line concise. It should be 55 characters or less. 
• Place important terms in the first part of your subject line. Note that part of your texts will be truncated if it’s longer. For mobile devices, it’s important to make your subject line less than 55 characters so part of your texts don’t get truncated. 
• Offer value in your subject line. Let readers have a sense of the information in your email message from your subject line. Provide a solution, and communicate it clearly in your subject line.

Make sure your subject line is as important as the rest of your email. That is because if people don’t open your emails to read the content and take action, it’s as good as not sending emails in the first place.

Actionable Tip: Write diverse subject lines, and choose the one you think is the most captivating. You can ask for the opinion of others to know which subject line is the best for your email. 

Write powerful subject lines to create a good first impression. Your subject line will determine how successful your email marketing campaign will be. 

If subscribers don’t understand or find your subject line appealing, they could abandon it. Additionally, your subject line should relate to the content of your email. I can’t stress this enough. 

Please don’t give your subscribers the impression that you’re trying to play on their intelligence. Ensure your subject line is the same as what you write in the email. 

3. Pay attention to your email’s preview text:

You’ll find this section displayed with your email subject line. It’s the snippet of copy pulled from the body of the email. 

You can use this section of your email to capture your audience’s attention. However, make it short and appealing. It should be less than 90 characters.

You can use a sense of urgency and keywords in this section of your email, too. However, it doesn’t make sense to repurpose your email. You’re writing to an audience that’s already familiar with your email marketing strategies. 

4. Personalize your emails: 

In email marketing, marketers need to be concerned about how their subscribers are responding to their emails. An email marketing strategy is successful when more subscribers open, read, and take action. 

But how can you make potential clients open your emails? A unique way to achieve this is by adding personalization to your emails. 

Here is a simple analogy. Assuming you received an email from Law Firm A and Law Firm B, Law Firm A added your name or company to the email you received (added personalization). In contrast, Law Firm B’s email doesn’t have your name or company name (no personalization).

Now, which email will you give more priority to? Of course, Law Firm A’s email is more personal and will receive your attention. You’re more likely to open Law Firm A’s email than Law Firm B’s. That’s the simple truth. 

Your clients will react the same way when you personalize your emails. You can add their names or company name to the email. However, if you’re using the company, write in the second person. 

Actionable Tip: You can incorporate personalization into your emails in multiple places. This includes the subject line, greeting, preview text, etc. However, ensure your personalization is natural, not forced. 

When it’s natural, your subscribers will feel valued. That’s enough to convince them to respond to your emails like it’s a letter from their close-door neighbor. 

5. Re-engage leads that have gone cold:

How do you re-engage leads that have gone cold? These include people who used to hire your law firm but suddenly stopped. 

How can you rekindle their interest in your law firm? You can try your best to win back leads that have gone cold. 

The simple process to win back such leads is by messaging them. You can use catchy subject lines to evoke emotion. Here are some examples below:

• “It’s been a while.”
• “We miss you”

You can send them messages along these lines to rekindle their interest in your law firm. 

Note that if one of these leads re-engages with your email, then you can tag the campaign as successful. But if all or most of them re-engage with your email, then you have achieved your aim. 

6. Carefully decide on the visual materials for your emails:

Do you wish to add visual interests to your emails? If yes, incorporate visual content into your emails. Graphics can make your subscribers click on your emails. 

Unfortunately, email providers block most graphics. So, there’s a possibility that your subscribers may miss the message in your visual materials. 

Here’s what you need to do when adding visual content to your emails. 

• Avoid high-resolution images. While such photos might look appealing, the file size can be an issue for your subscribers. The size of the graphical content may be on the high side; thus, it may take longer to load. This happens particularly when the subscriber has slow internet speed or on a mobile device.   
• If you’re adding graphics in your emails and added text in your graphics, try to create separate text replicating what’s in the image.

7. Consider mobile optimization:    

Why should you even bother to optimize your emails for mobile? Firstly, you must have heard that there are now more mobile devices than there are people in the world. 

Research shows that over 80% of people access their emails on a mobile device. So, it’s evident that the majority of people prefer to open their emails on mobile devices. They don’t wait until they get home, freshen up, and probably eat before turning on their desktop to read email messages. 

The last thing any law firm or email marketer wants is to send an email that subscribers can’t open on their mobile phones. If that’s the case, then engagement will be very low. 

How should you optimize your email for mobile? Here are a few tips. 

• Utilize a mobile-friendly design. Your email should render satisfactorily across all devices. This is necessary to ensure your subscribers don’t miss any important information. 
• Avoid high-resolution images or graphics that can take your emails longer than expected to load their content.   
• Check how your emails appear on a mobile device before sending them out to potential clients. 

8. Make an offer your subscribers cannot resist:

 If you want to increase your email’s open rate, make your subscribers an offer they can’t turn down. You can offer them a free consultation, free e-book, or industry news. 

