According to a 2022 American Bar Association National Lawyer Population Survey, there are over 13 million attorneys across the United States. With so many lawyers vying for clients, attracting and maintaining client leads is more challenging than ever.
One of the best ways to attract and retain clients is email marketing, a powerful marketing channel that uses personalized emails to promote your law firm's services. When used correctly, email marketing can drive leads and existing clients to take specific actions, such as reading an ebook about your practice area, scheduling a free consultation, or registering for an event.
Read on to learn why email marketing is effective for companies, how law firms can use email marketing, and how to start email marketing.
Why Email Marketing Is Effective for Businesses
Despite the rise of social media, email marketing is still one of the best ways to increase brand visibility, nurture leads, and boost client loyalty. It offers many advantages for law firms, including:
- Improved client relationships: Email marketing empowers you to nurture old and new leads with eye-catching and relevant content that meets their needs, such as ebooks, blog posts, videos, testimonials, and other media about your practice area and services. This increases client loyalty and interest in your services and brand.
- Lower costs: Email marketing is one of the least expensive ways to market your services and curate your brand. Many vendors offer email marketing tools and services at budget-friendly rates.
- Increased website traffic and revenue: Email marketing lets you use appealing calls to action (CTAs) to invite leads to your law firm's website. This, in turn, can lead to increased revenue.
- Customized marketing: Email marketing lets you send personalized emails to the right leads at the right time via marketing segmentation and email automation.
- Competitive advantage: Email marketing can make you stand out from firms that don't use it.
Accordingly, email marketing remains one of the most popular and lucrative forms of digital marketing. The global email marketing market is projected to increase from $7.5 billion in 2020 to $17.9 billion by 2027.
How Law Firms Can Use Email Marketing
Law firms can use email marketing by sending the following emails:
Automated Client Alerts
Automated client alerts thank clients for taking action — such as booking a case review — and remind them of upcoming events. These alerts can drive engagement, build your brand, and keep your law firm at the top of clients' minds.
Law Updates
Law updates are a great way to demonstrate thought leadership and dedication to staying on top of legal trends. They are short news bulletins that inform clients about recent legal developments.
For example, if you are a personal injury lawyer, you can create law updates about the following:
- How new damage caps in your state can affect the compensation plaintiffs receive.
- How a recent court decision affects personal injury law in your state.
- How a new legal definition may affect personal injury damage recovery.
- A new class action that may interest many of your clients and leads.
Law updates contain a brief summary of legal developments and an analysis of how these changes affect clients' cases. Consider using visual setoffs like numbered lists and bullet points, eye-catching headlines, and short paragraphs to make facts easier to digest. Links to relevant videos, blog posts, and ebooks can also help clients better understand legal developments.
Firm Updates
You should also send regular updates about your law firm to keep people updated about your practice. This will give clients and leads a better idea of how your law firm has changed since they last visited your website or office.
Law firms often send firm update emails whenever they:
- Change names
- Onboard or remove staff and partners
- Expand into a new practice area
- Expand into new cities, areas, and states
- Change locations
- Make media appearances
- Obtain large settlements or verdicts for newsworthy cases
Frequently Asked Questions
Your clients probably have many similar questions about your practice area and services.
Accordingly, in your emails, you can provide basic answers to these frequently asked questions (FAQs). For example, if you run a personal injury law firm, you can answer common questions like "How much time do I have after a car accident to file a personal injury lawsuit in [state name]?"
How To Start Email Marketing
If email marketing sounds like the right choice for you, follow these steps to get started:
1. Collect Information
Before you join any email marketing platforms or write any emails, you must collect information about client and lead needs. This will help you create solid marketing goals for your email marketing campaigns.
Most law firms use email marketing to achieve the following objectives:
- Attract and nurture leads: Email marketing can help you capture contact info and nurture leads. This can help you stay at the forefront of these individuals' minds.
- Increase client loyalty and retention: Posting relevant updates, testimonials, and educational content like ebooks and blogs can help you improve the experience of existing clients, retain clients, and encourage past clients to return to your firm.
- Improve communications: Automated emails that thank clients for inquiries and alerts for scheduled meetings can significantly improve clients' experience with your firm.
- Establish thought leadership: You can use email marketing to position yourself as a legal industry expert and build credibility for your firm. As you gain prominence, you may land more speaking engagements or appearances on television and podcasts. This can significantly increase visibility and, eventually, revenue.
- Attract new employees: Email marketing is also a cost-efficient way to target law school graduates and recruiters and build a pipeline of job-ready talent.
2. Determine Who Should Receive the Emails
Once you have a clear idea of your goals, you must determine who will receive the emails. Most companies send emails to the following:
- All newsletter subscribers
- Current and past clients
- Law school alumni and current students
- Referral sources
- Prospects
- Blog subscribers
- Reporters with whom you have relationships
If you don't have a clear idea of who you will send the emails to, you will not be able to reap the benefits of email marketing. For example, if you throw every contact in your email into the marketing list and just send sporadic firm updates, you will probably not get the desired results. Your audience may also lose interest in your services and offerings and unsubscribe.
3. Create Email Content
Once you've determined your email marketing goals, you can start creating email content. Remember to focus on providing value — otherwise, people won't want to read your emails. Research by Constant Contact has shown that the average email open rate in the legal industry is only 32.72%.
When creating email content, remember that legal concepts can be challenging to understand for non-lawyers. By presenting complicated legal concepts in a way that is easy for your readers to understand, you can help clients and leads navigate the legal issues they may face. For instance, if you are a bankruptcy lawyer, you can create a simple infographic that explains the differences between Chapter 7, 13, and 11 bankruptcy.
4. Define Your Email Marketing Schedule
Finally, you should create an email marketing schedule or calendar. A vital tool for planning, scheduling, and organizing your emails and delivery dates, an email marketing schedule gives you and the marketing team complete visibility into what needs to be done, by whom, and when.
The easiest way to create an email marketing schedule is to use Google Sheets or Excel. Just add all the details and share the file with your team members.
Let Scorpion Help You With Your Email Marketing Strategy
Developing and refining an effective email marketing strategy for law firms can be challenging, especially if you have never done it before.
Fortunately, Scorpion is here to help. We have the lawyer marketing expertise you need to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. We offer a wide range of digital marketing services, including:
- Email marketing services: We can help you create a powerful email marketing strategy that showcases your firm's unique abilities, fits your goals, and satisfies clients' needs.
- Law firm website creation and management: We can also create and manage websites and landing pages to build your brand and help you attract more clients.
- Legal advertising: Once your website is live, we can create a customized advertising plan that targets your ideal cases and clients.
- Legal marketing: We can also leverage the power of artificial intelligence to help your firm rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Interested in learning how Scorpion can help you build your legal marketing strategy? Contact us today to learn more about our services.
