email marketing — Legal Practice Pro

7 Ways To Profitably Use Email Marketing In Your Law Firm

August 10, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

One of the most popular posts on Legal Practice Pro (back when it was on the old URL) was about using autoresponders in the law office as a marketing tool. In that post I detailed all the cool things your could do with AWeber, my autoresponder of choice. That post was three years ago, and you’d think I would have gotten tired of AWeber by now, moved onto something else.

After all, three years ago we didn’t have Twitter or Facebook. Blogging was cutting edge but by no means as prevalent as it now is. Heck, WordPress was in the stone age and lots of people were thinking that Blogger was a pretty nifty way to go.

But for all my “do the new thing,” thinking, email marketing – particularly with AWeber – is still a critical part of how I market my bankruptcy practice (including all the non-bankruptcy consumer law stuff). Why? Because with AWeber you can:

create a contact form on your website so that whenever someone sends an inquiry, they automatically get an email attaching those DRA disclosures;
build a list of people who are interested in learning more about your services;
create a newsletter to blast out to your entire list once a month by email;
draft an email and see if it’s likely to trip the spam filters;
deliver an ebook, special report or other tractor beam to people who request them – and do it automatically;
send out a blast email to all of your clients (current and former) whenever something interesting happens in the office (such as days on which you’re closed for holidays, when you’re out for vacation, etc.); and
create and send out standard emails to clients at designated times during their case.

I’m sure there are more reasons and ways to use email marketing in your practice, but the upshot is this – at $200 a year, AWeber remeains a steal.

Photo by devilarts.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: email marketing

3 Easy Ways to Grow Your Marketing List

May 26, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

As a bankruptcy lawyer, one of the most important things you can do to promote your practice online is to establish and grow an email marketing list. People who subscribe to your email newsletters and bulletins are genuinely interested in what you have to say, and are the more likely to ultimately hire you or pass along your name and contact information to a friend or family member who can use your help.

Growing an email list is a difficult and frustrating task. They tend to think that website visitors should be obligated to share their contact information, since they are being given useful information in the form of website content. That’s simply not the case. The ability to email visitors is a privilege, not a right… and that privilege has to be earned.

Approached from the right perspective, though, growing a marketing list doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are three easy ways you can earn the privilege of having a responsive list:

Offer a free report in exchange for subscribers’ contact information. Subscribers know you’ll be emailing promotional materials, so they expect to receive something of value for letting you use their inboxes to advertise your practice. The report should contain information that your visitors are hungry for.
Provide an email mini-course to your subscribers.Write a multi-part mini-course about a topic of interest to your subscribers, such as “5 Simple Ways to Reduce Credit Card Debt”. Then, use an autoresponder service such as AWeber to automatically send out one part of the course each day.
Ask other lawyers to tell their subscribers about you. Ask lawyers in other fields (divorce, personal injury, and immigration spring to mind) to mention you when they email their subscribers or send out their newsletter. This helps them to provide greater value for their own subscribers… and as long as you are not in direct competition with them, they’ll be glad to share their subscriber base with you.

What ideas do you have for growing your list of prospects? Share them in the comments area below!

Photo courtesy of m kasahara.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: email course, email list building, email marketing

5 Steps to Effective Email Marketing

May 19, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

Recently, I wrote about the power of using opt-in forms to stay in front of your readers, and to position yourself as an authority in the legal world. If you haven’t already set up an opt-in form to capture your readers’ contact info, this should really be the next thing you do… even before you write another article or blog post. Or before you add another page to your website. Or anything.

Really, it’s that important. I kid you not.

Now, if you have already done this, and you’ve started collecting names and email addresses, you’re probably sitting back wondering, “Okay… now what do I do?”

As I noted above, your email marketing efforts should serve two objectives: First, to make sure your subscribers don’t forget about you and your practice; and second, to cement yourself as THE bankruptcy lawyer in your area.

If your emails don’t serve both objectives, you’re just wasting your time.

Let me explain. You can provide the most beneficial, relevant information in the world… but if your subscribers aren’t opening your emails, they’ll never benefit from your expertise. Conversely, if your emails get opened, but they’re filled with nothing but self-promotional fluff, your subscribers are going to start ignoring you very quickly.

Here are 5 tips that will help you put the “marketing” into your email marketing efforts, while still providing your opt-in subscribers with useful content.

