10 Email Marketing Tips for Law Firms

Well-defined content marketing strategy and strategically executed email marketing campaigns are tantamount to reaching your law firm’s target audience. How do you gauge success? Do you continue to use the same old plan?

If your email marketing campaigns have looked the same since the inception, you may want to revisit them to incorporate more law firm content marketing strategy into the mix.

10 tips for a successful law firm email marketing campaign

1. Timing of Law Firm Emails
   Clients of our integrated marketing and public relations firm often ask about timing of law firm emails. A lot of data exists about the “best times” to send emails. We’ve noticed that emails sent early on Tuesday mornings results in the most opens and click-through rates for most of our clients. Will this work for everyone? Absolutely not. You need to know your target audience and then test your email campaigns on several days and times to determine what is the most successful.

2. Balancing Images and Content in Law Firm Emails
   Recently, we dedicated an entire blog to the concept of balancing images and content in a newsletter. With the average person receiving 121 emails per day in 2018, make sure you are using the right balance of imagery and content. You are selling yourself and your law firm short by not including any text-based messaging along with an image in your email marketing content. By taking a shortcut and using only images, you’ll find that email recipients will unsubscribe from your email marketing database.

3. Including a Call To Action in Law Firm Emails
   What is the reason you are sending an email in the first place? To share your law firm news? Announce a big legal win? Whatever the reason for the email blast, you will want to drive people to read more or to click on your announcement. Create an effective call to action. Here are some helpful tips.

4. Testing Law Firm Email Marketing Campaigns
   Test your email newsletter or e-alert on desktop and mobile device. Internally, we test on mobile, desktop, and different desktop environments. Unfortunately, what I see on my Mac, is not always what someone else may see on a PC. Testing different environments takes time but is worth the quality control.

5. Including Relevant Content in Law Firm Emails
   One of the most important tips of email marketing is knowing the target audience for your content. For example, if your law firm specializes in family law, your newsletter would include topics about custody, divorce, grandparents’ rights, etc., but you wouldn’t include the most recent labor law news. The clients that have subscribed to your email marketing subscribed to receive relevant content to the services you provide. In your newsletter, you want to highlight recent news as it relates to your law firm, new attorneys, events and firm news.

6. Building Your Law Firm Marketing List
   Regularly invite contacts to join your mailing list. Include a prominent email sign up form on your website. Invite people to sign up for your email in your personal email signature. When you speak at conferences or present CLEs, invite attendees to get more information by opting in to receive your newsletter. When networking, ask permission to add new contracts to your email list. Requesting people to opt-in (and always including an opt-out) is the best way to remain compliant with electronic communications regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation.

7. Drafting Actionable and Interesting Subject Lines for Law Firm Emails
   Keep your subject line short and to the point. If you are not sure if you are using the best email subject for your audience, use A/B testing to see if your subject line has an effect on your open rates. If this is your first time writing subject lines, try out this free subject line grader.

8. Including Alt Text for Images Used in Law Firm Emails
   Alt text is descriptive language for your image. It can be seen in your email if the image fails to load. For example, this may happen if you are using Outlook. When you open an email, before you select “download images,” you may see white outlined boxes, sometimes there will text in those boxes, often hyperlinked. Before someone downloads the images, it’s helpful to get an idea of what will appear in that area. Using a descriptive alt text to your image is a marketing best practice and helps to search engine optimize the content if you include the newsletter or e-alert on your website.

9. Creating Noticeable Hyperlinks in Email Marketing Content
   Once your legal marketing newsletter gets into someone’s inbox, be sure to drive traffic to your website. The links in your email should be easily distinguishable. Oftentimes the link is underlined in blue. With advanced email marketing techniques, you can modify the links to appear the way you would prefer. Highlight text for your link, instead of adding a dozen “read more…” links at the end of each paragraph.

10. Measuring the Success of Your Law Firm Marketing Campaign and Adjusting Course for Better Results
    The most important part of legal email marketing is measuring your success and tweaking your emails for better results in the future. Use your email marketing platform’s reports to monitor your email results. Recently, one of our law firm clients moved a very timely article to the top of the newsletter. That article received the highest number of clicks and, overall, the newsletter had a better open rate than in the past. When measuring your successes, it’s okay to have low engagement but use the analytics for change. Sometimes the email subject isn’t quite right or you accidentally scheduled the email to go out on a holiday when engagement is at its lowest. Compare the data available from campaign to campaign to determine what will work best for your law firm.

Email is an essential part of law firm content marketing and serves law firms of all sizes. It is an inexpensive way to reach your audience.

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