I hate to say it, but it’s true: Marketing professionals love to give “one-size-fits-all” advice. We spend so much of our time urging the “best practices” that really do work for the vast majority of situations (and many of which clients in other industries find easy to forget) that we sometimes find it challenging to take a step back and assess the specific needs of businesses that may have concerns that do not apply to other business types. We can particularly run into this problem when we are addressing the very precise needs of law firms when it comes to email marketing. Email sequences can be a crucial component of any digital marketing strategy, but the special nature of an attorney’s obligations toward even prospective clients, as well as the obviously area-specific expectations associated with particular types of law, need to play a leading role in ensuring that the sequences work as intended.

Friendly Reminders: The Function of Email Sequences in Law Firm Marketing

Sales professionals will tell you that following up with past or prospective clients via email is a reliably effective, low-cost strategy for staying “top of mind,” collecting positive reviews, and generating ongoing interest. One of the major advantages of email marketing strategies is that they allow you to increase name recognition (i.e., brand awareness) by giving you opportunities to appear in front of likely customers (or clients) even at times when they may not be actively looking for the type of services your firm offers.

Just as SEO helps law firms to appear in front of prospective clients when they are already looking for legal information or legal services, email marketing helps to “close the gaps” in coverage by creating the background awareness that puts your firm in position to be the first one individuals think of when they decide it is time to hire an attorney. In addition, usually the reason your law firm has email addresses will be because their owners have provided them, which serves as a strong indication that the individuals in this list of contacts already have some interest in the type of legal services your firm offers.

The Name Recognition Value of Email Sequences

Exact numbers vary from study to study, but research in marketing psychology has overwhelmingly shown that most people need to encounter a brand multiple times before they will recognize the name or logo when prompted. They need to be presented with the same information even more times before they will remember the brand without prompting.

This essential truth about human memory is why, in every election cycle, you will probably see political signage strung along the roadways displaying no information beyond the candidate’s name: The signs don’t tell travelers anything about a candidate’s policy positions, and in many cases they may not even identify the party on whose ticket the candidate is running, or the office they hope to fill. The campaign managers are not worried about the absence of these details, because interested people can easily find that information elsewhere; the purpose of the signs is simply to make sure voters feel a sense of recognition when they step into the voting booth and see the candidate’s name. The repeated inbox appearances created by an email sequence operate on the same basic principle.

Tailored Messaging Opportunities

Luckily for law firm marketing, the space constraints of emails are much more forgiving than those of highway signage for a political campaign. The fact that emails can contain a great deal of information with no increase in costs makes them an especially attractive vehicle for client outreach. Beyond the name recognition benefits of showing up in a potential client’s inbox on a recurring basis, a well-structured email sequence can help to build trust and foster client relationships. Of course, all email sequences are not created equal! Tailoring your strategies to your target audience and your area of practice is crucial to maximizing the potential of an email sequence.

Tailoring Strategy: Consider the Lead Source

The “lead source” for any email address is just the mechanism by which your law firm obtained that information. Common options are contact forms posted to your law firm’s website or social media accounts (ideally these should be separate contact forms, with distinctive URLs; to track lead generation effectively, you want to avoid linking social media posts to the contact form posted directly on your public-facing website) and the referrals some law firms are set up to receive through third-party websites like Avvo or FindLaw.

Using the Technology: Leveraging CRMs for Audience Segmentation

Many CRM (customer relationship management) systems record lead source automatically as part of the intake workflow, so you may be already tracking this information, even if you are not actively using it on a regular basis. If not, make it a priority to set up a standardized method for ensuring that your team always notes where each new lead/customer contact comes from as the information is entered into whichever system your law firm uses for managing contacts (if you can automate this part of the process, so much the better!).

Segmentation for Customization

Many people intuitively recognize that lead source is valuable information for evaluating where your queries are coming from and which platforms are giving you the highest conversion rates. Less obviously, lead generation tracking is also very useful for helping you to effectively “segment” audiences (in this case, lists of email recipients) so that you can send email sequences that are customized based on the path the prospective client followed to provide you with their contact information.

“Segmentation” is a term you will see used frequently in relation to mass emails, but for customizing email sequences based on lead source what you will want to do is set up an audience “segment” for each lead source. You could stop there, and set up an automation that triggers a specific email sequence for each new contact based on the segment to which the contact belongs; ideally, however, you will want to further differentiate within segments, whenever your lead generation model relays information about the contact’s areas of interest.

