If you’re also concerned about this, or you just want to make sure your email marketing is bringing in maximum results, take a few minutes and read the 5 strategies I’ve outlined for you below.

As a quick freebie -try sending your newsletter on Monday morning, Thursday morning or the weekend instead.  Studies show those are the days that get the most eyeballs!

Just pay close attention to your stats and don’t be afraid to try new things.  Email newsletters are powerful business tools…when you use them right!

Enjoy and have a great week!

Laura Lee

5 Ways To Spark More Engagement With Your Email Newsletter

If you’re sending an email newsletter but feel like it’s not getting much attention….or perhaps not even getting read at all, it may be time to change your approach.

The purpose of email marketing is to build relationships, not just occupy inbox space.  It’s one of those low-cost “touches” that help people get to know, like and trust you, so that they feel comfortable doing business with you down the road.

But if you’re not being heard, or worse, your email is not being delivered–all of your efforts will be in vein.

Before we get into the 5 steps you can take to get more mileage out of your ezine , an important first step would be figuring out your current email marketing “stats” as they stand.  This will help you to track your results as you implement some of the suggested strategies below.

Specifically, pay attention to your current open rate and deliverability stats if you have them.  Then try some of these small, but powerful changes to increase your engagement and help ensure your hard work doesn’t end up in the virtual “trash”:

1. Spark curiosity with your subject lines- If your email open rates are low, start using creative subject lines that make opening your email irresistible. Pull something from the ezine that leaves them hanging so they feel the need to click and learn more.  Here’s a few examples of highly clicked titles we recently used for our clients: “My Valentine,” “I stole the chairs,” and “I never saw this coming…”.

2. Open with a personal note- People want to do business with people–not law firms.  Don’t be afraid to add a few personal tidbits before your article each week to help people relate and connect with you on a personal level.  Talk about your family, vacations, weekend activities…and even include some pictures, too!

3.  Avoid too many “promotional” or “spam” words- One reason your emails may not be getting opened is that you are using too many words that cause your email to be filtered into spam.  Free is a big one, and so are other promotional phrases like “50 % off!”  and “call now !”.  In some cases, email providers won’t even deliver these messages to their users at all…filtering them instead into the black hole of the internet.

4.  Make your email newsletter interactive.  Ask your readers questions and seek out their opinions.  You can even go outside the box and ask questions that have nothing to do with the law.  One of our clients recently moved into a new office, so we asked readers to share their favorite places to find inexpensive artwork and décor.  Responses came pouring in from people she hadn’t heard from in years.  It’s great to know that people are listening, asking questions helps to build relationships without sacrificing too much of your time.

5.  Tell people what you want them to do- If people aren’t taking action after reading your newsletter, it might be that you aren’t telling them clearly enough what to do. Don’t be afraid to include clear calls to action asking readers to sign up for an event, take advantage of a discount, follow you on social media or forward your email to a friend.  As long as you are providing quality content and are not being overly promotional, people will appreciate you helping them take the next step.

Try implementing these changes and pay close attention to your results.  If more people are interacting with you and open rates improve, you’re on the right track!

Have any other tips to increase engagement with your email newsletter? Please come share them on our facebook page.

Many times this happens when our efforts are not consistent.  If you’ve never heard of the “Rule of 7″ or thought the pleas for consistent marketing were just slick ways marketers or ad reps could get more business from you, please check out the feature article below.   I know you’ll pick up some very cost-effective and savvy ways to maximize your marketing results.

If you’re an estate planning attorney, don’t forget that the opportunity to save $200 per month on our Done-For-You monthly marketing package expires on March 5th.  You can go here now to check your area’s availability.

Have a great week!

Laura Lee

P.S.  We are putting the finishing touches on March’s campaign materials and they are out of this world.  The focus is National Health Care Decision day and we are giving you a vast assortment of marketing collateral to allow you to shine in your community.  Be sure to check out our portfolio on facebook for an example of some of our materials. Then check to see if your area is available.

If you’re not consistent, you’re non-existent

If the marketing for your law firm is not producing the ROI or results you want, you may have a problem with being consistent.

Consistent marketing isn’t just slick sales lingo from a marketer or advertising rep. trying to get more business from you.  In order for people to know, like and trust you, they have to hear from you regularly.

If you’ve never heard of the “Rule of 7″, it’s an old marketing adage that says a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing at least 7 times before they’ll take action and buy something.

If you think about this in light of your own buying habits, you’ll probably find it to be true.  How often do pick up the phone and call a high-end service provider based on a one-off advertisement coming from someone you don’t know?

But when you start to hear from someone regularly…and then maybe a friend or a independent 3rd party (like the local news media) drops this service provider’s name too, your relationship with the company can quickly move from ice-cold to warm and receptive.

