In the legal field, clients often have ongoing legal needs. These needs can range from receiving updates on the progress of the case to staying in the loop about legal updates related to their interests. So, maintaining regular communications is vital for lawyers and legal agencies. Social media won’t do the job for several reasons:
You know which channel doesn’t have these disadvantages? Emails. They can be personalized, they’re more friendly to the not-so-tech-savvy part of your audience, they show up right in the inboxes while your subscribers check them for personal messages — and they’re not affected by the algorithms.
Still not convinced to start using emails for your legal business? Let’s consider some of these benefits.
Emails, as we mentioned, have a personal feel and offer an opportunity to cater to the needs of a certain subscriber group or even one recipient. So, if you want to talk to each prospect separately and privately while talking to all of them at the same time, email marketing is the best channel to do so!
For example, if you’re following up with a client on a company registration case, you could hit them up with an email checking their progress and suggesting further assistance. This way, you will show the client that your firm values its customers and is committed to providing ongoing assistance.
Consistent, informative, and relevant email content helps your potential customers see your firm as trustworthy. For example, newsletters with updates on changes in law, case studies, and legal advice showcase your firm’s expertise in the legal niche.
Let’s say, your prospect seeks personal legal assistance in dealing with a convoluted business contract. As they search for a provider, they start receiving weekly newsletters from a firm specializing in business law. Newsletters cover recent changes in contract laws and give negotiation tips. This content helps your prospect recognize the firm’s competence. As a result, when they need assistance, they choose the firm with a newsletter instead of a competitor who doesn’t have one.
Emails from your law firm will consistently remind your potential customers: hey, we exist, and we’re at your service! So, once they’re in need, they’ll contact you for more intel.
Imagine a law firm specializing in taxes. The firm runs a monthly newsletter with updates on taxation laws and practical tips for businesses so they optimize taxes. They also host and promote events like webinars on the topic. Potential customers keep seeing this content, so they think of this firm regularly — they formed a connection to the company, despite not using its services yet. The former clients will contact the firm again if needed because of the constant reminders.
As we said before, any business can benefit from email marketing. For example, email marketing for dentists is a great way to increase appointment bookings through regular and laser-targeted check-up reminders. Targeted messaging like this is possible for law firms too. If you don’t just send a regular newsletter but also spice your emails up with segmentation and personalization, you’ll maximize the effectiveness of each campaign and invest every penny the right way.
How can you target messages in the legal niche? Let’s imagine a firm with no narrow specialization. It can segment the contact list based on their interests. For example, send different messages to those interested in corporate matters and those interested in intellectual property law. One gets updates on laws affecting their business, and the other gets updates on trademark regulations. Both groups get the content they need, so they engage with your emails more often, which also implies better conversion rates.
Finally, emails are very cost-effective compared to other channels. For example, let’s compare it to direct mail. Direct mail requires spending a buck on professional design, printing, and postage. Meanwhile, emails in most cases require only paying for marketing software.
Even better, email is not just cheaper — it pays off better. Email marketing tends to have a higher ROI compared to social media, let alone paid ads. And it keeps growing — according to Statista, more than 50% of marketers reported a double increase in email ROI by December 2023.
You can get excited and imagine all the beautifully designed newsletters with cool content you’ll send — but it will be futile if you don’t have a contact list. It’s especially important if you consider sending personalized or segmented emails: you don’t just need email addresses but also lots of additional data.
This short guide may not cover everything you need to know but you can use it as a starting point and build a list of your dreams.
Before building a contact list, you need to answer one question: who will be on your list? This will define your future list-building strategy and the email content you’ll send. Understanding your audience and empathizing with it is the key to engaging emails and strong customer relationships.
Here’s how you can narrow down your target audience:
Once you define which people you want on your list, it’s time to think of how you get them to subscribe. One great way to build your contact list is a lead magnet. It’s a freebie that people will get for subscribing to your newsletter. It can be an e-book, a blog article that’s only available via a link you sent in an email, or a video tutorial. You can choose any format but the content needs to be interesting to your group of interest and somewhat exclusive.
