Creating Effective Email Campaigns
Anyone familiar with the expenses involved in printing and distributing direct mail pieces or purchasing advertising space in a local business journal understands how cost prohibitive producing printed marketing materials can be. Your law firm simply may not have the bandwidth to create stunning print materials at the moment.
However, you do have access to one great alternative—email campaigns. The Direct Marketing Association reports that organizations can experience a return on investment (ROI) of 4,300% through strategic email marketing… all at a relatively low cost! Read on for a quick education in Email Marketing for Attorneys 101.
Develop Solid Target Lists
The best email campaign in the world won’t result in more cases and higher profits if it doesn’t reach the right demographic. Vet your target lists carefully to decide where to focus your firm’s marketing efforts, and then hone in on persistently emailing those key prospects.
Brainstorm Irresistible Subject Lines
An email’s subject line is like a conversation icebreaker—it’s your chance to create a positive first impression. While thinking about what you could you say that would strike the reader and make him or her want to learn more, keep these simple tricks of the trade in mind:
1. Spam words like “free” ward off readers and also increase the likelihood of your emails getting caught by recipients’ spam filters.
2. Subject lines of 50 characters or less typically receive the greatest response, according to research completed by MailChimp.
3. Don’t try to trick recipients into opening emails; it may work once but it’s not worth the damage to your firm’s credibility and may just alienate potential prospects.
Offer Content that is Valuable to Readers
Email marketing for lawyers should focus on presenting valuable information that addresses prospects’ concerns and subtly spurs them to consult your firm. Therefore, avoid coming across as too “salesy” when crafting email content.
For instance, a divorce and family law firm may want to draw readers’ attention back to the importance of focusing on their mental and emotional health during and after divorce, and then provide a handful of expert tips regarding how to navigate the ups and downs of post-divorce life. A call to action at the end may be just what the reader needs to make the hurdle and consult your firm.
Don’t Disregard Design
Layout, formatting, and overall design can hugely impact the readership of your law firm’s email marketing campaigns. To ensure that your communications are visually appealing, be sure to organize text into small, clean chunks or bulleted/numbered lists, break up the text using noticeable headers and images, and utilize readable font.
If necessary, such as in the case of an e-newsletter, feature a clickable table of contents or “features” section so that readers can easily find what they’re looking for without scrolling and scanning. Also, a best practice of attorney marketing: create both text and HTML versions of all emails.
Include the Unsubscribe Option
Marketing for attorneys should abide by CAN-SPAM laws that require senders to provide recipients the option to unsubscribe. Don’t risk steep penalties—include the unsubscribe button and assist recipients with unsubscribing as soon as possible if they ask to be removed from your target list.
Drip Email Campaigns: 5 Best Practices
Sending drip emails is one of the most effective techniques for moving prospects forward to a decision through the buying process.
A drip campaign is simply a series of pre-written email messages that are sent on a pre-determined schedule. The automation of your drip series means little effort is required from your firm once the campaign is set up.
Download our free guide and learn about the importance of key performance indicators (KPIs)
Best Practices for Attorneys
1. Segment Your Leads. There are multiple ways for lawyers to tailor their follow-up emails:
— Type of case. Injury lawyers, for example can have one series for auto accidents, another for falls, and a third for nursing home negligence.
— Quality of lead. More desirable cases can receive more detailed, extensive, and personalized information.
2. Send Behavioral Drip Emails. A prospect who missed the first scheduled call or appointment should receive a different series of letters than a fresh new lead.
3. Reduce Read Time. Most recipients will scan rather than read your emails, especially if they are using a mobile device. Write for this type of reader:
• Remove superfluous text
• Use boldface type, headlines, bullet points and subheads to specify important information
• Use images, videos, infographics, and other visual assets
• Add relevant links
• Break up paragraphs
4. Consider a Preference Center. Give recipients control over the type and frequency of emails they receive from you. According to HubSpot’s survey, the major reason why people unsubscribe from permission emails is that they receive emails too frequently.
5. Test and Optimize Your Funnel. Making small changes in your drip series can have a significant impact over the long term. A/B test specific variables like the content, call-to-action, sending time, and length of email. Test variables one at a time.
