Email marketing for lawyers – top tips

16th September 2013

Once your branded template is in place, it should be relatively quick to produce a briefing for your clients and contacts on any legal topic or recent case.

However some lawyers still struggle to get the most from their legal email marketing campaigns. So here are our top tips to take your e-newsletter up a gear.

1. Make sure you use a specialist email marketing software. This will ensure that your emailer is produced in HTML, online and plain text, increasing its chances of being viewed and reducing the chances of your main server being listed as a spammer!
2. Make sure your template is in keeping with your brand and when linking to legal articles on your law firm website the visual transition should be smooth.
3. Don’t go overboard with graphics and images, as the recipient’s attention span is short and you may lose them if it takes too long to load.
4. Don’t include a lengthy introduction, which effectively repeats everything else further down. Recipients will think they don’t need to read on.
5. If it is a multi-topic newsletter, don’t include too many articles. The lower down the articles are, the fewer clicks they will receive.
6. Don’t include lots of links which send the recipient elsewhere, such as off to a social media site from which they may not return.
7. Plan the timing of your emailer carefully. Avoid Fridays altogether and Monday mornings when people are ruthless about spring-cleaning their in-boxes.
8. Make your subject line enticing. It is valuable real estate, as it may be all that they see. Make sure it reflects the legal content within the e-newsletter.
9. Choose a subject which is interesting and relevant to your target audience. Don’t just write about the same case that all your competitors are writing about.
10. Encourage interaction by offering a white paper that they can request or a prize that they can win. If they forward the e-newsletter to friends you can pick up new contacts this way.
11. Review your statistics to get a better understanding of what really interests the recipients and provide more of the same.
12. Plan the frequency carefully – too frequent can be annoying, too few and it will not build brand awareness.
13. Make sure you research any bounces and keep your database clean and up to date.
14. Make sure you follow up any leads which emanate from your email marketing.

 For advice on getting the best from your email marketing strategy, call us on 01785 859 995.