When making an offer to your subscribers, remember to remind them that the offer is only available for subscribers. With this, you’ll see your emails’ open rates skyrocket. 

People like freebies. So, if your offer looks valuable to them, they will open your email and read the content. 

Making offers to your subscribers is another great way to show them that you care. Your subscribers will take your emails seriously if your previous offers were valuable to them.

9. Vary the frequency and time of sending emails to know what works best:

There is no particular time that’s right to send emails to subscribers. Likewise, there is no specific frequency or time for sending emails. What works for Law Firm A might not work for Law Firm B in terms of the frequency and time of sending emails. 

The best advice is to conduct tests to know what works and what doesn’t. Send at different times of the day and on other days of the week. You can also vary the frequency of your emails to learn what works. 

Actionable Tips: It is important not to bore your subscribers with your emails. If you keep sending emails every day, your subscribers might get tired, and your unsubscribe rate could increase.  

On the other hand, if you send fewer emails, your subscribers may forget about your law firm easily. The best option is to try different times and frequencies of sending to find out what works best.

However, it’s also important to have a schedule of when you want to send emails. Let your subscribers know when they should expect your emails, and stick to that time.  

10. Consider using segmented campaigns:

Are you running segmented campaigns? Unfortunately, many law firms might not be doing this. But what you must understand is that segmented campaigns will benefit your law firm’s email marketing strategies. It can increase your open rate by up to 100%. 

How do segmented campaigns work? As the name implies, segmented campaigns involve separating your email subscribers into different categories using their location, job titles, company sizes, interests, and others. 

Segmenting subscribers who interact with your content consistently will help you ensure you send the right content at each stage of clients’ buying journey. This will ensure your email marketing campaign is effective and yields results. 

11. Make your CTAs bold and clear:

How do you identify a successful email marketing campaign? You can determine this via the ROI. When people read your emails and take action, you’ll achieve a better return on investment. 

Without a clear and captivating CTA, people won’t know the next step or action you want them to take after consuming your content. In fact, many may only concentrate on reading your emails and may forget to click on your call to action. 

What can you do to make subscribers click on your CTA and do whatever you’re asking them to do? 

The first thing is to make your CTA bold and catchy. Use bold fonts, and differentiate the color from the rest of the texts. Use a different font size to make it catchy. 

Endeavor to communicate what your users will receive when they do whatever you’re asking them to do. But remember to make the actions you want your subscribers to take short and enjoyable. 

If you want them to fill out a form, make the form short and simple. Most of your subscribers may abandon your form if it’s too long and confusing. 

12. Humanize the sender of your emails:  

In this digital age, people are very careful with the type of email they open and read. With bots and hackers trying to steal users’ data, people avoid email newsletters and links like a plague. 

How can you humanize your email sender? In addition to personalizing your emails, it’s important to humanize the sender by including the person’s name. 

State the name of the person who wrote the email. Furthermore, sign off with a signature and include the person’s name, too. In addition to adding a name, include the person’s address.

The address should match your office address to show that the individual who wrote the email is from your office. By doing so, you’ll build your subscribers’ confidence and make them comfortable opening your emails. 

Actionable Tip: If different lawyers in your firm are sending emails to your subscribers, track the reactions of your subscribers to each sender. Unfortunately, your subscribers may have a favorite without you knowing. 

You can gauge how your subscribers perceive emails from your different senders by taking note of the open rate. However, this isn’t something you can identify overnight. It will take time, but with constant monitoring, you can identify how your subscribers respond to different senders.

13. Monitor performance metrics: 

How are your email marketing strategies performing? It’s essential to monitor performance to get optimal results. When you monitor performance, you’ll be able to identify strategies that performed well and the ones that didn’t. 

By learning how the different strategies you deployed worked, you’ll be able to make data-driven decisions and know where to focus more attention. You’ll know strategies that are killing your email marketing strategies by lowering open rates and increasing unsubscribe rates. 

What are the performance metrics you have to measure? Consider the click-through rates, open rates, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other important metrics. 

14. Keep your email list healthy:

A great way to improve your open rate and other performance metrics is by cleaning up your email list. This involves removing inactive subscribers from your email list.

Inactive subscribers include potential clients and clients who haven’t opened your emails for a long period. It seems they are no longer logging into their emails.  

However, before you remove inactive subscribers from your email list, try to re-engage them. Send a personalized and well-crafted email that appeals to their emotions. If this doesn’t work, then you can take your next action – delete. 

Conclusion

Email marketing for law firms is an inexpensive and effective way to connect, engage, and build solid relationships with potential and existing clients. It offers a unique way to connect with potential clients and keep your law firm in their minds. 

We have provided numerous tips that can help you run successful email marketing campaigns. Follow the tips to get the best out of your campaigns. 

Though email marketing is effective and inexpensive, it can also be tricky. It’s important to understand your subscribers and know how to target them with your emails. You can find an expert to manage your email marketing campaigns or do it yourself. However, consistency is important in email marketing and other marketing channels.