COMMENTARY: Effective strategies for your law firm's e-newsletter

By Traci R. Gentilozzi

These days, we tend to focus on social media marketing for law firms. But the truth is, good old email remains an extremely powerful tool to get new clients and keep existing ones.

The benefits of email are:

• low cost.
• high return on investment.
• greater chance of reaching your target audience (emails reach the intended inbox 90 percent of the time).

What is the most successful email marketing strategy for law firms? The e-newsletter.

But before your firm creates an e-newsletter and hits the “send” button to hundreds of recipients, here are some important things to consider.

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Segment Your Contacts

The first thing to do is gather the emails of current clients, referral sources, potential clients, other attorneys, legal organizations, etc. Basically, include anyone who would be interested in getting an email from your law firm. One of the easiest ways to collect email addresses is to enter them into a spreadsheet, which can then be exported into Gmail or Outlook, or whatever email platform your firm uses.

Also, remember to regularly add people to the list. When you meet people at networking events and follow-up with them, ask them to sign up for your firm’s e-newsletter or get their email address and include them. When you present at a conference, distribute a sign-up sheet so people can write down their email address. A good way to get subscribers is to offer something in return – maybe a free download of a blog post or video presentation. In other words, make it worth their while to subscribe.

It is crucial that you segment your email list — that is, prepare targeted lists of recipients who share certain characteristics. This way, you can be sure the people receiving your emails actually want to open them. Yes, you can send one email to the entire list, but it will appear generic. For example, if you’re a personal injury firm, you can segment your list and send one email to people who are interested in motor vehicle accidents but another email to people who are specifically interested in bicycle crashes.

It is also important to have a goal for each segmented list. For example, the goal of one segment may be “encourage potential clients to contact us,” while the goal of another may be “encourage lawyers to refer clients to us.” If you do not set a specific goal for each segment, then it will not be useful in the long run.

Once you send emails to your contact list, you can assess the behavior of your recipients to create even more segments. The program you use to create and send your e-newsletter (e.g., MailChimp) will capture information about the emails that have been opened, such as the links that have been clicked and how the emails were opened (smartphone, tablet or desktop) ... and much more. Be sure to pay attention to these details — they can be used to create even more segmented lists.

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Designing and Sending Your E-Newsletter

E-newsletters are a great way to deliver valuable information to clients, potential clients and referral sources. They are a way for law firms to showcase their expertise in certain areas of the law. E-newsletters also help educate people about changes in the law, alert them to important news or let them know about events your firm is sponsoring.

But keep in mind that e-newsletter recipients are already inundated with email. For this reason, you should always target your e-newsletter to the specific needs and interests of your audience. Here are some strategies to help make sure your law firm is creating and sending the most effective e-newsletter possible.

Keep It Short and Sweet

On average, people spend about 51 seconds perusing an email. Even then, most people just skim it. So what does this mean? Get right to the point.

Remember: e-newsletters are not the same as print newsletters. While print newsletters are usually a few pages, there are no “pages” in an e-newsletter and recipients are unlikely to scroll far or actually read all the content. So if you have something lengthy you want to share, like a blog, a press release or an article, post it on your firm’s website and include a few lines about it in the e-newsletter, along with a link to the full post on your website.

Provide Practical Content

An e-newsletter should be used as a tool that promotes and grows your law firm. Therefore, it needs to include content that 1) helps your readers and 2) captures the essence of what your law firm does. For example, your e-newsletter can include links to blog posts and videos on your website — in other words, provide information that is valuable to recipients while at the same time promoting your firm.

Give It Some Personality

E-newsletter recipients need to know there are real people working at your law firm. So be sure to personalize your e-newsletter. Include news about the firm in general, about an attorney or staff member, about the firm’s community involvement or a firm outing.

Another way to make e-newsletters more personal is to use color images to enhance the content, including photos of lawyers and staff at the firm. However, do not rely on images to convey important information because images may be blocked entirely by the recipient’s email program.

Grab ‘Em by the Subject Line

Time for a reality check: most recipients will not open your e-newsletter. But don’t let this discourage you — the recipients who do open it are enough to make it worth the effort.

No matter whether the email is opened, the subject line is something that everyone sees. So be sure your subject line is intriguing. For instance, you may want it to be the title of the blog that is featured in the e-newsletter. By putting a blog title or article title in the subject line, recipients are reminded of what your law firm does, even if they do not open the email.

Optimize for Smartphones

Chances are, about half of your e-newsletter recipients will read your email on their smartphone. So make sure it is optimized for mobile screens.

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Attorney Traci R. Gentilozzi owns 360 Legal Solutions PLLC, a company that focuses on legal content development and promotion for sole practitioners and small firms. She is also the editor of BRIEFS, the monthly publication of the Ingham County Bar Association. This article is reprinted with permission from BRIEFS.