Email Marketing for Lawyers: How to Build Trust and Win More Clients

Marketing for many industries takes different forms. In the legal sector, word of mouth and referrals play a key role. However, in today’s interconnected world, lawyers cannot simply rely on word-of-mouth marketing as it has limited reach. This is where email marketing for lawyers comes in.

Email marketing for lawyers is a proven tool that helps lawyers reach a large number of prospects. When done correctly, email marketing can help lawyers maximize their word-of-mouth marketing and build relationships without doing so much work. 

The only problem here is, like the law, email marketing for law firms is not exactly straightforward. As you will see in this guide, you need to take special precautions to ensure that your strategy follows legal ethics and also meets the needs of your clients. Most times, finding this balance requires a bit of expert ideas that you will find in this article. Keep reading to find out!

Why Email Marketing Is Important for Lawyers?

We already mentioned that lawyers typically rely on word-of-mouth marketing to reach their prospects. If that is true, why should you bother about email marketing? The following are some proven reasons why law firms should invest in email marketing:

• Cost effectiveness: Email marketing, for the most part, is cheaper than most other marketing channels. In turn, you get an ROI of about 38 times your investment. In comparison, Google Ads give you only about 2x ROI. 

• Building trust: Beyond profits and ROI, you will agree that trust is key to building a long-lasting law firm. Email marketing helps you build this trust by giving your law firm a human face. For instance, when you reach out to clients after consultation with a personalized tone, it shows you are concerned about them. It tells them they are not just another case you need to build numbers. 

• Staying top of mind: The legal industry is different from others in the sense that people may not need lawyers until they get into trouble. In those times of trouble, people often resort to those they know are good and can be trusted. With a good law firm email marketing strategy, you can be that law firm that comes to mind. A good strategy essentially tells your prospects that you are good at what you do. So, when the need arises, they easily think about hiring your legal services.  

• Educating clients: Leading prospects to your website can be tricky, but with email marketing, it’s a bit easier. You can cleverly craft your email content in such a way that it encourages users to visit your website and learn more about their case and about how your law firm can help. 

Understanding the Audience: Targeting Legal Clients

Your audience is not the email addresses that you see when you send emails. Rather, they are real people with real legal issues that require your help. In order to give them the best message, you must know them. Beyond those email addresses, who are these people? What do they do? What are their legal needs? Answering these questions will guide you on how to send your emails. 

Segmenting clients by legal needs

After you have asked questions about your clients, you will notice everyone is different in many ways. As such, if you were to send personalized messages that will meet the needs of everyone, you might as well just send emails one by one. But then that would be time-wasting and would require too much thinking and effort. A better way is to use segmentation. 

Segmentation means you are looking through your list and grouping people that are similar so you can offer them targeted messages that meet their needs. For instance, you can group people based on:

• Case type: Personal injury, estate planning, corporate law, etc.
• Type of client: Are they individuals or businesses?

Customizing emails based on case lifecycle

Beyond the type of case or client, your emails should reflect where each client is in their customer journey. This allows you to tailor your messages to their specific needs at different stages. This is what email marketers call lifecycle emails. For lawyers, clients typically fall into these groups:

• Initial consultation: This is the point where clients reach out with their concerns and try to see if you are the best fit for them. Emails here should be written with a welcoming, informative, and reassuring tone. 

• Ongoing cases: At this point, you have agreed with the clients, and the case is either in court or under negotiations. In this case, emails have to keep the clients updated on the progress, upcoming deadlines, and any actions needed from them.

• Follow-ups: After case resolution, you can’t simply leave them—even when you won. You need to check in on client satisfaction—don’t assume they liked the job. Ask for their reviews and offer additional services if relevant.

• Referrals: Finally, this is where you thank clients for referrals and provide easy ways for them to share your contact information.

Confidentiality and trust in email communication

As a lawyer, you probably already understand the importance of confidentiality. But again, it is important to mention that your clients trust you with their sensitive information, and this trust must reflect in how you communicate with them via emails. 

Ensure you are familiar with data protection laws such as the GDPR and HIPAA, and ensure your email marketing practices adhere to these regulations. More importantly, use email marketing tools that offer robust security features to protect client data.

Finally, avoid mentioning specific case details in emails. For instance, the names of your clients and the case you won for them should not be part of the review. 

Types of Emails Lawyers Should Send

Client education & legal updates

This category of emails helps you build a consistent relationship with clients as well as prospects. Like in the example below, it typically contains information about law and interesting news in your practice areas as well as industry updates. 

Case-specific email sequences

Like the name suggests, you only send these emails to provide updates regarding a case you are currently handling or have just closed. These emails play a crucial role in your law email marketing strategy as they keep clients informed.

Client retention emails

After offering your services to clients, you should send them follow-up emails requesting their feedback. Remember, only the client can define their satisfaction. Therefore, these emails will help you gauge the areas where you might need to improve. Besides, you can also use the email to show the client other things you do. Doing all of this will help you retain the client and make them permanent customers. 