Now consistent marketing doesn’t mean you have to buy expensive ads in local magazines or the yellow pages every single month, either.  That may work for your particular business, but here’s a few other places where you can increase your marketing results by committing to consistency:

•    Email newsletter- Pick a frequency that you are confortable with and start sending your email newsletter regularly.  If you decide to send it bi-weekly on a Friday, make sure it goes out bi-weekly on a Friday!  Be a consistent presence in your prospect’s inbox.

•    Social Media- Building a presence on social media requires consistency! With so much happening on sites like Twitter and Facebook, you can’t expect to post an update once a month and get noticed!  At the very least, commit to posting and interacting on your channels at least once or twice a day.

•    Blogging- Great SEO results depends on posting regular content.  You don’t have to post daily–but shoot post on your blog at least once or twice a week.

•    Follow-up- There MUST be consistency in your follow-up!  Every client and every prospect needs to be hearing from you the exact same way, every single time.  If you’re not sure how to put a consistent follow-up strategy in place, or you’d like do train your staff how to  follow-up more effectively with the prospective clients of your firm, grab our free audio training on follow-up in the law firm here.

These are just a handful of places where implementing consistent marketing can maximize your efforts. Take the next 60 days, try our advice and track your results. We guarantee you’ll see a much greater return for your marketing dollars!

…then take a peek at the special we have right now on our Done-For-You monthly marketing packages for estate planning attorneys.

We know that you are so busy taking care of your business, servicing your clients and building referral relationships that your marketing sometimes takes a backseat to everything else going on.  That is why we created this program specifically for you.

These are high-quality, professionally done marketing materials with a proven track record of helping estate planning attorneys gain more clients, more page 1 search rankings, better conversions, newspaper and TV coverage, increased referrals, new speaking opportunities and more!

Each month, our DFY program includes:
•    A direct-response marketing campaign and step-by-step instructions on how to implement it (i.e. free reports, landing pages, postcards, brochures, follow-up scripts);
•    A press release and media pitch letter for maximum local publicity and SEO;
•   A weekly blog post professionally written and optimized to dominate the search engines (…for many DFY clients, our blog posts show up on page one in Google before any other page of their website!),
•    A done-for-you print newsletter to stay in-touch with clients by mail;
•    4 video scripts for video marketing; and
•    Area exclusivity!  We will not work with your competition.

It’s all of your marketing, professionally done for you each and every month, without the aggravation or expense of hiring in-house staff.  All of the materials are delivered to you in editable format so that you can customize and edit as you see fit.

To head off March, we’re offering these marketing materials at just $797 per month–a $200 monthly savings off the regular price of $997.   There’s no time commitment either; try it out at the discounted price and cancel if it’s not for you. No worries, no hassles.

This is like hiring a part time legal marketing professional for your firm for only about $12 per hour, that is a huge savings while still giving you expert results.

This offer is only good until March 5th, so to learn more about the program and request exclusivity in your area, visit http://www.legalmarketingmaven.com/dfy

Of course if you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to just post a comment below or shoot an email to help at legalmarketingmaven dot com, we are happy to help.

To your success,

Laura Lee

P.S.-  Please feel free to browse through our Portfolio photo gallery on Facebook to see real results that our clients are getting and samples of materials that you will receive in the program.

Does Legal Marketing Maven also help with implementing the marketing materials? I don’t have enough time to do it myself.

Yes!  We are an implementation company!  The DFY packages were put together to help lawyers that have in house staff (or virtual teams that they are working with) so that they didn’t have start every month from scratch.  But we will happily put together an implementation package that meets your needs, just reply to this email and schedule a complimentary strategy session with me to explore those options.

Do all of your DFY materials focus on general estate planning (or focus on one particular niche)? I am an elder law lawyer, will it work for me?

Our DFY materials are eclectic and focus on estate planning for the young and old, we try to incorporate basic estate planning, elder law and administration into our materials each month because we believe your practice will benefit from serving clients in all stages of their life.

Do you have DFY materials for other practice areas? I am a bankruptcy lawyer and would love materials like this for my law firm.

Currently our DFY materials are only for Estate planning attorneys however, we are planning to launch 2 new practice areas this year.  If you are interested in these types of materials for your practice area please reply to this email and let me know what that is, it will help me determine which 2 areas we will roll out next.

If you need the services now, let’s schedule a time to chat about what your needs are and create a custom package that will meet your needs.

Does Legal Marketing Maven work with lawyers in other practice areas?

