Law Firm Email Marketing

What Are The Different Types Of Email Marketing Campaigns That Make Sense For Law Firms?

Law firms can use all three of these types of email marketing campaign tactics effectively.

Why Should Law Firms Set Up Email Marketing Campaigns?

First and foremost unlike advertising, email marketing has no additional variable cost to your firm. There are no costs associated with sending emails other than the monthly subscription to an ESP (email service provider) and some elbow grease. Triggered emails can be set up once and operate for long periods of time effectively without any additional labor hours or associated costs. While putting together effective email marketing workflows and content for newsletter style campaigns can be time consuming, the rewards from this process are certainly going to be worth it for your law firm.

How Does Email Fit In And Integrate With Your Current Marketing And Advertising Efforts?

Email marketing is rarely a stand alone channel for law firms. While many attorneys focus on launching single campaigns in isolation (like PPC or television) and attempt to gauge their performance in isolation, email marketing is not one of those channels. While email may not lead to a huge increase in direct response retained clients, a large reason for this is that many attorneys are using single source first touch attribution models. While this makes sense for small law firms or solos, this approach will certainly not scale as you grow your law firm. Email marketing should act as a support layer to add touch points or as a source of cross sell opportunities to your full marketing strategy. The most common examples of this are triggered emails (and triggered SMS) that increase the response times on intake management.

Benefits To Attorneys And Law Firms That Have Email Marketing Campaigns Set Up:

• Improved form fill contact rate
• Improved intake efficiency
• Reduced workload for paralegals and case managers
• Reduced call volume from current clients inquiring about case status / progression
• Higher intake to retained client conversion rates
• Coss marketing time sensitive cases to past clients
• Increase client referrals
• Increase attorney referrals

Examples Of Email Marketing Tactics For Law Firms:

• Newsletter emails
• Lead / intake creation email
• Client case communication triggered emails
• Attorney referral relationship building emails
• Attorney referral email newsletters

What Email Service Provider (ESP) Tools Are Used For Email Marketing?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud: 27.02% marketshare
Marketing cloud likely doesn’t make sense for most law firms as it’s going to be more complicated to set up and integrate than most firms are willing to stomach – the exception to this would be law firms that have their intake setup in salesforce or are using an intake management system built on top of SalesForce, for example Litify or Advologix. The market share on this is likely artificially high as most fortune 500 or enterprise clients use salesforce marketing cloud. This solution likely doesn’t make sense for 95% of law firms.

Mailchimp: 19.24% marketshare
Mailchimp is the most commonly used ESP and the service that we see the vast majority of plaintiffs law firms using. It’s going to be the cheapest solution, most widely used by entry level marketing managers (anyone can do it and you won’t have to hire specialists to maintain its continued use for newsletter style campaigns).

HubSpot: 12.63% marketshare
Hubspot is a marketing automation tool and CRM platform that bundles together a full suite of products. This is often used by companies that want a fully vertically integrated solution for their CRM and ESP with a heavy emphasis on marketing automation. This also likely doesn’t make sense for most law firms as they use industry specific lead and intake management solutions as their CRM layer. You can read our full intake management solution guide here.

Constant Contact: 9.25% marketshare
Constant contact is the former industry leading ESP prior to Mailchimp’s rise. Mailchimp largely dominated the ESP space with effective branding. Constant contact is a solid choice for law firms who need and ESP that focuses primarily on newsletter style campaigns. All in all your firm won’t see a big difference between choosing either constant contact or mailchimp.

Marketo: 8.81% marketshare
This is Adobe’s answer to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and is an enterprise ESP that is largely unused by law firms as very few (we may even venture to say none) have their CRM or intake management built out on Adobe’s suite. This is another solution best suited for enterprise customers.

Sendgrid: 8.66% marketshare
Sendgrid is primarily a transactional email service that was purchased by Twilio. Sendgrid or MailGun (another transaction emai competitor) are both great solutions to transactional email. Ultimately your firm needs to decide if transaction emails are going to be handled by our intake solution or a third party solution like Sendgrid or MailGun.

Should I Use My Intake Management System Or A Dedicated Email Service Provider (ESP) To Send My Emails?

The answer here is that it depends. This is largely going to depend on what type of email needs to be sent. If it’s a newsletter style email these are typically better served by a dedicated ESP (such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact). If it’s a triggered email, like an automated email to be sent after an intake has signed a retainer agreement, this could be appropriately handled either by an intake or practice management solution that has this functionality or a transactional email service like Sendgrid or Mailgun.

KPIs For Law Firms:

Success isn’t just about sending emails—it’s about understanding how your efforts impact your goals. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are your compass in this digital landscape, guiding you towards actionable insights and measurable outcomes.

Discover the metrics that matter:

• Bounce Rate
• Open Rate
• Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Conversion Rate
• Unsubscribe Rate

Building Email Lists For Lawyers:

When putting in place a cohesive email strategy for your law firm, it’s important to think about your different audiences and tailoring the content to each email list accordingly. For example, one segment of your audience base may be other attorneys (think: referral partners), another may be past clients & current clients, and another may be former intakes or potential clients (PCs) that didn’t end up converting into clients. When crafting each email you’re sending, you want to focus on serving the right content to the right audience for the most effective approach.

Can You Set Up Email Marketing Campaigns On Your Own Or Should You Hire An Agency To Do It For You?

Simple email marketing can certainly be done by employees at your firm. However, if you want to set up more complicated triggered email flows based on intake stages within your intake management system, you may need an agency to support your efforts. Get in touch with us today for support taking your firm’s email marketing to the next level.