3 Simple Mistakes That Will Mark Your Firm’s Email As Spam
In a 2014 email statistics report, spam comprised an estimated 85% of all email traffic. As such, email providers and email receivers have raised the bar for what emails make it to the inbox, and what gets sent to the spam bin.
Even if your firm isn’t trying to send spammy emails (of course not), there are mistakes you could be making that are causing well-intended emails to be marked as such.
For Starters, How Does an Email Get Marked as Spam?
An email can be flagged as spam in one of two ways—by the ISP that hosts a mail server; e.g. Google, Yahoo, etc., and by the reader him/herself. An ISP filter can mark an email as spam if the domain of origin or IP address seems fishy. There are literally hundreds of parameters that can gauge this, and ISP’s are constantly trying to stay ahead of spammers with new and improved algorithm updates.
A reader is also in control of what emails get flagged as spam. If an email does make it past an ISP’s filter, but contains irrelevant, salesy, or boring content, the reader is likely to block the address, delete the email, report the email as spam to their ISP, or all of the above.
Now, let’s take a look at 3 simple mistakes that will mark your email as spam by ISP’s, or by readers themselves.
1. Lack of Permissions
To have email permission, the recipient must have agreed to receive messages from your firm by subscribing to your emails, e-newsletters, etc. Without proper permission by said recipient, any emails you send are likely to be marked as spam, as they’re deemed unsolicited by ISP’s. Lack of permission can also happen if you email contacts who did provide you with their email address, but didn’t specifically opt-in to receive your emails.
2. Poor or Spammy Content
The content of your emails—including the title, body, embedded links, images, etc., can all flag your message as spam. Specifically, here are a few things to avoid in your emails:
- Bad links
- Poor html code
- Misleading subject lines
- Too many images
- Use of ALL CAPS
3. Not Relevant to the Reader
Even if your firm’s emails are being sent to a subscribed recipient, if the message doesn’t contain something of value, the recipient may not mark it as spam, but they’re likely to delete it and unsubscribe from future emails if irrelevant correspondence continues. Make sure that every email, e-newsletter, etc., sent contains valuable content the recipient can relate to, and finds interest in.
How are your emails stacking up? To find out if your email marketing efforts are reaching optimum levels, contact one of our legal marketing experts here.
How to Craft a Drip Email Campaign from Scratch in a Day
Drip email campaigns: law firms either hate them or love them. (If you need a quick refresher course, a drip email campaign is a series of automated emails sent out either at predetermined intervals or when triggered by the recipient’s behavior, such as opening a message in the series.)
A number of attorneys are achieving great success with these automated email streams. Others have not adopted the legal marketing strategy at all. Most law firms, though, fall in between the two extremes—they have played with drip email campaigns in the past, either created internally or through an attorney marketing partner, or they are currently dabbling in email marketing without any strategic plan. Unfortunately, these scattered approaches lead to mediocre results at best.
Consistent, automated emails campaigns are absolutely integral to any law firm’s success today, from nurturing leads into clients and providing better client service to generating more referrals for a larger caseload with less marketing spend. The biggest obstacle that most attorneys have to implementation is that they have no idea where to start.
In this guide, we will delve into how attorneys can write an email drip campaign in a single day and be well on their way to engaging more clients with marketing automation. This article—part one of the guide—shares fundamental knowledge that you need to know about attorney email marketing before beginning. It is designed to help you:
- Understand the importance of email marketing and automation in law firms today
- Estimate your return on investment (ROI)
- Learn strategies for increasing email engagement rates
- Develop a strong foundation and good habits for all attorney email drip campaigns (ideal for law firms that are new to email marketing and automation)
Part two will focus on actually writing the email messages. Additionally, the piece will share psychological strategies that make emails more appealing and share examples of well-written campaigns. All in all, this how-to guide provides a comprehensive road map for developing your first drip email campaign from scratch in a single day. Let’s get started.