Referral request emails

It’s not a bad idea to ask your clients to refer you. Aside from the fact that these emails help you get referrals, they could also show the client that you are confident in your services. If you can tell them to tell others, there is a huge possibility you are doing a great job. 

Writing Effective Subject Lines for Legal Emails

Now that you have seen some legal email campaign ideas, let’s quickly show you how you can write compelling subject lines. But first, why the subject line in particular? The short answer is, because we want your emails to have a good first impression. We are in a busy age, and your subject line is all you need to convince readers to open your email. So, your emails must have the following:

Clear and professional tone 

It can be tempting as a lawyer to write with technical terms and ambiguous grammar. However, when writing your emails, always remember you are writing to regular people—not lawyers, not court clerks. To keep people engaged, your email should be easy to understand while still sounding like it was written by a lawyer. 

A good example of a subject line can be “Case Update: Smith v. Johnson (File #123).” You will notice it is short, clear, and easy to understand while maintaining a professional tone. In comparison, “Hey there! Got a sec?” is a bad example as it does not sound professional.

Urgency and relevance 

Emails that include a sense of urgency in their subject line generally have a higher open rate. But then, as a lawyer, ensure you are not using false urgency as it will only make them see you as unserious overtime. 

A good example is “Immediate Action Required: Client Meeting Tomorrow.” This subject clearly explains the details to expect in the mail with an appropriate urgency and priority level. It is better than “Please Respond When You Can”—it is bland and looks unprofessional.

Using client-specific terminology 

Finally, your subject line should include some legal terms that relate to the client. This will help the client get an idea of what to expect and ignite their curiosity to know more. 

For instance, “Merger Agreement—Final Draft for ABC Corp” is a good example of a subject line with client-specific information. However, be careful not to use complex terms and also do not include confidential information in the subject line. For instance, “Mr Smith: Update on Your Divorce Case.” 

Best Practices for Email Content in Legal Communications

While the subject line is very important, it is only one of many important steps to writing a great email. So after creating the best subject line, ensure your email has the following: 

Concise, informative writing

Like we mentioned earlier, one of the key roles of your law firm email marketing campaign is to educate your readers. However, if we are being fair, nobody has the time to read long, boring chunks of texts these days. Therefore, to achieve your goals, your emails must carry the most amount of information with the least amount of words. If it’s too long, no one will read it!

Linking to legal resources

You cannot separate legal communications from the law. As you write, it is important that you show your clients what the law says about their cases.

Don’t just say what the law says; instead, show them where to find the law code or the relevant resources by using hyperlinks. This will help you keep your communications tidier and also help your clients see you as more knowledgeable. But then, ensure the links you use are up to date and functional. 

Offering free consultations

Aside from the obvious that everyone loves freebies, free consultations show prospects that you care about them and not their money. Use the opportunity to show your expertise and build trust with them. But then, ensure that the emails clearly state the terms and limitations of your free consultations. 

Why Lawyers Must Keep Email Lists Clean

One of the ethics that email marketers must adhere to strictly is keeping their lists clean. However, as legal practitioners, this is even more important since you uphold and defend the law. Maintaining a clean list involves how you source your list. It also means going through the list once in a while to remove inactive and unresponsive emails. 

As a lawyer, you must ensure that you only communicate with people who willingly agreed to receive your emails. Buying emails of people or sending emails to people who do not respond to your emails is bad and can lead to issues like increased bounce rates and spam complaints. It might even ruin your sender reputation. 

Besides, maintaining a clean email list ensures compliance with regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act and the GDPR. However, cleaning your list regularly is time-consuming. In fact, maintaining a clean list yourself might be difficult, as your list might contain spam traps. 

Instead of stressing, you can easily use third-party software like Sendigram Email Checker for your list cleaning. Sendigram Email Checker is a powerful tool for maintaining list hygiene. It verifies email addresses in real time, removing invalid or risky contacts like spam traps. This automated process saves time and ensures your list remains compliant with various email marketing regulations.

In addition, the following are some extra advantages of using Sendigram Email Checker:

• Upload several files at once.
• Import additional contact data.
• Get suggestions for correcting typos.
• Real-time email verification.
• Identification of potential spam traps and disposable email addresses.
• Bulk email list cleaning capabilities.
• Integration with popular email marketing platforms.
• Regular updates to stay current with email provider changes.

To Sum Up

As a lawyer, your goal is to see your law firm get more clients and retain the ones you already have. Well, like you have seen, having the right law firm email marketing strategy is one of those ways to get there. It all starts with understanding your clients and what they need. More importantly, your emails must be crafted such that they carry clear and simple yet professional information to your target audience. 

Remember, all of these will only work well if you have a good list. To do that, ensure you get your list the right way and keep things clean using Sendigram.