Social Media
Law Firm Email Marketing
If social media is the future of law firm marketing, doesn’t that make email marketing the past? Doesn’t that mean those days are behind you? Why should you consistently send emails to promote your business when countless social media platforms could use your time, talent, and attention? You’ve probably been told that your law firm‘s marketing future resides in social media. While social media does offer fast access to your core audience and an excellent opportunity to promote your firm, it is only one small element in a much larger legal marketing plan.
Social media is only one of the tools available to keep in your toolbox. If your box only has one tool, it isn’t much use when you’re working to build that exciting future filled with potential clients for your law firm. Including email marketing as a critical component of your marketing efforts helps you solidify brand awareness while educating your target audience about the legal services you provide and how your firm can benefit them.
Email marketing offers the best of both worlds. Rather than relying on people to come to you, as is often necessary with social media marketing, you get the opportunity to visit your target audience in their email inboxes week after week. Designing and implementing effective email marketing campaigns offers a greater return on investment, yielding results well beyond the day’s open rate. Array Digital understands the importance of building a responsive email list for building your brand and converting new clients to your law firm. We are here to help you build an effective email campaign that maximizes your efforts through automation. In this chapter, you will read about the many benefits email marketing brings to the table so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not email marketing is something you’re interested in pursuing for your firm.
Overview of this chapter
Email marketing campaigns are one of the most efficient tools law firms have available to help spread important news. For this reason, email newsletters and other email marketing tools should be integral components of your overall marketing strategy. Even now, when social media is all the rage, a well-designed and executed law firm email marketing campaign can yield significant results, bring in new clients, and become a gift that keeps on giving by bringing in new business for your firm, regardless of search engine rank and social media activity.
After reading this chapter, you will understand all the top tools for marketing automation and how to send personalized emails to your mailing list. More importantly, you’ll learn about email content and how quality content is one of the best tools to build a better email list and encourage more opt-ins so your list grows and grows. You will also learn how to select email content for your marketing campaigns that is ideal for lead generation within your practice area.
What is email marketing?
It is true that an email marketing funnel is more effective in certain areas of law than others. However, if your practice serves a niche area, few tools can offer the potential conversion rate that a well-designed email marketing campaign can deliver. Essentially, email marketing automates the process of reaching out to those who have opted in to receive emails and newsletters — either from your law firm’s website or a carefully crafted landing page — and sends a steady stream of carefully crafted email content to your contact list.
Different people will receive varying bits and pieces of content according to where they are in the email marketing funnel. Those who have just signed up may receive introductory emails about your practice area, links to your podcast, and other tools to help build trust. Those who have been subscribers for longer may receive more in-depth information and targeted content designed to close the deal and convert potential clients into current clients. The beauty of a well-crafted email marketing plan is that the follow-up is built into the design, and email automation makes it easier than ever to reach prospective clients on their own terms and in their own time. If your firm creates large volumes of content, rebranding it through emails and social media platforms might be an ideal marketing channel for your firm to explore.
Email marketing in the age of social media still matters. Here’s why.
Email marketing isn’t an ideal solution for every law firm. However, it is unwise to dismiss it out of hand. There are simply too many reasons email marketing remains a viable medium for marketing your practice. Email marketing isn’t about SEO and doesn’t optimize your law firm’s website for search engines or users. However, it provides an audience whose interest can be piqued with little more than attention-grabbing subject lines. Plus, you can gauge how successful your content is by paying attention to your unsubscribe rates in comparison to new content and email newsletters.
Repurpose older content
One great thing about email marketing is that it allows you to utilize older content, breathing new life into it by adding inbound links that make it appear relevant and valuable.
Customize emails
Don’t forget to invest in email marketing software that allows you to customize and personalize emails so that all your subscribers feel like you’re speaking directly to them. The right system will even allow you to customize the time of day you send emails to maximize your potential reach and open rate.
Budget efficiently
One of the best features of email marketing, depending on which system you use, is that it is a highly cost-effective tool for marketing. Even law firms that don’t have the budget to compete against large, established firms in the PPC ad market can invest in an email marketing service that produces results.
Join the competition
Finally, don’t overlook how easy it is to establish your authority via email marketing. Each automated email you send only serves to reaffirm your firm’s relevance in your practice area and your abilities in the legal field. It offers a distinct advantage to your firm over other firms that rely solely on social media for their digital marketing campaigns.
You need the right email system for your firm
Your email marketing efforts are only as good as the software you utilize to push them forward. Ask successful business owners which top systems they recommend and study the various email marketing platforms and integrations to see which ones appeal most to you. Not only do you want an automated email marketing process, but you also need a platform that allows you to test various email templates to see which ones deliver the highest click-through rates for your firm and which ones seem to generate the best conversions for your practice.