Why Attorneys Need to Invest in Email Marketing and Automation
Email is a powerhouse in the marketing world. Forrester Research reports that 90% of email messages reach the intended recipient’s inbox, while only 2% of Facebook fans will stumble across a law firm’s post in their News Feed. Here are a few more staggering statistics:
- Pew Research claims that more than 90% of online adults utilize email
- 83% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers employ email newsletters as part of their content marketing strategy, according to Content Marketing Institute
- Campaign Monitor estimates an average of $44 returned for every $1 spent on email marketing
- The Direct Marketing Association and Demand Metric determined that email achieves an ROI of 122%, much higher than other marketing strategies
While email marketing used to be considered a sleazy tactic, the times have long since changed. If your law firm isn’t including it in your broader attorney marketing strategy, you are missing out on massive returns.
Of course, email marketing in and of itself is not a magic bullet; the strategy must be backed by competent, high-quality service that ensures loyal clients (and positive online reviews), as well as a comprehensive marketing plan that ensures resources are dedicated down the right avenues.
Email achieves an ROI of 122%, much higher than other marketing strategies.
Once those pieces are in place, however, your law firm can expect to see significant ROI on each drip email campaign. For instance, let’s say that you spend $200 to develop each email message of a five-message campaign, for a total of $1,000 spent. If your retainer is $2,000, then converting just one lead into a client pays for the entire drip email campaign and more.
The key to success is saying the right things to the right leads at the right time. We will discuss this next.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
Before writing a word, it is essential to know your audience. Without understanding your potential clients through and through, your email messages are sure to fall on deaf ears.
Therefore, consider these questions before moving on to the next step:
- What situation or challenge would make a prospect reach out to your law firm?
- How can my legal practice help to resolve these specific pain points? What would their lives look like afterward?
- What are your prospective clients’ values and what kind of content would they find valuable?
- How can my law firm add value to their lives?
- What could I say or do to build trust with recipients?
- What is my audience demographic?
Answering the questions above at the start of each drip email campaign not only helps to get into your audience’s mindset, but also ensures that you are focused on appealing to the right kind of lead that can result in new business.
BONUSES: Learn more about obtaining higher-quality leads in our blog article. Then, find out how to qualify leads and land better clients with our step-by-step guide.
Step 2: Understand the Structure of a Great Marketing Email
Typically, the basic structure of an attorney marketing email includes:
- “From” name
- Subject line
- Greeting
- Brief message
- Call to action (CTA)
- Closing
- Optional: postscript
- Contact information
“From” Name
This is the name that recipients see in the sender field when the email pops into their inbox. Though you may be tempted to designate this as your law firm’s name, consider taking a more personal approach. Try “Mike Johnson, ABC Law Firm,” for instance. Nearly 70% of U.S. recipients claim to base their decision to open an email on the name in the ‘From’ field, according to Campaign Monitor, so putting a human face behind your legal practice could make the difference between them ignoring or opening your emails.
Nearly 70% of recipients claim to decide whether to open an email on the name in the ‘From’ field.
Subject Line
One of the most important elements of any email, the subject line is responsible for both informing recipients about your message’s content and convincing them to read. The more valuable your email seems, the greater the chance of a recipient clicking to open. Competition for attention is fierce—this should be one of the areas where you focus the most attention.
Research shows that subject lines possessing the following characteristics perform the best:
- Snappy snippets: Although there isn’t a hard and fast correlation between fewer characters and higher open rates, shorter subject lines can be more appealing on mobile devices with limited screen space. With approximately 56% of all messages now being opened on mobile devices, according to Litmus, shorter subject lines (35-38 characters for the iPhone oriented in portrait mode) may lead to a significantly higher open rate.
- Clear value: This is research-backed common sense. If recipients don’t instantly see the value of stopping their day to read your email messages, they won’t do it. Clearly communicate the benefit of your email within the subject line to hook readers.
- Personalization: Adding in the recipient’s name or geographic area can make the email feel tailored to each prospect, thereby increasing interest and engagement.
Mailchimp reports that emails within the legal industry achieve an average open rate (the percentage of emails opened out of the total number delivered to inboxes) of 21.33%, meaning that you can expect roughly 1 in every 5 recipients to open an email from your law firm at any given time. Should you experience a much lower open rate on your drip email campaign, subject lines should be one of the first things to adjust and test.
If recipients don’t instantly see the value of stopping their day to read your messages, they won’t do it. Clearly communicate the benefit within the subject line.