Factors To Consider in Tailoring Email Sequences by Lead Source

As you think about the role of lead source in conditioning the structure of your email sequence, there are a few factors you can consider to help shape your decisions. Any email sequence will also need to be structured with your law firm’s specific practice area(s) in mind, but using lead source as a tool for tailoring the most appropriate messaging for a specific contact can significantly enhance your ability to connect with potential clients.

Past Clients: Email Sequences to Solicit Feedback and Reviews

Past clients may be a great target for generating future business in some cases. Depending on the type of law you practice, however, getting repeat business from former clients may not be realistic; business clients may need help with contracts several times per year, but if you are managing a personal injury firm, you probably hope that most of your clients do not find themselves needing your services on a regular rotation. With this caveat in mind, one type of email sequence you can count on to be relevant to past clients is a request for feedback and a prompt to review. Consider scheduling 3-4 emails in this sequence, with increasing periods of time between emails.

Social Media: Email Sequences To Deliver Value

Contacts who provide their email addresses after clicking the link in a social media post are often motivated by the promise of additional “content.” The content will of course depend on what your law firm has developed and offered, but many digital marketing agencies will recommend posting short videos and “carousel” posts comprised of sequenced infographics as lead generation materials, usually with a CTA (call to action) inviting anyone who pauses in scrolling to take a closer look at the post to sign up for free tutorials, guides, or other resources. That format will often mean that the first message in an email sequence directed at contacts from social media needs to deliver the free item promised in the post. If your firm offers more than one free resource via social media, consider setting up an automation that will select the subsequent messages in an email sequence based on the specific resource a contact has requested.

Keep in mind that contacts who provide their emails in response to a social media prompt tend to be interested in informative and educational content; frequently they are providing their contact information because they are hoping for more materials that are similar to the post that initially caught their interest. For law firms’ marketing strategy, this means that email sequences directed at contacts from social media lead generation can often capitalize on the topics covered in the lead-generating posts. Consider setting up automations at two, four, and six weeks after initial contact inviting each recipient to view a related post, schedule a discovery consultation, and sign up for a newsletter (which would keep the contact receiving regular emails).

Website Contact Form

Emails addresses entered in the contact form(s) on your law firm website indicate an especially high level of interest (what marketing professionals sometimes call “high-intent” actions). Often you will be wanting to follow up with these contacts right away; sometimes the information collected by your contact form can structure the form that follow-up takes. Consider designing your contact form with a dropdown menu that allows site visitors to indicate their level of intent and urgency, for instance “just learning” vs. “need legal advice.” You could also add a checkbox inviting visitors to indicate that they would like a callback within a set time period (e.g., 24-48 hours).

If you are soliciting any type of written description of their reason for reaching out, make sure that you practice good digital security in protecting that information (you will likely also want to set your contact form up to include disclaimers and advise against entering any identifying details). That said, information written by site visitors themselves can sometimes be difficult for CRM automations to parse accurately, but it can also be a rich source of information for tailoring both initial follow-up messages and the email sequences that follow. Correlate topical interest with level of urgency to structure email sequences that align with the information site visitors have provided you; try immediate contact for high-urgency form submissions, and emphasize building trust with authoritative, topically relevant content over a more extended sequence for “just learning” submissions.

Points To Remember

There is no one “right” number of messages to include in an email sequence, any more than there is a perfect frequency at which to send them. The crucial thing for law firms to remember is that messaging that speaks directly to the concerns and interests a contact has already expressed will always be in a better position to build trust and cement reputation than a “cookie-cutter” message that could apply to any member of the general public. Structuring high-quality email sequences that deliver high conversion rates and set your law firm’s office phone ringing is often going to be less about the number of emails and the schedule on which you send them, and more about the understanding of prospective clients’ concerns that each email in a sequence conveys. Pay attention to how your contacts are reaching you and providing their information, and demonstrate your law firm’s value by responding with emails that show topical knowledge and situational awareness.

Annette Choti, Esq. is the founder of Law Quill, a legal digital marketing agency that helps growth-minded law firms increase their online visibility and convert more clients. She is also the author of “Click Magnet: The Ultimate Digital Marketing Guide for Law Firms” and Click Magnet Academy. Annette used to do professional comedy, which is not so far from the law if we are all being honest.

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