Mailchimp
If you’re looking for an intuitive, simple-to-use option, Mailchimp delivers the goods. More importantly, you do not need to be a tech expert to put various features of this platform to work to streamline your funnel and maximize your email marketing workflow. You can also track your metrics to determine which types of emails yield the best results.
SendFox
For a cost-effective email marketing platform, it is hard to find one that compares to SendFox. While it may have fewer bells and whistles than other email marketing platforms, it offers all the tools you need to create robust email marketing campaigns designed to generate plenty of website traffic for your law firm.
ActiveCampaign
With a steeper learning curve than Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign offers a few more options for sending personal emails, enjoying marketing automation, and customizing practically anything. If you’re an experienced email marketer, this might be the better choice for your email marketing needs — unless your goal is to keep it simple.
AWeber
Affiliate marketers and online storefront owners appreciate the simplicity and ease of set-up that AWeber offers. However, Mailchimp is widely recognized as the better solution for law firms. It provides greater scope and features and remains intuitive for your law firm’s marketing strategy.
Plan and grow your email list
If your goal is to make the most of the potential your email list represents, you don’t want to sit down and type out whatever top-of-mind content comes to you. Instead, you want to have a plan for success. Otherwise, you’ll rack up unsubscribe requests and miss out on the opportunity your email list (and the hard work you invested in building that list) represents. You need the opportunity to grow your list without losing subscribers along the way.
That means you need to find solid email marketing strategies or lead magnets to expand your audience. Ask yourself how your law firm stands out. Are you the only firm in town that specializes in personal injury law? Do you have an above-average success rate in your family law cases? Do you have free content you can offer your audience that other firms do not provide? Consider these freebies to incentivize subscribers for your email list.
White papers or case studies
White papers and case studies are informative in nature and can be instrumental in reminding people how much they need the services you provide. This can be especially true in fields of practice such as real estate law, estate planning, wills and probate law, family law, and even criminal law. White papers and case studies can help net new clients for your firm and build your reputation as a thought leader in your practice area.
Guides
Guides are valuable tools for helping people understand how the law works and what steps are involved in addressing their legal situations. A solid guide with a compelling call to action can be instrumental in turning potential clients into repeat business for your firm time and time again.
Educational outlets
This includes webinars, college speaking engagements, presentations, and more. The truth is that effective content marketing, including email marketing, can transform practically any useful and educational material into opportunities to grow your audience.
Videos
From podcasts to local interviews and video blog posts, videos are new leaders in the content marketing field. Not only do they provide content in their own right as videos, but they can also be transcribed into written content, broken down into snippets for social media posts, and combined with educational materials to create webinars and infographics. One video can quickly and easily be transformed into multiple content streams you can use to grow your email list.
What to include in an email and when to send it
Beyond the compelling headlines designed to encourage higher open rates for your email marketing, it is essential to deliver the goods with consistently high-quality content that is timely and meaningful to your target audience. The following types of emails are excellent choices for matching content to purpose.
Newsletter
Is there anything exciting going on in your field of law? Any new legislation? Landmark Supreme Court decisions? What about game-changing precedents? You can create an email newsletter to keep your audience up-to-date on the latest developments in your practice area.
Promotional
What’s going on in your world? Has your law firm started a new social media page? Do you have a new podcast? How about a new blog post or podcast episode? Consider using email to notify your email list of new content. Make this development exciting so that everyone will want to read about it.
Survey
Want to know what people think? Ask. Surveys are excellent tools that invite audience participation and get critical details about your potential clients. You can use surveys to build better future content and to create new content informing your readers of the survey’s results. The idea is to get as many eyes on your information as often as possible by being engaging and interesting.
Email marketing is for every business. Start marketing today.
Each mail delivery platform has its own unique format, requirements, and regulations about email content and how you use their systems to automate your law firm’s email marketing process. The more automated the process, the better the potential results for your law firm. The best bet is to go with a largely plug-and-play operation that allows you to track results, conversion rates, click-through rates, open rates, and more without spending too much valuable time on the minutiae of the emails.
Email marketing is a complex endeavor. At the same time, it is one of the most valuable tools for automating the advertising process for your law firm’s website. If you’re not sure where to begin, Array Digital is ready to help you maximize the potential of your digital marketing efforts with a customized content marketing strategy for your organization. Contact Array Digital today to find out how we can help your law firm reach the top of the SERPs with SEO and advise you on your email marketing campaign with our lead generation and content marketing tools.
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