Greeting
Many marketers simply stick with the reader’s first name but again, it is always best to match your brand and your contacts’ expectations. If recipients would be offended with the use of their first name, stick with a more formal “Mr. Smith” or avoid using names in your greeting altogether.
Brief Message
This is the body of your email. In most cases, short messages perform better than long ones for the simple reason that people are busy and won’t take the time to read lengthy paragraphs. Use short, concise sentences to maintain reader interest and cultivate momentum through to the end of the message.
Regarding design, keep in mind that statistic above—more than half of all emails will be viewed on smartphones and tablets. Keep the design simple for smaller screens and don’t be afraid to experiment with text-only emails to avoid image clutter.
CTA
Each message should include a targeted call to action. It can be repeated or rephrased multiple times but an email shouldn’t try to convince readers to take more than one action, such as calling your law firm for a consultation.
Closing
Quickly wrap things up at the end of your message. Feel free to use the individual’s name that you put in the “From” field and mention your law firm’s name as well.
Optional: Postscript
Including a P.S. after your message taps into the ways that our brains work: humans have limited attention spans so we tend to remember the first and last bits of what we read. This occurs with subject lines, calls to action, and email messages themselves. Key into this mental habit by writing a postscript into your message to reiterate your call to action, such as a hyperlinked “P.S. Don’t forget to download your free 100-page personal injury e-book now!”
Contact Information
Let your readers know how they can reach you directly by phone, email, or online. Just be sure that someone is manning the phone lines, email accounts, and social media profiles that you mention in this footer area.
A Brief Word About Email Personalization
Personalization is key for email marketing success in today’s landscape, where prospects are looking for the brands they truly connect with among the dozens of emails that they receive every day. The average open rate for emails with personalized copy is more than 18%, compared to just 13.1% for generic emails, according to Statista.
Note that personalization doesn’t just mean inserting the recipient’s first name at the beginning of the message. Rather, personalization should be a comprehensive attitude to attorney email marketing, from crafting subject lines that appeal to each demographic of recipient to curating email copy targeted to the subject matter they are interested in.
The average open rate for emails with personalized messages is more than 18%, compared to just 13.1% for generic emails.
Look for ways to tailor the message elements mentioned above without pushing too hard to connect with prospects. Recipients will notice if you try to force a connection to “sell” them.
Step 3: Determine Your Purpose
There are many different types of attorney marketing campaigns, such as:
- Introduction: Ideal for after a new prospect opts into your email newsletter, for instance
- Top-of-mind: Check-in emails that share content and news in order to continually keep your legal practice’s name in front of recipients
- Referral: Designed to promote client referrals from past clients
- Cold lead / Reengagement: Perfect for reconnecting with recipients who have not engaged with your law firm throughout a period of time (such as not opening any of your law firm’s emails within the past 3 months)
Each type of drip email campaign can be customized to your needs and resources. For instance, you can write a 10-email sequence or a smaller 5-email campaign, and even combine types of campaigns such as promoting referrals within your top-of-mind emails. This freedom provides the flexibility to create tailored campaigns, but it also means that you must set out with a clear objective in mind or risk creating a muddled campaign with no clear objective.
Step 4: Diagram Your Drip Email Campaign
Next, diagram the email sequence. Determine how many messages will be involved and when they will go out. This drip email campaign from Pardot is a great example of a simple email drip sequence diagram based on the recipient’s behavior (as opposed to a predetermined schedule):
When creating a drip email campaign based on a preset schedule, it can be difficult to know how often to contact recipients. Reach out too often and you’re annoying or invasive. Reach out too late and your competition engages the prospect first.
Here are a few helpful rules of thumb regarding campaign timing and frequency:
- Respond at lightning speed: If someone opts into your email list or downloads a piece of content, they should receive a response email within minutes. According to InsideSales.com, up to 50% of sales go to the business that responds to a prospect first.
- Connect a handful of times per month: Marketing Sherpa reports that more than 60% of recipients enjoy getting promotional emails every week. Two emails per month is the sweet spot for open rates, according to the Database Marketing Institute. Start out in the neighborhood of 1-4 times per month for emails like top-of-mind campaigns and attorney email newsletters.
