Email Marketing: the Path to Increased Conversions

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that aims to reach current and potential customers through email contact.

Broadly speaking, every commercial email sent out to an individual or a group of people can be considered email marketing, from an email thanking someone for providing their contact information to an e-newsletter. Successful email marketing, however, involves the creation of an integrated campaign where you stay connected with current and potential clients in a way that encourages clients to use your services or recommend you to their friends.

Why Consider Email Marketing

Email marketing has many significant advantages for law firms that incorporate this form of marketing into their efforts to reach clients online. Email marketing is less costly and less time consuming than other forms of marketing, and it allows law firms to reach customers with more timely and relevant messaging.

Email marketing makes it possible for marketing messages to be personalized to recipients, and it allows for more frequent communications than many other marketing methods. You can track user engagement with your emails easily, and the shareable format of emails makes it simple for users to send valuable content that you provide on to friends and family so you can reach a wider customer base.

Best Practices for Email Marketing
For email marketing to be effective, you need to have a comprehensive plan for who to target, how to run your email marketing campaigns, and how to track responsiveness on the part of email recipients. While there are many marketing factors to consider, a good first rule of thumb is to be courteous. You don’t want your emails to become a bother for recipients, so you don’t want to overload their inboxes or send them irrelevant material.

Getting your emails noticed amidst a crowded inbox can be challenging. As you craft your email marketing campaign, you’ll want to make sure you have engaging subject lines that encourage recipients to open the emails and check out what you have to say. Personalization can be helpful when you are running a marketing campaign, as users are 22 percent more likely to open emails with subject lines that are addressed to their first name. You also want to keep the subject short and to-the-point.

Once the user has opened the email, the content inside should be valuable. Don’t make the information overly sales-oriented but rather impart something useful so the reader wants to forward the email and wants to keep coming back for more. You also need to make sure the content of your message matches the subject line, as no one wants to be tricked into opening an email.

You’ll also want to include a creative call to action encouraging the reader to click through or to contact you. You can include your call to action towards the beginning or the end of your message and you may want to put it in a bright, bold color to capture attention.
Finally, you should give your contacts the ability to unsubscribe from future email campaigns. That’s not just a best practice, but mandated by law.

Get Started with Email Marketing Today

When you’re ready to get started with email marketing, you should consider one of the many email marketing services that are available to streamline the process and make it easy to integrate your e-marketing efforts into your online campaign.

These services are typically very user-friendly and offer a range of features including built-in templates which allow you to easily create newsletters and other campaigns. Most services also include the ability to automate and track your emails and segment your clients and prospects into different lists so you can send the most relevant information to specific contacts.

The Academy is excited to be integrating MailChimp into our Member sites. MailChimp is one example of an email marketing service which sends more than 10 billion emails monthly on behalf of users. By using it, our Members will be able to automate follow-up communication with prospective clients as well as delivery of newsletters, seminar invitations, and so much more. You’ll need to find a system that works for you and a marketing method that makes sense given your firm’s goals, but it’s certainly worth the small investment of your time and effort.

Rita Chaires
Director, Web and SEO Services
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (800) 846-1555
www.aaepa.com