As marketing becomes increasingly important for law firms, various advertising methods are being employed in an attempt to attract new prospective clients – including a plethora of search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) campaigns. However, the vast majority of business for most law firms comes from its existing client base. It is therefore far more effective to concentrate on marketing legal services to existing clients than to pursue brand new business. Furthermore, with email newsletters, it is also generally far less expensive.
What?
An email newsletter performs two primary functions: staying in touch with clients and reminding them why they may need or want legal advice. The latter function requires some thought and planning.
Ensuring that clients are aware of any new legislation or important case judgments which could affect them is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. A regular email newsletter is a perfect opportunity to provide a legal update, to make clients aware that the law is changing and to demonstrate that you are familiar with all the changes. It is also vital that you explain how any changes could affect your clients, to encourage them to get in touch to seek advice.
The newsletter can also serve as an opportunity to advertise any firm news or events, but the primary focus should be on legal news and why it could be of interest to the reader.
Who?
If the email is going to be distributed to your entire client base, you should try and include legal news which covers multiple sectors – private client as well as commercial client. If you are aiming at a more specific group of clients such as employers, you should focus on developments in that particular area of law and explain how your readers/clients could be affected.
You can also send several different newsletters, each one directed at a specific set of clients, but the more versions there are to prepare and distribute, the more time you will need to spend on the campaigns.
When?
When considering the best time to send out the newsletters, there are no exact rules but it is largely a matter of common sense. Business clients are likely to be most receptive on Tuesdays to Thursdays as they will often be inundated with junk mail on Monday and trying to finish up for the week on Friday. The same principle applies for the time of day – somewhere around midday is probably the best time to send. There is little point sending at weekends, as this will often end up in the morass of spam and possibly be deleted.
Private clients may not have access to their personal emails at work or at any rate will have less time to read them whilst in the office. They are more likely to read their emails in the evening or at weekends and will generally receive less spam than business clients, so the timing is probably less important.
How?
The two crucial fields in any distribution list are the email address of the recipients and also a salutation so that you can personalise the emails.
You may be able to extract this information from your case management software or CRM system. If you haven’t already been collecting emails, this could prove the impetus to manually update your client list with this information. Alternatively or additionally, you could add a “newsletter signup” form to your website. This will give users an easy and straightforward method of providing their email addresses and subscribing to your newsletters.
Although it is possible to buy or rent email lists from certain organisations, this can prove to be a waste of money as many of the recipients will fall outside your target market – and it can be risky if the company has not gained all the relevant consents for the emails they provide. It is far more effective – and safer – to build your email list organically from existing and new clients.
Once you have your distribution list, you will need to use some form of email distribution software to send out the newsletters.
Which?
If you are only sending to a handful of recipients you can use your regular email client (eg Outlook). However, addressing each recipient by name at the top of the email will make it seem more friendly and provide more encouragement to read on. With Outlook, you will need to personalise each email separately or you can use an Outlook add-on such as Send Personally.
In general it will be easier and more efficient to conduct your campaigns using a mailing list service. These provide a function for personalising mass emails, as well as automatic list maintenance. This means that new or existing subscribers can log in, subscribe to your mailing list, unsubscribe, change their details, or subscribe to an alternative newsletter which you provide. They also handle “bounced” emails, so you can see which emails are not getting through and take relevant action. A couple of the less expensive services are Constant Contact and Your MailingList Provider.
Another useful function mailing list services provide is email tracking statistics whereby you can find out how many people have actually opened your email, which were the most popular links and how many recipients clicked on each one. You can focus on certain individuals and find out whether they opened the email and, if so, which links they clicked on.
Seeking permission
The best-practice method of attaining permission to send someone an email newsletter is getting them to add their email to a subscription form on your website. This will result in an acceptance email which they must then confirm by emailing a reply or clicking on a confirmation link. This is what is known as a double opt-in. A single opt-in is essentially the same but without the confirmation email.
In other situations, where your client has not specifically requested the email newsletter or signed up to a list, you should ideally ask them for permission to send them emails in the course of any work you are doing for them. But if you have done work for them in the past and, as such, can be deemed to have a “business relationship” with them, it is perfectly legitimate to send them email correspondence as per the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
In any case, you must provide a straightforward method of opting-out from future mailings. You must also include your company registration number, place of registration and registered office address in the footer of any email correspondence.
Tips and tricks
An effective subject line will often be the deciding factor as to whether your email is opened or binned. Try and appeal directly to the recipient with the prospect of something which may be useful or beneficial for them.
Also, ensure that it the origination of the email is instantly recognisable, by including your firm name in the subject line and/or the “From Name” field. The “From Address” field should also include a firm-specific email address, although this can be different from the “Reply To” address.
Help!
If you don’t have the time to prepare a regular email newsletter, some companies can provide this service, together with a robust distribution system. If one of your specialities is employment law, the leading British employment law website, Emplaw is able to provide a “white label” email newsletter service, which includes content creation, customisation, design and an intuitive delivery tool. For further details of this service, or if you would like help with any other kind of email newsletter campaign, please contact me.
Alex Heshmaty is a law graduate with several years experience in web design, IT management, legal editing and research and legal marketing. He currently works as a freelance copywriter and “legal techie” (legal IT consultant). See www.legaltechie.co.uk.
Email alex@legaltechie.co.uk.
