Continuing the National Law Review’s overview of the Good2bSocial digital marketing certification, this week we look to Email Marketing for law firms. Email Marketing is a critical element of law firm digital marketing, and the Good2bSocial Digital Marketing Certification provides an overview of key principles such as Email Segmentation, A/B Testing and Email Marketing Drip Campaigns. Kevin Vermeulen Good2bSocial’s COO:, “There is a natural sense of urgency that tends to accompany the legal field that marketers can take advantage of with email marketing.”

HowEmail Marketing Benefits your Law Firm

Email Marketing, if done correctly, can be a great way to stay top of mind as a regular presence in your client’s and potential client’s inbox, and a consistent source of leads.  Modern life requires close attention to email, so if you can build a list that is engaged, and if you provide useful content, your law firm’s email marketing program will become a crucial part of your digital marketing strategy. Refining your email marketing strategy to increase your open rate helps stretch your digital marketing dollars and increases your ROI.

Some basic things to consider when putting together an email campaign:

1. Make sure your email template displays well on mobile.  Mobile is a huge factor in email opens, so make sure your email looks good no matter what device your subscriber is using.

2. Images:  Less is more.  An email with too many images can negatively impact your click-through rate and often takes too much time to download or may become truncated.

3. Be strategic about when you hit “send.”  Research indicates mid-morning is the best, but it’s also important to consider the day of the week.

4. Using the recipient’s name in the subject line or the body of the email can drastically increase click-thru rates.

Email List Segmentation: Give Your Email Subscribers What They Want:

Providing your subscribers with content they find useful and appealing should be a cornerstone strategy of your email marketing program. If your subscribers are finding your content helpful, they are more likely to be engaged, forward your emails to others, not report you as spam, and ultimately look to you as an expert resource--and then service provider.  To accomplish this goal, dividing your email list into segments is a good way to target your content to appeal to the right audience.

Options abound for email segmentation, so starting small can make the process manageable and still yield results.

Ways to Segment Your Email Lists to Reach the Right Audience:

1. How did they sign up?  If they were looking for information on a particular topic or area, crafting a list or related lists based on the subscriber's expressed interest is a reasonable inference.

2. Where is the subscriber on the buyer’s journey?  This can provide clues into what kind of information they may find useful.

3. How engaged is the subscriber?  Are they opening your emails consistently?  If not, pelting them with every email you send is not a way to increase engagement. For low-engaged subscribers, perhaps send a reminder campaign of their options, so they can more efficiently tailor their preferences to their needs.

4. Where is the subscriber located?  Some clients or potential clients may be interested in regional information--relevant to their geographic area..

The Importance of A/B Testing or Split Testing in Email Marketing.

A/B Testing involves creating two different versions of the same email, sending out both, and comparing the results in terms of clicks and responses to extrapolate the variations that are more effective for your audience. Many email marketing programs provide for A/B testing, and provide the analytic data you need to make an informed decision about results.  It’s important to test on a large email list, to ensure the data you garner is significant, and weave the takeaways into your email design strategy.

Email Marketing is highly dependent on context, so looking at pre-existing information can give your law firm insight into what areas to A/B test, to funnel results into recommendations that can have a broad impact.  Some areas you can A/B test are:

• Subject line

• Layout design--one column or two columns?

• Body text

• Closing text

• Images

• Personalization

It’s important to A/B test one variable at a time, so you can clearly identify what is responsible for the differences in the results.  It’s important to start at a point that makes sense for the situation; for example, if you are seeing low open rates, start with the subject line.  The open rate, the click-through rate, and the conversation rate are metrics most often used to evaluate the results.  If changing the layout design results in a higher click-through rate, that is a change you might want to consider incorporating across your emails.

A/B testing is important to keep your email marketing fresh, and responsive to the interests of your subscribers.

How Email Marketing Drip Campaigns Help Your Law Firm.

Email Marketing Drip campaigns are a way to send crafted messages to each segment of your email audience to stay top of mind, deliver helpful information, and nurture professional relationships.

Drip Campaigns pick up where email segmentation left off.  Identifying a segment--and then creating triggers--either action triggers or demographic triggers that kick off a domino effect.  In many instances, this can be automated, making the work involved more supervisory--and less labor-intensive.  For example, you have a group of prospects segmented by how they signed up--and you send them emails that provide them with options--so if they click on a specific link, it indicates an interest or preference, transferring that contact into a different bucket--so they are sent content based on that preference.

Email drip campaigns are highly customizable and require strategic thinking about your client persona and Client Journey Mapping for law firms.  The Good2bSocial Digital Marketing Certification provides resources to help law firm marketers look at their audience, and help design a customizable program for them.  Kevin Vermeulen, COO of Good2bSocial:

"It can be a tedious and time-consuming process to get a drip email campaign put together, but because of the hyper-efficient and automated targeting, the results are well worth it. It may take days or weeks to get everything exactly where you want it, but once it’s working, you’ll have something that can run for months or years, completely automated, constantly working to bring your firm new clients, and ultimately more revenue."

Email Marketing Big Picture Campaigns

It’s important to make sure any email marketing campaign your firm does complies with all relevant privacy legislation and regulations.  For example, the GDPR in Europe, the CCPA and CPRA in California, and Virginia’s latest data protection legislation, and more states, countries and regions are drafting new legislation at a rapid pace.  Additionally, there is always the possibility of a comprehensive federal law on privacy that would impact email marketing efforts.

To Read Part 1 Good2bSocial Digital Academy for Law Firms - Inbound Marketing and Client Journey Mapping, click here. 

To read Part 2 Good2bSocial Digital Academy Content Marketing Strategy for Law Firms Click Here.

To read Part 3 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Developing a Successful Social Media Strategy for Law Firms, click here

To read Part 4 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Paid Social Media Advertising Campaigns for Law Firms, click here

To read Part 5 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Search Engine Optimization for Law Firms, click here.

To read Part 6 Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Paid Search Advertising for Law Firms, click here.

To read Part 8  Good2bSocial Digital Academy -- Legal Marketing Campaign Measurement and Analytics:, click here

Stay tuned for more details on the topics and key takeaways included in the other modules of the Good2bSocial Academy.