- Test various times and frequencies for your audience: Ultimately, the best way to discover how often your recipients prefer to receive communications is to ask recipients, and then develop campaigns and test performance. If you experience a high unsubscribe rate when contacting recipients 3 times a month, switch to bi-weekly and assess the impact.
Up to 50% of sales go to the law firm that responds to a prospect first.
In part two of this guide, we will explore writing a five-message Nurturing drip email campaign designed for prospects who download a piece of content—in this instance, a personal injury e-book about car accident injuries from a personal injury law firm’s website. It is intended to prompt the recipients into calling the legal practice for a complimentary consultation or scheduling a consultation online. This diagram for this e-book nurturing campaign looks like this:
Expert email marketing tip: During this planning phase of an drip email campaign, draw your sequence out by hand like the series above—don’t just map it mentally! You will want to refer to this document as you write in order to stay on track and avoid confusion.
If you don’t have time to diagram or develop a drip email campaign, try the James Legal CRM, which automates prospect follow-up (and sends out killer, specialty-specific content!) as well as review solicitation.
Keep in mind that this is just a basic, foundational campaign to iterate upon for your particular prospects. In many cases, and in certain legal specialties, it may take a dozen touchpoints over the course of several months to nurture a prospect into a client. Recipients may not be ready to commit to pursuing their issue just yet and need much more information from you before deciding whether to call your legal practice.
Keep contacting recipients using varied campaigns to appeal to their needs and don’t give up on unresponsive prospects after just one drip email campaign. 80% of people require 5 follow-ups after initial contact, according to The Marketing Donut.
80% of people require 5 follow-ups after initial contact.
Step 5: Define Success and Determine Which Metrics to Track
Indicators of a “successful” drip email campaign could include:
- High open rate: the percentage of recipients who opened their email message out of all emails delivered to inboxes
- Significant click through rate: the percentage of people clicking the link within your email (to call your law firm or to schedule a consultation after landing on your “Book a Consultation” landing page, for instance)
- Low bounce rate on your webpage: the percentage of website visitors who leave your attorney website after viewing just one page
- Low unsubscribe rate: the percentage of people who opt out of your email messages
Of course, the ultimate metric of drip email campaign success is the number of new or repeat clients coming into your law firm, and the amount of revenue produced compared to the total cost of the campaign. However, the elements above can indicate that you’re on the path toward success (or demonstrate where to improve) and may therefore be important metrics to measure.
When developing a new drip email campaign, always set a realistic performance goal, determine your successful campaign milestone, and decide which metrics to measure in order to judge progress throughout the life of the campaign.
Step 6: Writing the Email Copy
Now that you understand how to develop a great campaign, it’s time to explore actually writing an attorney marketing campaign. We will return to this in part two of this guide, soon to be released on the Optimized Attorney & Attorney Marketing blog.
While you’re waiting for the guide, download our free prospect content for 4 legal specialties: bankruptcy, criminal, family, and personal injury.
With an average return on investment (ROI) of $44 for every $1 spent, email marketing is a necessity for law firms of all sizes in today’s digital marketing landscape. Therefore, in part 1 of this how-to manual, we set the stage for producing a email drip campaign —an automated series of messages—from scratch.
(If you have not yet read the first part of the Email Drip Campaign guide, you can find it here on our attorney marketing blog.)
We laid the foundation for a successful email marketing strategy for lawyers, detailing the anatomy of a well-written email and explaining how to diagram your first email drip campaign. The second part of this guide picks up where the first left off: at the writing stage, where you craft the messages that will go out to leads (note that this guide starts at step 6, as part one of the guide covers steps 1 through 5).
In this how-to handbook, we will cover exactly how to write attorney marketing emails that make recipients want to open and read, as well as how to nurture those essential relationships down the funnel into becoming clients.
As mentioned in part 1 of this guide, we will explore writing a five-message New Lead Nurturing email drip campaign designed for first-time prospects who download a piece of content, such as a personal injury e-book about car accident injuries. The diagram for our e-book nurturing campaign is as follows:
In the subsequent material, we will explain how to write each email in the series outlined above. By the end of How to Craft a Email Drip Campaign from Scratch in a Day: Part 2, you should be able to develop your own email in just a few hours.
Disclaimer: All emails should comply with CAN-SPAM laws such as enabling recipients to unsubscribe at any point. Be sure to review all regulations prior to developing and launching any email campaign to ensure compliance.
Step 6a: Write Email #1
Topic: Content Delivery and Thank You
Timing: Within 5 minutes of the prospect’s opt-in
Because this email series is triggered by downloading a personal injury e-book about car accidents, the first email delivers the e-book along with an introductory message from your law firm. This may be the first touchpoint between you and your potential client, so put your best foot forward: deliver their content within minutes of your lead providing their email address.
According to Harvard Business Review, law firms that contact leads within an hour of receiving leads’ information are nearly 7 times as likely to qualify them as law firms that wait. In fact, these responsive legal practices have a 60x better chance at qualifying leads than legal practices that wait for 24 hours. Don’t delay; ensure that the content delivery email reaches your recipient as soon as possible.
Thank them for their interest and then use this first email opportunity to position your law firm as the premier informational resource for the recipient’s problem—in this case, a car accident that resulted in injuries. At this point in the sales funnel they may not be ready to commit to signing a retainer agreement, but they probably have questions.
Offering the opportunity to speak to one of your staff and get those questions answered immediately is a great way to both demonstrate value to your email recipient and convert them from just another contact to a very warm lead. Your Content Delivery and Thank You email could look like this:
Subject Line: Your e-book: 10 Common Questions About Auto Accidents
Body:
Thomas,
Thank you for your interest in Law Firm’s guide, 10 Common Questions About Auto Accidents! Please click here to instantly download your free e-book (PDF). We hope that you find it helpful.
If you have questions about the guide or are injured and wondering whether you are entitled to receive compensation, speak to our experienced team now at 888-888-8888.
Or, click on the button below to schedule a free initial consultation.
We look forward to assisting you very soon.
Sincerely,
Natalie
Client Service Specialist
Law Firm
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Note: If a recipient clicks through and schedules a consultation, remove them from the email drip campaign and focus instead of getting them on the phone to qualify and convert. This applies to every stage of the sequence.
Step 6b: Write Email #2
Topic: Next Steps and Questions
Timing: 1 day after opt-in
If your lead either calls your law firm or clicks through to your website to schedule an online consultation after the first email, that is fantastic. Have a team member qualify them to judge their promise as a potential client and then remove them from the email drip campaign (you can shuttle them off to another campaign depending on where the qualification conversation goes).
However, in most cases, leads need to be contacted more than once in order to prompt action. Perhaps they aren’t ready to make the leap, are simply busy and they didn’t read your personal injury e-book, or they scanned through and then got distracted before reaching out to your law firm. (Tip: If you’re having trouble with leads going cold after your first interaction, download our free booklet, “Solutions to Your Law Firm’s Digital Marketing Problems.”)
The purpose of the second email in this drip campaign is to keep your legal practice top of mind until they do decide to move forward. When that occurs, your law firm is ideally positioned to jump on the opportunity and gain the contact’s business.
Therefore, this second email should be delivered approximately one day after the prospect downloads the personal injury e-book. While you do not want to hassle contacts, a follow-up email within 24 hours ensures that you reach them again during this golden period of interest, when their problem is still fresh.
Reach out and ask how you can be of service. Consider:
- How can you add value?
- What do they need? What negative emotions are they struggling with and how can you address them?
- What kinds of questions can you proactively answer?
Some attorneys might want to push for a consultation or send over a list of 10 reasons why their law firm is better than the competition, but very few prospects will respond positively to these types of aggressive marketing tactics. At this stage, it is much more beneficial to build trust by focusing on recipients and their needs instead of you and your legal practice.
Additionally, use this message to ease their worries or assumptions—briefly explain the next one to two steps so recipients know what to expect when reaching out to your law firm. For example, review this Next Steps and Questions sample email:
Subject Line: Get your personal injury questions answered.
Body:
Thomas,
Yesterday you received our e-book, 10 Common Questions About Auto Accidents. Now that you have had a chance to read through, do you have any questions that we can answer?