As an example, let’s take a look at some potential lead magnet ideas for a firm that provides services related to employment law.
For example, Shoosmiths provides a recorded webinar on employment law developments — you can even download notes, which is great for accessibility. If you have recorded events you haven’t published on your website or other channels yet, use these recordings to lure leads into your contact list.
Another way to introduce a lead magnet for collecting email addresses is inviting website visitors to a webinar. Once they register, you get the addresses and additional information depending on the sign-up form. Here’s an example of RCM&D inviting users to register for its upcoming webinar.
List segmentation is an awesome practice because it allows you to send more relevant emails based on your customers’ relationship with your law firm, current sales funnel stage, interests, and more. The easiest segmentation criteria that would require no additional data are subscription dates, dates of the last email opened, and other variables related only to email addresses and their activity. These criteria will allow you to run a retention campaign for those who lost interest in your emails or a thank you campaign for those who have been with you for a long time.
The simple segmentation we mentioned above is already a great strategy. However, things get a little more nuanced when you want more complex segments. In email marketing software like Selzy, contact lists don’t contain email addresses alone — each contact comes with additional information stored in default or custom fields. For example, default fields may include names and other basic information. And when you create custom fields, you can get as creative as you want. Then, you can use these fields and their values to filter out contacts for targeted messaging and spice up your email marketing strategy.
How do you fill these fields, custom or not, with data? If you’re using a list of former clients and referrals, you can do it manually — but, as you scale up, this solution is not feasible. One way to do it is to create a sign-up form that includes the information you need. For example, in this form by Trollinger Law, subscribers can choose why they want to download the car accident guide — out of curiosity or necessity, for themselves or someone else.
So, you collected a high-quality contact list, and it’s time to run your first email campaign — but you will end up losing subscribers if your content isn’t engaging enough. Here are some tips on how to ace your legal newsletter.
You may be tempted to use legalese thinking it would make you seem smarter but it won’t do any good to your marketing emails. Unless your audience is fellow legal professionals, you shouldn’t gatekeep knowledge by writing convoluted sentences and using vocabulary that would require excessive googling or checking every word in a dictionary.
The thing is, you’re writing emails for your subscribers, not yourself — so, it’s your job to come up with simple explanations that everyone from your audience will understand. If you use the “explain like I’m 5” approach, more people will finish your emails and not drop off after the first paragraph out of frustration.
If your subscriber list mostly includes laypeople who don’t know a lot about laws, they’re likely to have similar concerns and questions. To help your audience sort things out, you can answer these questions proactively in your newsletter.
Also, if your company’s tone of voice allows you to do fun stuff, you can make an entertaining newsletter out of the whole FAQ premise. For example, you can answer weird but surprisingly common questions like “Is it legal to swear in public?” or create a list of hilarious questions from your customers.
Law is a field where credibility is vital. So, in law firms’ brand communications, it’s important to show that you’re qualified and trustworthy. Here’s how you can do it:
A crystal clear call to action is essential for conversions, may it be an email or a website. Your subscribers or site visitors won’t click a button if they don’t know what they’ll get in return, right?
If you’re in doubt, you can always use the simplest CTAs like “Get a consultation” or even “Learn more”. It’s a no-brainer but it doesn’t mean you can’t experiment. For example, you can implement “user POV” CTAs that are written from your subscribers’ perspective with first-person pronouns and active voice. Here’s an example:
Another thing to consider is the CTA hierarchy. Take a look at the email below. It’s mostly about the arbitration report, and it urges you to learn more about it and download a PDF. These are the main CTAs of the email. Meanwhile, the newsletter also contains secondary “Read more” CTAs under article descriptions. These buttons look slightly different — they’re grey and not as noticeable. So, if you have multiple buttons in your email, think of the most important ones and highlight them visually.
Email marketing has proven efficient compared to other channels, and it can do a lot for a law firm. However, starting a newsletter from scratch, especially if you’ve never worked with email marketing software, is a rather complex task. Here’s where you can begin:
Also, don’t forget these tips on how to make your email content more engaging:
