A 15-Point Email Marketing Checklist for Law Firms

It’s easy to get excited about the variety of digital channels available to law firms. From LinkedIn Stories to Google Ads, there are so many tactics that can help you build your brand and grow your practice right from your laptop. Don’t forget about email, though. As one of the lowest cost mediums, email is still proving to be successful as of recently. In fact, this past year, 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement. However, not all email is equal and it’s important to keep in mind specific practices. Follow our 15-point checklist to learn everything you need to know about email marketing for law firms. 

1. Send a Newsletter At Least Once a Month

The main idea behind sending a newsletter is to keep your law firm top of mind with your readers. As a minimum, you should send out a newsletter at least once per month. If you can generate enough relevant content, sending one out weekly should provide even better results.

2. Maintain Consistent Branding

Leverage your brand voice consistently and include visual branded elements such as one color palette. Make sure your logo is visible in every email, use the same fonts, text size, colors, etc. 

3. Take Time to Personalize

It makes sense that emails perform better when they are timely and relevant to the audience. Aside from just using their name in emails, try to tailor content to subjects recipients have shown an interest in. Email marketing for law firms should also be about sending content that your readers will find valuable. Tip: on your “subscribe” form, you can have users select topics they want to learn more about. 

4. Automate Where You Can

While newsletters and one-off campaigns will always have their place in your email marketing strategy, the savviest law firms are starting to set up automatic email campaigns that trigger off of a user’s actions. Check out these 8 marketing automation emails your law firm can set up easily, such as a welcome email for when people sign up for your newsletter.

5. Keep It Short

Remember, the idea is to draw people back to your website. Even if your subject line is enticing, nobody is going to read if they are greeted with a huge block of text when they open the email. Try to provide short, relevant, interesting points to draw readers back to your site for more content and information. Your newsletter should be a sort of digest, not the whole book.

6. Optimize Your Subject Line, and Don’t Forget Preview Text

You know that the subject line is the first impression your potential readers get. Apply the same principles to preview text that will show them what they can find in the email. Try conveying a sense of urgency in your subject line while piquing the reader’s curiosity.

7. Ensure People Can “View in Browser”

At the top of each email, include a “view email in browser” link to ensure that any rendering issues can be resolved by having people click through to a browser. Most email providers will give you this option, so simply choose yes during the creation process. 

8. Make Sure Emails Render Correctly Across All Devices

In 2022, it’s essential to have emails show up properly on a phone. Ensure your email and any landing pages it links to are navigable by phone. Most providers give an option to test deliverability and rendering before sending. 

9. SPAM is the Enemy

One of the worst things that can happen to your email program is for emails to get stuck in a spam filter. That can cause all of your emails to be blocked. Avoid these SPAM trigger words in your subject lines, and always include a functional unsubscribe link, a valid physical mailing address, and a permission/privacy reminder.

10. Keep Your List Clean

That means making sure people on your list actually want to receive information from you. It’s also a good idea not to buy lists, as they can dilute your database quality. More firms are moving to double opt-in processes by giving people the chance to opt-out. For example, once someone subscribes, ask them to verify their email and choose some preferences in the first email you send. 

11. Keep Critical Information and Calls-to-Action Above the Fold

With email marketing, you need to get right to the point. Explain the main value proposition or message at the top of the email. You also want to let people know which action to take before they need to scroll. You can always include more content further down, but give people a chance to click through to the next step near the top. 

12. Keep the Code Clean

If you’re using a plug-and-play email solution, you might not need to worry about this. However, if you’re creating emails in-house or leveraging old templates, you need to remove extra tables or rows and set padding = 0. Avoid Javascript as many email providers will strip it out. 

13. Develop a QA Sheet and Pay Attention to It

When you send a lot of emails, it can be easy to go on auto-pilot and churn out content. It’s important that you document the things to check for before an email goes out the door (spelling, broken links, etc). Share with everyone on your team who sends emails and review it with every email sent. 

14. Test and Test Again

This is how you will develop your own best practices. You can A/B test subject lines, headers, call-to-actions, design, copy, segmentation, day of the week, time of day – really any element of your email program. As you get results, you can document the “winners” and then optimize future emails. 

15. Measure and Report on Your Email Strategy

In order to know if your email marketing is working, you need to monitor and measure. Decide on the metrics you want to measure, and then pull reporting for each send and for time-over-time comparisons. We recommend pulling a comprehensive report of the previous week’s email performance each Monday. Using an email marketing platform like Hubspot will allow you to monitor the metrics of all your email campaigns so you can take an informed approach moving forward.

Takeaway

Email marketing for law firms can be both the easiest and most effective part of your digital marketing strategy. Follow our email marketing checklist for law firms and you’ll be well on your way to optimizing the ROI of your email marketing campaigns. These best practices will help your law firm convert more contacts and leads into clients for lower costs and less effort than other channels.

If you need help with your law firm’s email marketing strategy, contact us for help today. We can streamline and automate your processes while helping you increase the size and loyalty of your email subscribers by delivering highly personalized content to them.

This post has been edited and republished from Oct. 15, 2020.