17 Tips For Creating Effective Email Marketing Campaigns For Black Lawyers and Black-Owned Law Firms

Lee Brookes • December 7, 2020

INTRODUCTION

People use emails to connect with friends and relatives. Businesses use it to connect with their customers.

Despite the rise of social media over the past years, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, according to McKinsey.

Email delivers the highest ROI for marketers.

72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email. 17% prefer social media. So, you should be doing email marketing.

Email is a powerful way to connect with Law Firm prospects.

Here we will reveal 17 Tips For Creating Effective Email Marketing Strategies you should be using to generate more leads for your Law Firm.

TIP #1 - Give Something Valuable Away

Popular bloggers often brag about how many emails they’ve collected.

You’ll see something like this:

“10,000 subscribers and counting.”

It’s not because they like the numbers. Huge numbers like that grow their business. In fact, the value of websites these days is measured by how many subscribers they have.

The higher the subscribers count, the higher the value of the site.

The truth is that people don’t give their emails to anyone. They don’t give their emails because they like your website. Except you give them a strong reason to sign up.

The reason should be so powerful that people can’t wait to give you their email addresses.

Offer something so enticing that leaves web users with no choice but to sign up for your list.

That thing must be valuable. That thing could be worth, at least, $1,000 in actual price value depending on your Law Firm's specialization.

TIP #2 - Optimize Your Email Messages For Mobile Experience

Mobile is the future of everything.

The death of desktop is looming. Desktop sales have been dropping for years now.

269.7 million computers were shipped in 2016. This is 6.2% lower than the number sold in 2015.

People are not replacing their old PCs. Instead, they just use their tablets or smartphones.

54% of emails are now opened on mobile. Desktop represents just 19% of all email opens.

If your email messages are not optimized for mobile, people will delete them. That reduces your chances of converting subscribers into clients for your Law Practice.

TIP #3 - Re-engage Inactive Subscribers

It’s often less expensive to target existing clients than new ones.

The same thing applies to Email Marketing.

It’s easier to engage current subscribers, and convert them into referrals, than it is trying to win new subscribers. Present subscribers know a lot more about your Law Firm than new ones.

Nearly all email lists will have some inactive subscribers. It’s normal when some percentage of your subscribers aren’t engaging with your messages.

Those inactive subscribers can still become clients and even refer their friends or family members if you do the right thing.

First, you need to define your own “inactivity.”

For some marketers, a subscriber is inactive if they haven’t opened their emails in the past six months.

Some marketers will tell you their “inactive” period is three months. For others, even less or more. We believe, between three to six months is a good timeframe.

After defining your “inactivity” period, it’s time to start engaging inactive subscribers.

How do you do that?

You can re-engage inactive subscribers by conducting polls and surveys. Promise them something in advance and make sure you send free gifts as a reward for completing the polls or surveys. That will increase conversions. The gift will motivate them to act. Polls and surveys also enable you to learn more about inactive subscribers.

TIP #4 - Segment Your Subscribers

Segmenting your email lists helps you get better open and click rates.

Why does email segmentation work?

If you have 1,000 people subscribed to your email lists, most of them have different needs and interests.

Let’s assume you are a Law Firm that specializes in Personal Injury and Long-Term Disability, and thus collecting emails.

Some subscribers would be much more interested in learning about their personal injury claims and the steps they need to take, while others may want to learn the processes and procedures concerning long-term disability.

Even if you have a Personal Injury and Long-Term Disability blog, some subscribers would be interested in learning about Divorce, or filing for Bankruptcy.

You can’t satisfy all your subscribers with a piece of content because they have different interests.

Email segmentation makes it possible to keep, at least, 80% of your subscribers happy.

How?

It helps you send content that each subscriber is only interested in reading.

MailChimp conducted a research on about 2,000 MailChimp users who sent about 11,000 segmented campaigns to almost 9 million recipients.

They found that segmented email campaigns generated 14.31% more opens, 10.64% more unique opens, and 100.95% more clicks than non-segmented email campaigns.