Yes!  We privately work with clients in a variety of practice areas – personal injury, medical malpractice, bankruptcy, business law and family law.  Our services span a wide range including but not limited to:

•    Development and execution of direct response marketing campaigns
•    Web writing, Copywriting and Blogging
•    Teleseminars and Webinars
•    Landing Pages/ Squeeze Pages
•    Email Marketing
•    Newsletters
•    Infusionsoft Management
•    Autoresponders
•    Search Engine Optimization
•    Social Media Marketing
•    Article Marketing
•    Reputation Management
•    Press Releases and Public Relations
•    Marketing of In-Person Events/ Conferences
•    Creation and Launch of Lead Generation Pieces
•    Book Writing
•    Ghost Writing
•    Product Launches

I’m happy to schedule a complimentary strategy session with you to discuss your marketing needs and let you know how we could be of service.

Have a question that wasn’t answered here, please let me know – simply email help@legalmarketingmaven.com and I’ll get back to you shortly.

Want to schedule a time to chat?  Simply email help@legalmarketingmaven.com and we’ll get something scheduled.

LL

As you’ll see on the site, these items can be purchased in a bundle or completely a la carte according to the marketing needs you have for the month. Here’s what you have to look forward to in May’s package:

Monthly Marketing Campaign:

• Postcard copy targeted to parents of graduating seniors explaining that their child is now an adult and how to work with your office to retain some control over their child’s financial and medical affairs (we asked a few attorneys to pass this around their office as a test case and every mom with high-school aged kids requested the ‘parent sanity kit’!).  It also offers mom or dad a free planning session when they come in to have documents created for their child.”
• Detailed instructions on how and where to purchase a mailing list targeted directly to parents of graduating seniors to send the postcard to.
• Copy for 2 Facebook Ads (just turn the postcard copy into a landing page on your blog or website to reach even more parents of graduating seniors!)

• A public service announcement to help spread your message to the local TV and radio stations.

4 Optimized Blog Posts and 4 Videos Scripts On The Following Topics:

• Determining long-term care insurance needs
• Planning considerations for an aging LBGT community
• What to do when divorced parents can’t agree on legal guardians
• Will your business survive after your death???

Press Release and Pitch Letter – Designed to land free publicity in local newspapers, TV outlets and other family media sources:

This timely press release explains the 3 documents every parent needs to legally intervene on their graduating senior’s behalf if the unthinkable happens.

Done-For-You Print Newsletter - Want to send a print newsletter this month to your list?

Our print newsletter is chock full of articles and content that you can simply customize with your firm information and send out to your clients and prospects.  We’ve even included a feature article that carries along our “graduating seniors” theme to get more parents into your office next month!

Again, you can get all the details and purchase the May campaign materials by clicking here.

Have questions?  Please don’t hesitate to contact me by emailing help@legalmarketingmaven.com

Remember, the point of your newsletter is to develop a relationship with your leads and prospective clients on their own turf.   It’s so easy to just “start a newsletter” because a marketing guru tells you to, but you really must understand the “why” behind the “what” if you want to be effective and generate leads/referrals in this area.

So with that said, let’s jump right into the top three things you should NOT be writing in your newsletter:

1. Case Briefs- It seems logical that a law firm newsletter would have case briefs of relevant decisions in your practice area, right?  Wrong. While information on recent case law may be valuable to your clients, what you have to say about it is probably WAY over their head.  Unless you can write on a third grade level and explain what the case means for THEM in plain English, leave complicated case briefs out of the newsletter.
2. Promotional Hype- Your newsletter isn’t another opportunity to pitch your firm and services.  You might get by with that here and there, but eventually the client will get sick of “being sold” and throw it in the trash.  Instead, stick to useful content, tips and how-to’s that will improve or add value to their life in some way.
3. Legalese- Again, you’re trying to reach clients on their level so try to leave complicated legal jargon out of the mix.  And if you’re trying to educate your client on a certain area of the law and absolutely must drop a few legal terms, be sure to provide clear and alternate definitions so your prospects can actually follow along with the article.

Hopefully you’re noticing a trend here with my emphasis on words like them, their, etc.  Understand that if you can bring the focus of your newsletter back on the client and away from the firm, you’ll be much more effective in bringing in referrals and converting existing leads.  

And of course, if you still hate the newsletter process and can’t seem to unleash its true potential, then consider this a job to be outsourced!  In today’s economy, a newsletter is one marketing tool that you MUST have, so commit to having one that works for you—even if that means brining in outside help!

Note: If you need help finding a legal newsletter manager for your firm, please email help@legalmarketingmaven.com

Online Business Manager and law firm marketing expert, Laura Lee Sparks, is one of the most authoritative and well respected voices on attorney outsourcing, legal marketing and being a virtual assistant for lawyers on the web.  Her advice and legal marketing campaigns have helped lawyers reach and surpass the million-dollar mark in their businesses numerous times thanks to her straight-forward advice and ability to make legal marketing principles easy to understand and implement.  For further information on lawyer outsourcing programs or to contact Laura Lee directly, please email help@legalmarketingmaven.com