Our personal injury team is available now at 888-888-888. In this initial consultation, we will answer your most pressing questions about car accident injuries, and determine whether you may be entitled to fair compensation from a negligent party.
We can also walk you through what NOT to do to avoid sabotaging your potential personal injury case.
Call Us Now: 888-888-8888
Sincerely,
Natalie
Client Service Specialist
Law Firm
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Step 6c: Write Email #3
Topic: Testimonial/Social Proof
Timing: 7 days after opt-in
Email #3 in the new lead nurturing series utilizes social proof—in this case, the approval and recommendations of previous clients—to strengthen your brand, build trust, and convince prospects to give your law firm a chance.
According to BrightLocal’s Consumer Review Survey:
- 83% of people trust online recommendations as much as those from family and friends
- More than 70% of prospective clients report that positive reviews increase their trust in a local law firm
These external findings align with our own experience at Optimized Attorney; our Online Reputation Management (ORM) software has helped attorneys build a stash of positive online reviews that significantly increased their caseload. Loren Etengoff, a Washington-based personal injury lawyer, has more than doubled his caseload. 9 out of every 10 new clients say that they reached out to his personal injury practice after seeing the positive online reviews generated by the James ORM tool.
Social proof undoubtedly pushes prospects further along the sales pipeline and closer to contacting your law firm… without having to “hard sell” them on the idea. In email #3, leverage the power of social proof by training the spotlight on some of your most powerful testimonials. For instance:
Subject Line: “I received $10k in injury compensation.” Words from Law Firm’s clients.
Body:
Thomas,
If you were injured in a car accident, the person responsible should be held accountable. However, we know firsthand that receiving fair compensation is easier said than done, and it can be a scary, stressful, and frustrating process.
That is why we do what we do. At Law Firm, our priority is easing your fears and stresses while handling all legal necessities on your behalf, so you can focus on getting well. The greatest reward is hearing what our clients—like Bob and Maura, below—say about us:
“I consider myself lucky to have found Law Firm after being struck by a car while jogging. They were professional, communicative, and helpful through every step of the process. Because of them, I was able to receive the compensation I deserved.”
—Bob, Law Firm client
“Law Firm was a godsend. After I hurt my back in a car accident, I didn’t know where to turn. I called Law Firm and they handled everything! I ended up receiving $10,000 in compensation for my injury and I can’t thank Law Firm enough!”
—Maura, Law Firm client
Call us today to find out if we can help you receive compensation like we assisted Bob and Maura.
Get A Free Case Evaluation: 888-888-8888
Sincerely,
Natalie
Client Service Specialist
Law Firm
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Step 6d: Write Email #4
Topic: Limited Time Content Offer
Timing: 13 days after opt-in
By this point, your new lead has received: a piece of valuable content from you (a personal injury e-book about common questions after a car accident), received a follow-up email that offered a risk-free legal consultation and the opportunity to ask pressing questions, and finally, proof from past clients about your law firm’s reputability and standards of service.
Ideally, they are warming up to the possibility of working with your attorney team to pursue their personal injury case and need yet another small nudge to keep the momentum going. Other possibilities at this stage in your email drip campaign include: the recipient has not opened any of your messages thus far, or they have opened one or two but haven’t clicked through to call or visit your landing page (a page on your law firm website dedicated to a specific objective, such as convincing a prospect to call for a consultation).
A limited time content offer addresses both possibilities by injecting a sense of urgency and scarcity. Extend a high-value piece of content that they will not be able to resist—a 100-page personal injury handbook that is only available for the following 24 hours, for instance. Experian found that when compared to typical emails without urgency, emails that conveyed a sense of urgency achieved:
- 14% greater open rates
- Nearly 60% higher click through rates
- 2x the number of conversions
Just be sure to mention this urgent, valuable deal in the email subject line. An “urgency and scarcity” email could read like this:
Subject Line: 100-page personal injury book—free for 24 hours only!
Body:
Thomas,
If you’ve been injured in a car accident, you probably wished for a manual that walked you through what to do afterward. Good news—our 100-page e-book does just that.
It is called “I Was Injured In An Accident. What Do I Do Now?” and it’s FREE to download—but only for the next 24 hours.