TIP #5 - Use Email Marketing Automation

According to a report by Forrester, B2B marketers who use marketing automation increase their sales pipeline by an average of 10%.

Email automation is a subset of marketing automation.

Email automation will not only convert leads into prospects. It will delight existing clients and convert them into brand ambassadors where they will generate referrals for you.

There are a lot of good email automation platforms like Get Response and Wishpond.

TIP #6 - Personalize Your emails

Personalizing your email messages will increase engagement.

It will make your emails more relevant and useful to current and prospective clients.

Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, but 70% of Law Firm's do not use them.

If you are not personalizing your marketing emails, you are missing a lot of sales opportunities.

Personalization is not just about using people’s names in messages. It is way beyond that.

TIP #7 - Occasionally Send Out Exclusive Content

Exclusivity is a powerful marketing tactic that many Legal Marketing Pros have been using for years.

Apple uses it. That is one of the reasons it’s the most valuable company in the world despite the fact that it only has a tiny market share in the smartphone industry.

With exclusivity, you can get more email subscribers and generate more sales.

The idea can be creating an exclusive content available only to your email subscribers.

It can also be creating a product that is only open to your email list.

You can use exclusivity to build a deeper connection with your email subscribers.

TIP #8 - A/B Test Everything. Button, Color, Design, and Format.

Your Law Firm's Internal Digital Marketing Team or your Agency of choice, should be A/B testing your Law Firm website designs, as well as your Law Firm's Facebook Ads, Google AdWords Ads, and landing pages. The same thing applies to Email Marketing.

You should continually be a/b testing your email messages.

Here are the things to a/b test:

Call to action (Example: “Book Your Consultation” vs. “Call Us Today”)
Subject lines
Testimonials (or no testimonials)
The layout of the message (single column or two column or different placements for different elements)
Personalization
Body test
Headline
Closing text
Images
Test different offers

Note: Don’t test the whole list at once.

Pick one or two elements and see how that improves conversions before testing the next two or more elements.

It’s important you know why you’re testing before you do a test.

You may test the headline for open rates. You may test the image for conversion rates. And you may test the call-to-action text for click-through rates.

TIP #9 - Add Urgency To Your Emails

If your emails put recipients under pressure to act, you’ll convert more subscribers into prospective clients.

For a long time, digital marketers have been using phrases like “Act now,” “Hurry,” and “Only a few items left” to convert web users.

Urgency is a key feature of the human brain. Urgent situations make us act very quickly. Amazon is a great example that uses urgency a whole lot.

TIP #10 - Use Social Proof To Sell On Emails

The concept of social proof has existed since the beginning of human beings. Our ancestors learned important survival skills by emulating and imitating each other.

For example, you see a restaurant with zero reviews on Yelp. Then you see another restaurant with hundreds of reviews on Yelp.

Which restaurant are you likely to visit? I have no doubt that it’s the restaurant with lots of reviews.

Social proof has a huge influence on which Law Firm people will choose to handle their respective claims and legal cases.

Digital marketers use social proof on almost every marketing channel, and email is not an exception. Your Email Marketing messages is a powerful channel to use social proof too.

TIP #11 - Use Cliff-Hangers

Cliffhangers are mostly used in movies and fiction books.

But smart Legal Digital Marketers are starting to tap into the power of cliffhangers.

What is a cliffhanger?

Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

“A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction.”

Cliffhangers are what happens at the end of a book chapter, or an episode that leaves you in suspense.

TV stations use it to keep you seated and not touch that dial.

To make a subscriber open your next email and be excited to open the next and next ones, you need cliffhangers.

If subscribers are not feeling excited to open your emails, it will be difficult to keep them as active subscribers for a long time.

TIP #12 - Write Inviting Welcome Emails

When someone subscribes to your Law Firm's email list, you should welcome them with an inviting message.

The welcome message is like the first impression of how you’ll treat them through emails. If you don’t treat them amazingly right the first time, you risk getting ignored when you start sending messages.

You need to make your welcome message have a lasting impression on new subscribers.

