E-Blasts are dead. Email marketing is not.

newsletters-for-email-marketing

THIS IS THE THIRD POST IN A SERIES ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING FOR LAW FIRMS.

When venturing into email marketing, you should consider:

1)     Choosing email marketing software

2)     Segmenting your list

3)     Creating a design

4)     Curating content

5)     Tracking success

I previously discussed how to choose your email marketing software, create and segment your email list and design your newsletter. In this post I delve into e-newsletter content recommendations.

For an e-mail marketing message to be effective, it must appear personal and relevant to each reader. While email marketing is not dead, the days of ‘list-buying’ to ‘e-blast’ 10,000 messages are dead.

CREATING CONTENT

TIP: If you have great content, your audience will not only forward your newsletter to friends, but if you have social sharing enabled, they will “like” it and post it on their social media outlets creating viral sharing.

Starting a regular e-newsletter, while a highly effective lead-generation tool, can be quite time-consuming, especially at first. Great newsletters take time to design, and good content takes time to compose and curate. I suggest starting with a quarterly e-newsletter, especially if you do not have a dedicated marketing staff member, and then, eventually graduate to a monthly calendar.

To avoid becoming an email marketing statistic, write an effective, enticing subject line to get your message opened, and then develop a distinctive voice that delivers quality, niche-specific content tailored to your reader.

Before you embark on your literary e-masterpiece, keep in mind that the average e-newsletter reader will only spend about ten seconds reading your e-mail message upon first open. Give your readers easily digestible information that keeps them coming back, clicking, and bookmarking your links to learn more.

Effective e-marketing includes valuable reasons to click.  Sometimes a reader must click a link to continue reading an article on your law firm’s blog.  Or, readers can be given the opportunity to request more information, download an e-book, sign up for an event, follow your law firm’s Twitter feed, or like your Facebook Page. Don’t make the mistake of ending the relationship because you did not factor in user engagement.

HOW TO FIND AND CREATE GREAT EMAIL CONTENT

Take heart, you don’t have to write every newsletter article from scratch. Hopefully, you have a blog on your website. You can repurpose your blog posts by writing an enticing introduction and including a link to read more. Not all e-newsletter content needs to be yours. Create a folder in your mailbox, your bookmarks, or on your computer of ‘good reads.’ When you read a really good article, file it away in your folder. When you are creating your newsletter, go back to that folder and include these articles in your newsletter.

What else can you write about?  Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Did someone win a big case?
  • Did someone speak at a conference or luncheon?
  • Did you attend a great conference, webinar or event?
  • Did someone in your firm win an award or get recognized?
  • Did a new paralegal or lawyer join your firm?
  • Did you learn about a great mobile app that has helped you?

Next week, we’ll continue to the email marketing series with a post about deciphering your email analytics and how they should influence your future email marketing efforts.

If you have a question about creating content, where to find great content or what makes great content viral, contact me. If your law firm needs assistance with its email marketing, from a total new setup to an overhaul of your existing system, we can help. I have run e-marketing campaigns for over a decade, and am proud to lend my e-expertise to law firm marketing. Contact us today to learn more about how we can work together.

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