Are You Maximizing Your Most Valuable Legal Marketing Resource?
What does legal marketing mean to you?
Is it buying a full-page spread in a glossy, high profile magazine?
Maybe it’s starting a blog and hoping someone, somewhere will come and read your posts?
Whatever “legal marketing” means to you, if your campaign does not include the intentional gathering and centralization your email contact list, you are missing out on one of the cheapest and MOST EFFECTIVE ways to generate referrals and additional revenue sources to your firm.
Think about it. The contacts on your email list are people you already have a relationship with. Chances are, they aren’t going to delete your emails as “spam” as though you were a stranger. Instead, a client or former client will generally open your email to see what you have to say.
So now that you have their full attention, you can use this opportunity to build relationships, educate your clients on changing areas of the law that pertain to them, or send out friendly reminders that you and your team are always willing to help—or will at least refer them to another practicing attorney that CAN help if the problem goes beyond your expertise (again, thinking about income from passive referral sources).’
It’s also a great opportunity to ask for referrals from friends and family if the client has been satisfied with your work as an attorney.
But most importantly, email marketing provides that constant contact that you may not be able to achieve during office hours with your client. It keeps you involved in their life and in their face, without sacrificing countless hours of your time as a busy attorney.
So hopefully by now you realize why the contact list is an “overlooked goldmine” when it comes to generating referrals and repeat clients.
What you may not know is how to get started, or how to centralize your email list so you aren’t manually adding your contacts one by one in Outlook, etc.
In my experience, one of the best (and low-cost) programs to assist with your email marketing campaign is A-Weber. Not only does A-Weber allow you to centralize your contacts in one database (as well as individual groups), but it also helps you create an opt-in mailing campaigns to reduce the chance that your emails get marked as spam (and hence face the threat of landing on an email blacklist).
Yet for those that want to go one step further and use the list to promote products, services, etc., I recommend using a fully integrated program such as Infusion that offers shopping cart solutions, individual and group email history, fax and voice broadcasting, sale tracking, web forms, etc. all in this one platform.
But whatever program you chose, I encourage you to make a serious effort to not only collect email addresses for each and every client that walks in the door, but to also centralize your contacts into one of these programs to fully maximize your successes in an email marketing campaign.
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you turn ideas into action? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.