How To Earn More Legal Clients Using Email Marketing

Short on time? Here are some quick email marketing tips for law firms:

Use lead magnets to build your email list
Improve your mailing list CTA to encourage the reader to sign up
Use email automation to save time
Try email segmentation to send personalised messages to your audience
Link to great landing pages in your emails
Use an attention-grabbing subject line
Include eye-catching visuals
Use relevant calls to action throughout your emails
Test how often your audience likes to receive emails
Connect your email marketing campaign to the rest of your digital marketing strategy.

Want to learn more about email marketing for law firms? Keep on reading.

The Benefits of Email Marketing for Law Firms

Creating an email marketing campaign for your law firm has many benefits, providing your campaigns are interesting and serve the reader rather than just acting as a news update about your law firm.

Get personal with segmentation

The first benefit is that you can target different people on your mailing list with content that’s relevant to them. This is called segmentation.

Rather than sending out the same email to everyone, you can use your email marketing software to cut your audience into segments.

These segments will be based on information they gave you when they signed up for your mailing list.

This could be based on an eBook they downloaded or simply a selection they made in a drop-down menu when signing up for your email list.

For example, if you specialise in business law, the messages you want to send to the members of your mailing list who own franchises will be different from what you send to people with agricultural businesses.

Save time with automation

Automation is another benefit of law firm email marketing.

It requires a bit of work upfront but will save you lots of time down the line.

Email automations are singular or multiple emails sent when a person signs up for your email list.

They can be triggered for different reasons. For example:

Someone downloads a guide, triggering an email automation sequence that sends them three emails, with a few days between them, with more information related to that guide.
A person fills out a consultation request form and gets an automatic email letting them know you have received their email and that someone will be in touch soon.

One purpose is to shorten the sales cycle, and the other is to reassure people that you will get back to them. Both help build a connection and trust with your law firm.

Cutting down lead time

Email marketing, especially when using segmentation and automation, can significantly cut down lead time.

Instead of the person downloading a guide and then forgetting about it, they’ll get automated emails with more information related to the guide, answering questions and reminding them about the guide.

Automated emails sent when someone joins your mailing list can be used to answer common questions people about to become clients often have.

Sending them a few emails answering those questions can be the difference between them becoming a client or looking elsewhere to find their answers.

Just don’t send them all at once; space them out a bit. You don’t want to lose subscribers as soon as you get them!

Email courtesy of Really Good Emails

You can also send people emails to remind them to finish filling out a form. Life is busy, and people get distracted.

Building Your Law Firm’s Mailing List

All the above advice is helpful… if you have a mailing list to begin with.

You may have felt like having a mailing list isn’t useful to your law firm, so you haven’t got one.

Or maybe you have one, but sign-ups have plateaued.

Here are a few ways to help you build a mailing list full of prospective clients.

Lead magnets

Lead magnets are any content that brings new leads to you. They’re often free guides or tools that the user can access by sharing their email address, like the below guide from us at Thinkplus.

It’s becoming more common for businesses to share the content for free but allow users the option to enter their email if they’d like to get the guide or the results from the tool in their email inbox.

The type of lead generation content you offer will depend on your target audience.

You could share:

An eBook which walks the reader through how to acquire a piece of land
A free will-writing template
A compensation calculator.

Email list CTA

You need to have great CTAs inviting people to sign up for your mailing list. Lots of people have signed up for too many mailing lists already.

They don’t want to add another voice to their inbox unless they get something out of it.

You need to be clear about what your audience will get when they sign up for emails.

Harry’s Newsletter shares what you’ll get by signing up for their mailing list in just a few words and backs it up with social proof — reviews from readers.

Remember to tailor your CTA to your audience.

If someone is reading a blog about creating employee contacts, they’ll likely want to stay up to date with new laws in the business space. The CTA should reflect this.

“Don’t get left in the dark. Our weekly newsletter will keep you updated on any business laws you need to know about.”

How to Create Great Emails

Now you’ve got more quality leads on your law firm’s email list, it’s time to write to them.

The quickest way to create great emails is by cutting down great content.

You can cut a blog down into different emails and set them up as an automated sequence. Or you can send that specific content to a segment of your email audience that will find it relevant. That content might be the reason they convert.

If you’re creating emails from scratch, remember to keep your audience in mind. So many law firms have email marketing strategies that focus on the firm — who got an award, who got a new certification, the new office extension that’s happening.

They don’t think about what their audience actually wants to read about.

By writing emails that offer value to your audience by teaching them something new, reassuring them or helping them out, you’ll already be ahead of most of your competitors.

What else do great emails need?

Landing Pages

Send your email readers to the best page on your website. If your email discusses a guide, link to the guide page instead of the homepage. Your landing page should always be relevant to your email.

Subject Line

A/B test your subject lines to see what works with your audience.

Do they prefer:

Something straightforward?
Something with emojis?
Something that builds intrigue?

A/B testing your subject line will help you identify what gets your subscribers to open an email and convert it into clients.

Eye-Catching Visuals

Decide on a design that fits your emails based on your law firm and target audience. A/B test small design changes to see what your audience enjoys most. You could switch up your header design or the calls to action designs within the email.

Email courtesy of Really Good Emails

Call to Action

The number of CTAs you include will depend on the email’s length, but don’t overdo it.

If the CTAs override your email’s message, you’ve gone too far.

Your additional CTAs should focus on catching the attention of people who are not ready for the first CTA.

For example, you’ve set up an automated email to trigger when someone downloads an eBook. The main goal is to convert this person, but they might not be at the stage of the sales funnel you thought they were.

Put the main CTA in place to entice the “ready” customers towards conversion and include a secondary CTA for those who aren’t ready to convert, directing them towards content related to the eBook they downloaded.

Frequency

Use A/B testing to see how often you should send emails to subscribers.

Test different frequencies and monitor the results to see what works for your firm and audience.

Connecting Your Email Marketing with Your Law Firm’s Marketing Strategy

Ideally, your email marketing strategy should be connected with the rest of your law firm’s strategy.

Why? Because it makes your life so much easier.

Instead of needing to think up new ideas for what to send to your mailing list each week, you can take ideas from the other content you’re putting out.

If you’ve published a new video or blog, send out an email about it.
If you’ve finished a guide, turn it into an automated email sequence and send it to existing subscribers.

Not only does this save you time, but it connects your marketing efforts and creates a consistent message for your audience.

Law Firm Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing has many benefits for law firms like yours that are looking to grow their client base.

By segmenting your mailing list and sending targeted, personalised emails, you can build trust and provide value to potential clients who already want to hear from you.

Automating parts of your email strategy saves time while shortening the sales cycle. Useful lead magnets like free guides and tools also help grow your mailing list quickly.

When creating emails, focus on what your subscribers want to read about, not just news about your firm. Use landing pages, eye-catching designs, clear calls-to-action and A/B testing to optimise your emails.

Tie your email marketing into your broader law firm marketing efforts to save time and share a consistent message. Follow up on other content by sending emails about new blogs, videos and guides.

By providing value, establishing connections and speaking to their specific needs in a personalised way, your email marketing will help convert more quality leads into clients for your law firm.