270 billion. That’s how many emails are exchanged every single day worldwide. With an estimated 3.7 billion email users in the world, that’s approximately 73 emails per person every day – many of us, myself included, probably receive more than that.

The average email open rate in the legal industry is around 23%. So, if we safely estimate your potential clients and colleagues receive 100 emails a day, they’re only opening 23 of them. It would also be a safe estimate to say that your email marketing efforts may end up in the 77 daily unopened emails.

If email outreach is a large part of your business, getting people to respond to your emails could have a huge impact on your client intake. If email outreach isn’t a large part of your business, it probably should be – even if your current emails gets relatively low open rates, email marketing has shown to deliver one of the highest ROIs.

Ways to Leverage Email Marketing

Many people know the importance of email but don’t know how to fully leverage it beyond one-on-one communication. Before diving into the strategy behind effective emails, we can cover a few of the basic ways in which you can utilize email marketing in your law firm:

• Client interactions: This one may seem obvious, but you can utilize email to keep in touch with your clients even after their trial has finished. This will increase client loyalty and improve the perceived value of your services. At the very least, you should communicate regularly with your clients to keep them updated on their case.
• Automated emails after appointments and form submissions: After a potential client books an appointment or submits a contact form on your website, they should hear from your firm immediately. The simplest way to do this is to set up an automated email that’s delivered to their inbox – you can use this email to acknowledge their submission, provide alternate forms of contact information, or thank them for reaching out and sharing helpful information about your firm (recent blogs, videos, etc.)
• Monthly newsletters: Monthly newsletters are a great way to humanize your brand and engage your online audience. You can send out announcements about your firm, profile various staff members (or clients/referral partners!), share client reviews, or use it as a means to provide them with educational material.

So how do you get people to not only open, but respond, to your emails? Check out these email marketing tips.

1. Integrate data into your email marketing efforts

You need to be tracking your emails. If you’re not incorporating key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates (CTR), or response rates, you’ll have no data to leverage in future email campaigns. Analyzing information such as what subject lines get the best open rates or whether or not including images increases response rates will allow you to iterate and improve your email content.

At the very least, you need to make sure you’re religiously tracking the following on all email campaigns:

• Open Rates
• Click-through Rates
• Bounce Rates
• Response Rates

This will provide insight into not only what content is working, but will let you know when you need to perform some list hygiene if your bounce rates get too high.

2. Keep it short and sweet

Data indicates the ideal subject line is around 65 characters, and the ideal body length is less than 100 words. Shorter emails are proven to get more responses, and they also force you to get your point across faster.

You can also make your emails appear shorter than they are by breaking up paragraphs and spacing out your content – line breaks are more digestible, so we feel like they’re easier to read. So don’t send your potential clients standard paragraphs of 5-6 sentences in an email. Instead, try not to use more than two sentences per line.

3. Personalize your email content

<First Name>, thanks for reaching out!

Personalized emails get 26% higher open rates than non-personalized emails. While most of us know when these emails are automated, people still like to see their own name in something they’re reading. When sending introduction emails, newsletters, or other content, try to include the recipient’s name at least once – it’s even better if you can put it in the subject line.

Using an email marketing platform (like Mailchimp) allows you to easily personalize your content through merge tags, so it requires less manual effort. You can also personalize email content beyond including their first name by ensuring you’re only sending them information that’s relevant to them. By segmenting your email lists, you can ensure you’re only sending the most valuable content. This brings us to our next tip…

4. Create customer-centric content

Audience segmentation is an effective way to ensure every email you send is customer-centric, meaning you’re only sending content that is relevant and valuable to them. You can segment your audience based on case type, age, geography, or demographic.

For example, you could create an email list of all contacts you’ve worked with for car accident cases and send them your latest eBook on highway safety tips.

If your clients or potential clients open an email and find irrelevant information, it’ll reduce the chances they’ll open your next email (or the one after that.)

5. Include a clear CTA

To get more responses, you have to tell people what they need to do. What is the goal you hope to achieve by sending this email? If it’s to get them to book an appointment, make that clear. If it’s to call your office or leave a review for your firm, make that clear.

If you send an email and don’t include a clear call to action, your customers won’t know what you want from them. You should also limit the number of CTAs you include in an email to avoid confusion. This means you should ask them to call you and review your law firm – the requests are conflicting, and they’ll rarely do both.

6. Make your emails visually engaging

Images, videos, and even emojis can liven up your email content and make it more engaging. Incorporating color, rich text formatting (like bolding, underlining, or italicizing important phrases) and other visual elements will make your content more enjoyable to consume. But, make sure you don’t overdo it. Maintain a unified color palette, use a small number of images, or take it easy on the use of emojis.

And, for good measure, never type in all caps lock. IT LOOKS VERY JARRING TO THE EMAIL RECIPIENT.

Most of these visuals can be helpful in moderation, but overloading your emails with visual content can slow down loading speed and make your email more likely to end up in the spam folder.

Mastering the Art of Email Marketing

As an attorney, email marketing can be an effective way to generate leads – but only if you send effective emails. By incorporating the 6 tips we’ve covered, you’ll be able to see an increase in open rates and better email conversion rates overall. The best way to maintain a successful email marketing strategy is to make sure you always take a data-driven approach to email.

If you’d like to find out what our secret formula for email subject lines is, feel free to reach out to the team at Crisp Video Group. We send approximately 75,000 emails a month, so we’ve learned a thing or two about email marketing.