5 Email Marketing Best Practices for Lawyers

How can law firms benefit from email marketing?

Before getting into the best marketing practices, you should know exactly how you can benefit from email marketing. All digital marketing methods come with benefits to take advantage of, but an email marketing strategy can offer a lot to law firms specifically.

Build relationships and improve communication

By offering prospective clients relevant and timely information about your area of the law, you open a conversation that can engage existing clients and attract potential clients. That conversation serves to build trust and shows you know what you’re talking about.

Even short, personal emails can create or foster a relationship with your clients. For example, you can use email automation tools and email marketing software to say thank you to a client, remind them of a scheduled appointment or make them aware of a particular point of law.

You can improve the overall experience with clients by sending them news about what’s going on in the legal arena they’re most concerned with. A weekly or monthly newsletter about the aspects of your business you would like your clients and potential clients to have an awareness of can establish trust with clients and prospects.

Customized and personalized delivery to the right people at the right time

Email marketing, when combined with email marketing automation and segmentation methods, can allow you to get your marketing messages to the right people at the right time. In the legal field, personalization is an incredibly important part of marketing.

People want to feel you know their situation and are talking to them directly. Generic sendings may not move someone to seek more information.

Modern email marketing tools can help you establish a warmer relationship by allowing you to personalize your marketing materials based on specific criteria that allow you to target segments of your audience.

In this way, clients and prospective clients can see that you’re speaking directly to them and offering them relevant information.

Attract leads and increase brand awareness

Email marketing for lawyers provides an easy way to develop your business. Through this marketing method, you can gain more leads, contact details, and other necessary points of data that can help you engage with prospects more effectively.

In addition, your marketing emails will serve to keep your business in the minds of those who see them. That increase in awareness creates prospective clients who, when the time comes, will remember your name above all others.

Your email marketing campaigns will also help to drive people to your law firm's website where they can learn more about you, ask for more information, or set up a consultation.

Pursue professional development and thought leadership

You can use email marketing to present yourself as a leader in your field and someone who stands at the forefront of your area of practice.

Clients and prospective clients benefit greatly when they believe you know what you’re about. But you can also use this marketing method to increase your own professional development.

For example, you can leverage email marketing to attract new talent to your firm, gain coverage from media outlets, pick up speaking engagements, and various other professional development opportunities.

These are just a few of the email marketing benefits that can come from a successful email marketing campaign. This marketing method can do a lot more, especially as you collect data and metrics.

As a cost-effective way to grow your business, it makes sense to use email marketing or to include it as part of your overall email marketing campaign.

Email marketing best practices for lawyers and law firms

Knowing how a law firm can benefit from email marketing represents the first step toward an effective email marketing strategy.

However, like any marketing method, you need to have a strategy and implement good marketing practices. Here are some best practices that will make sure your email marketing efforts bring you real results.

Set clear marketing goals

Before embarking on an email marketing campaign, it’s important to set clear goals.

Do you want more clients? Do you want to retain existing clients? Do you want to increase awareness of your legal niche? Are you trying to recruit talent? No matter your goal, make sure you’re clear about it.

You can achieve other goals with email marketing, but having one primary goal to focus your efforts on will give you the best results. Create your email marketing plan with solid goals in mind.

Build and maintain your targeted email lists

Build, maintain, and constantly curate your email lists. Segmenting your contact list will help you do the most with your email marketing campaign, especially if your primary goal will require several approaches.

For example, you can have an email campaign that sends one type of email to potential clients, a different one to current clients, and a further separate segment dedicated to sending general information.

Starting out, you may not have too many email addresses to work within your contact list. You can build your email list by creating a call to action for people to opt-in to your email mailing list from your website and other places online. You can also use social media for this purpose.

Make sure that a call to action exists everywhere you can possibly have it. As your email list increases, keep curating it, cleaning it up, and segmenting it.

Craft well-written emails that offer value

Your emails should have good subject lines, good design, and offer content people will want to peruse. You want to use clear language and conciseness.

This is especially important for law firms as legalese can sometimes confuse people or cause them to turn away from what you’re trying to convey to them.

Use clean email templates with a design that doesn’t clutter the page. In addition, make sure you’re using a design that works well with mobile devices. Make sure your subject lines convey information and have a high level of relevancy if you want good open rates.

Always measure and improve performance

Most email marketing tools offer a lot of information and data concerning the performance of your email campaign. Pay close attention to your metrics and constantly work to improve the ones you choose to track.

You can also use A/B testing to see what works and what might need a little fine-tuning in your email offerings. A good email marketing platform will have all those tools and insights available. Make use of them frequently.

Pay close attention to legal compliance

Legal professionals have an increased duty when it comes to compliance with regulations and laws governing the sending of emails to people.

These laws and regulations can vary by state, but two things you will need to remain in compliance with are the CAN-SPAM act and the GDPR.

Some general tips regarding legal compliance for email marketing include:

• Always include your business name and address in your emails
• Write honest subject lines that contain no obfuscation
• Only market to people who opted-in to receive emails from you
• Have an easy and obvious way for people to unsubscribe from your mailing list

Your email marketing platform should also offer you more information about compliance and have offerings that also comply with laws and regulations. Even legal professionals must do what they can to avoid legal problems.

By staying in compliance, you ensure that your business will continue to operate with no issues and your email marketing campaign will continue working for you for as long as you run it.

Get the most out of your email list

Digital marketing isn’t just something that can help a business succeed. These days, digital marketing should be looked at as a necessity for lawyers and law firms.

By utilizing digital marketing effectively with professional but easy-to-use tools, your business will rise to the challenge of any goal you set for it.

Mailchimp offers a plethora of digital marketing and email marketing services and expert information that can help you take your legal business to the next level. Email marketing for lawyers, while powerful, is only one tool at your disposal. Take a look at Mailchimp and all it has to offer.