Don’t miss out on your complimentary copy! Click the image or button below to download it now.
Then, call our experienced personal injury team at 888-888-8888 to discuss your accident and find out whether you are entitled compensation for injuries.
Sincerely,
Natalie
Client Service Specialist
Law Firm
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Step 6e: Write Email #5
Topic: Testimonial/Social Proof
Timing: 19 days after opt-in
The final email in this nurturing campaign, email #5 provides more social proof to continue to build trust. Make sure that this email is different from email #3 and don’t be afraid to get creative.
For instance, embed a testimonial video created by your law firm. Prospects love video content—in fact video is so appealing that it is set to make up 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020.
A social proof email containing a testimonial video could look something like this:
Subject Line: “I received the money I deserved after my car accident.”
Body:
Thomas,
You are busy so this will just take a minute. We wanted to share what a few of our clients have said about working with Law Firm after being injured in car accidents.
(If you can’t view the video below, please watch it here.)
Law Firm’s mission is to treat every injury victim with respect and assist them in receiving the compensation they deserve. If you’ve been hurt, let us help you.
Call us for your free initial consultation today: 888-888-8888.
Sincerely,
Natalie
Client Service Specialist
Law Firm
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If your contact doesn’t open any of the 5 emails in the series, they should be shunted off to a different email drip campaign, such as a reengagement campaign focused on recapturing the lead’s attention.
At Optimized Attorney, we recommend the first email of that campaign to be a simple one that asks: “Do you still need ?” Get right to the point, provide your contact information, and see if you receive a response. This straightforward strategy works!
Step 7: Finalize Subject Lines and Review Email Drip Campaign
After drafting your entire campaign in its entirety, it is time to polish your work starting with the message subject lines. As mentioned in part one of this guide, subject lines significantly affect open rates; with poor subject lines, your messages do not have a great chance of reaching readers, much less converting them into clients.
Go back through at the end of the writing phase and pay particular attention to this element within each of your five messages.
- Do you accurately describe what is inside each message?
- Can you be more concise to appeal to smartphone users, who will only see the first 40 or so characters?
- Do your subject lines demonstrate value (i.e., do they give the reader a reason to stop and open your email?)?
Tinker with these short phrases until they are the best you can possibly make them, and then go back through your entire campaign to ensure that it flows smoothly from start to finish. If possible, ask a colleague to review the drip sequence as well.
Step 8: Position Your Email Drip Campaign for Success
At this point, you should be finished writing your first email drip campaign. This is a milestone accomplishment on the journey toward building a strong email marketing strategy that nurtures leads into clients.
It’s worth mentioning, though, that while great writing is obviously an important part of a successful attorney email drip campaign, it cannot buoy an email sequence alone. Even the most carefully crafted email messages won’t result in a greater number of the right clients without a few essential components in place.
For instance, if your email list is very small or stale, you won’t reach enough of the right people. If your landing pages are poorly designed, website visitors won’t convert into callers. If your support staff doesn’t answer the phone promptly or provide excellent service that builds trust with callers, leads won’t convert into clients.
In other words: email marketing for lawyers should be one part of a comprehensive marketing strategy, and writing highly-converting emails based on the guidelines outlined above should be just a single element of your comprehensive email marketing strategy.
Tip: Learn more about creating fantastic content in our attorney marketing guide here, and dive into 9 ways that lawyers can gather and convert more leads here.
If your law firm doesn’t have the time or resources to develop a multi-faceted law firm marketing strategy, try the James Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. A tool developed specifically for attorneys, the James CRM combines all elements of an ideal law firm marketing package:
- Specialized content that is specialty-specific and branded with your law firm’s name and logo (including a 100-page book to help your legal practice stand out from the crowd when contacting prospective clients)
- Mechanized review solicitation to cache positive online reviews
- Automated prospect follow-up via education email drip campaign (the James Legal CRM also reminds you of important follow-up tasks)
- Simple call tracking to assess how well your support staff is managing incoming prospect calls
- Detailed reports that showcase your return on investment (ROI) and pinpoint areas for improvement
Even with all of these powerful features, your real cost for using the James Legal CRM will most likely be negligible, due to your law firm’s savings and increased revenue.
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