Use email marketing sparingly.When many Internet Marketers (including lawyers – and if you’re marketing online, you’re an Internet Marketer) discover how responsive subscribers can be to email marketing, they start shooting off emails every single day. Yes, your readers want to hear from you. Yes, they’ll be looking forward to the wealth of knowledge you share in each email. But they don’t want to hear from you every day. A good rule of thumb is this: Unless you have information to share that is important and time-sensitive enough to warrant a “special” message, keep your emails to twice per week.
Email consistently. Unless you’re sending out something special, try to schedule your emails to go out on a regular schedule. Autoresponders should be programmed accordingly so that your subscribers come to expect and even rely upon your email showing up.
Spend enough time on email titles. No matter how much you know or hoe much experience you have under your belt, your emails aren’t going to be opened unless their titles catch the eye. Think about exactly how the email will benefit the reader… and distill that into a succinct, attention-grabbing title. Using numbers (“5 Ways to…”) and what’s-in-it-for-me phrases (“How to…”) are excellent for telling why a subscriber should take the time to find out what you have to say.
Pull, don’t push. We all have to make a living, and lawyers do that by selling our services. Your content should naturally lead to the moment when your prospect agrees to become your client, and when money changes hands. Informative, useful content will draw clients to you; writing fluff content that doesn’t answer valuable questions will push them away.
Use email marketing to interact. Most of us tend to think of email marketing as a one way street – I write, you read. To truly draw in subscribers and turn them into paying clients, though, invite them to contribute to the process. Ask your opt-ins to tell what problems they want solved, what information they need, and what goals they want you to help them fulfill. You just might be surprised at the number of responses you get. This not only helps the readers feel valued, but it also helps you tailor your content to more effectively position yourself as the “go to” lawyer for your readers (and their circle of friends, family, and co-workers).

I’ve been using email marketing and autoresponders for the past five years in my bankruptcy practice, and can attest to the fact that when done right – it works like gangbusters. Why? Because it provides a valuable service to my prospects, creates demand for my help, and helps to keep my practice humming.

Photo by Mzelle Biscotte.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: affinity marketing, email marketing, list marketing, opt in

What is an Opt-In… And Why Should You Care?

May 15, 2009 By Jay Fleischman

So you’re blogging to get your name out there as a bankruptcy lawyer, and building a following of readers who care about what you’re saying. That’s great – it feels good to read a heartfelt comment from a reader, thanking you for being a beacon of light in the muddled mess of cyber-info. And you can hope that some of your readers will keep coming back – and maybe even eventually become your client.

If you’re not getting visitors to opt-in, though, you’re missing out on a boatload of opportunities to connect with them.

I’m sure that you’ve seen that little box on a blog or website where you can fill in your name and email address (hint: look to the right of this page and you’ll see what I’m talking about). That’s called an opt-in form. Most of the time, the webmaster or blog owner will offer you some kind of bonus – a report or “how-to” guide, for example – to get your contact information. You get valuable information, and they get your email address, so it’s a winning proposition for everybody.

By voluntarily submitting your contact info, you become an “opt-in”. That means that the owner of the site can send you email without fear of being accused of spam (the email equivalent of telemarketing calls), as long as you’re told how you can opt out.

As a lawyer, why would you want to get your readers’ contact info?

Think about it from a reader’s standpoint for a minute. Let’s say you stumble onto this great blog, and it’s filled with useful, relevant advice that you can actually use. Maybe there are even a few products on the blog that you wouldn’t mind buying at some point.

You’re reading along, and mid-sentence, the phone rings. A potential client is on the other end, so you can’t really let it go to voicemail. So you take the call, meaning to get back to your reading in just a bit. The second you hang up, though, another call comes in… and then it’s time for a consultation… and then you have to be in court an hour later…

You can easily see where this is going. As useful and downright important as that blog was, you were pulled away from it by other obligations. By the time you’ve dealt with all of the phone calls and meetings, you’ve forgotten all about the blog. Maybe you remember a few days later, but then you can’t find it again.

Do you want your prospective clients to forget about you?

I certainly don’t.

This is where the opt-in form becomes such a powerful marketing tool. Offer your readers something of value – for example, a guide to handling credit card debt, or a report showing how to avoid mortgage scams – in exchange for their contact info. People will gladly share their email addresses if they know they’re going to get something useful out of it.

Once a reader has opted in… you don’t have to worry about wandering off and forgetting how to find you again. You can send them newsletters, announcements, email courses, free information …. anything that will benefit your subscriber. You’ll not only keep yourself (and your practice) in front of your readers, but you’ll also become the “go to” attorney because of the wealth of knowledge you share with your opt-in list.