In addition to recruiting new clients, your law firm’s marketing efforts should focus on forging repeat business and building a high level of trust with your current and potential clients. In fact, maintaining a presence in your clients’ lives should be part of your long-term marketing strategy.
One way to do this is through an email newsletter. When done well, they represent a key component of your marketing strategy — rather than ending up in people’s email spam filter.
3 Ways to Improve Your Legal Newsletter
Make sure they get it
The most important objective for any newsletter is that subscriber actually see it. Unfortunately for many businesses, spam filters and Gmail’s promotions folder have separated the vast majority of commercial email to places where users never look.
However, you can increase your chances of landing in the subscriber’s inbox by doing the following:
- Use a double opt-in form on your firm’s website. A double opt-in form requires the receiver to sign up and confirm their email address. This is helpful in avoiding spam filters because the user has clearly indicated that they want this newsletter.
- Avoid using any sales term in the email’s subject line. Put the emphasis on providing valuable information.
- Use only one or two images. While visuals are important to establishing your brand and making the newsletter easy on the eyes, too many images means it more likely to land in the spam folder.
- Use only two or three links. You want to have a link to your website, but limit the rest. Just like images, too many links will tip off the promotional email filters.
Focus on relevant information
Speaking of filters, they exist for a reason — no one needs more spam in their inbox. The challenge for your firm is to provide information that is relevant to your clients’ needs. Stick with the subjects you know best and develop short, informative articles about them. Tell the subscriber, in simple terms, about the thorniest issues related to your area of practice.
You will want to include a brief, soft call-to-action at the end that reminds users of the services your firm provides. But in general, be more about providing good content than making a sales pitch.
Formatting your legal newsletter
Every legal newsletter should include the following elements:
- Your firm’s logo
- Your firm’s website and contact information
- An informative article on a topic related to your firm’s services
- A catchy headline
- Sub-headers or dividers to break up the text
- An “unsubscribe” link
As you can see, there’s little margin for error. A well-formatted legal newsletter strikes a balance between being aesthetically pleasing while informative enough to not get caught in a spam filter.
Keep these tips in mind as you plan your legal content marketing strategy. And don’t forget — your previous clients are just as important as anyone new you bring through the door.