TIP #13 - Use One Call-To-Action in Each Email

A call-to-action (CTA) is the button or link you put inside your email that asks prospects to take a desired action, whether that be to book a consultation or fill out your instant case evaluator.

CTAs can be anything like “Book Now,” “Click here to get started,” “Click here to schedule your appointment,” “Get an Instant Case Evaluation.”

Conversion, revenue, and profit for your Law Firm, can all depend on the effectiveness of your CTA.

Your CTA should be appealing to your email subscribers.

How many CTAs should you have per message?

ONE!

You can repeat the CTA two or three times because people’s attention spans are short.

But when you have different CTAs that ask for different things, it becomes difficult to convert prospects. You won’t be helping subscribers buy your product when you do that.

They would probably become confused on which action to take.

Imagine emailing a busy person and asking them to do many things at the same time. Well, they are unlikely to do anything.

TIP #14 - Use the word “YOU”

The word “you” is a powerful word. It makes a lot of sense to add it to your Law Firm's Email Marketing campaigns.

Gary Halbert, one of the finest copywriters the world has ever seen, used the word “you” to get his direct mails opened.

According to Halbert:

“Everybody in the world divides his mail into two piles which I call the A-Pile and the B-Pile.

The A-Pile contains letters that are, (or appear to be), personal.

The B-Pile contains everything else: Bills, catalogs, brochures, printed announcements, envelopes that obviously contain a sales message, and so on.

Now listen up: The most important thing you can ever do when creating a direct mail promotion is to make sure your letter gets in the A-Pile!”

Use the word “you” if you want subscribers to open your email.

TIP #15 - Integrate Email and Social Media

Email Marketing for your Law Firm, is even more powerful when combined with Social Media Marketing.

Most of your email subscribers are on social media too. And keep in mind that your competitors are on social media.

Getting on social media to connect with your subscribers gives you an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with them.

People don’t make buying decisions based on the information they get from a single medium. They combine different mediums like email + social media + reviews + blogs + influencers.

Therefore, expanding your connection points with subscribers beyond email is highly recommended for your Law Firm.

If you’re publishing on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you should ask your email subscribers to follow you there as well.

TIP #16 - Continue Getting New Emails

According to Corey Dilley, the marketing manager at Unbounce:

“Unbounce’s email list is the biggest asset we have for driving new acquisitions.

Why?

Email marketing consistently generates 80-90% of our landing page traffic when we launch a new campaign, piece of content or product feature.

Email allows us to engage our audience in a creative, personalized way that blog posts or tweets can’t.” – Corey Dilley

Joe Pulizzi, the founder of Content Marketing Institute, confessed that he regretted not building his email list earlier in the process of developing his company.

The emails of prospects and customers are the biggest digital marketing asset any Law Firm can have.

Top web companies like Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Uber rely so much on the emails of their users.

Your email is the only thing you have 100% control over.

Facebook may stop sending you traffic next year.

Google may come up with an algorithm update that penalizes your Law Firm blog.

Instagram may get beaten by a new up and coming Law Firm, requiring you to build up your profile and reputation on the new platform. That means starting from the scratch all over again.

You don’t own Facebook, Google, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Fortunately, you own your Law Firm's email list.

With email, you can always reach out to your dedicated list of past or current clients who care about you and what you do.

But emails get depleted over time.

Some people will stop caring about what you do and write about.

Some people will stop using their emails and create new ones.

And sadly, some people will die.

All these reduce the quality of your list.

If you’d built up a list of 10,000 email subscribers last year, it would be worth less today.

That is why you need to keep getting new emails from time to time.

Never stop building your email list.

The moment you stop, the moment your list starts losing its value.

TIP #17 - Send Emails At The Right Time

Getting people to open, click-through and share your Law Firm's marketing emails creates a snowball effect.

It leads to more traffic, more subscribers, and more client conversions. You can get all these by sending your emails at the right times.

The right times are when your current subscribers are likely to open, read and visit your website. And even share the content with their network on social media.

According to CoSchedule, the best times to send emails are 6:00 am, 10:00 am, 2:00 pm, 8:00 pm, 10:00 pm and 12:00 pm.