Newsletter Marketing: How eNewsletters Can Help Market Law Firms

Newsletter Marketing

With the state of the Internet today, newsletter marketing is the most powerful marketing that a law firm can do. Newsletter have low distribution costs and even better, very low marginal costs. You can add an additional subscriber for practically nothing. Properly executed newsletters have resulted in firms getting major clients, attorneys getting prestigious speaking engagements and press coverage on television, radio and in major newspapers and magazines.

Define Your Purpose

Defining your purpose in some ways is easy. Law firms newsletters should be designed to generate additional firm profits. You can attempt this a variety of ways, which we will discuss next. What you should not do is to simply send out a newsletter, because you can or even worse, because some firm attorneys think you should.

Many firms have newsletters that are really a hobby of 1 or 2 attorneys. They are a hobby in the sense that little thought goes into the use of the newsletter for client development or increasing firm revenues. As a result the "cost" of the newsletter to the attorney and firm exceed revenues and associated benefits to the firm. The newsletter illustrates very well how smart the attorney/author is, but surprisingly how smart an attorney is, is one of the main reasons that clients select attorneys. So the firm must first make a decision that newsletters are intended to increase firm income.

Once a firm makes a decision that their newsletter(s) should be a part of building a profitable firm, then the firm needs to make some decisions about the newsletters principal uses. For example, many firms say they are focused on getting new clients, but then send the vast majority of their newsletter to their present clients with no defined system to reach out to non-clients.

So what purposes can a firm use a newsletter for:

1.      Getting new clients

2.      Cross-selling

3.      Improving relationships with present clients

4.      Direct fee generating opportunities

5.      Branding

6.      Press stories

7.      Referrals from other professionals

8.      Relationship building

9.      Publicity opportunities

10.  Advocacy

You can select more than one  purpose, but you shouldn’t select more than three purposes, though on rare occasions you may try to fulfill one of the other purposes. The fewer purposes you focus on, the easier it is to do everything else associated with planning and executing the newsletter. You don’t have to balance your approach between conflicting purposes.

One purpose, which you rarely see in newsletters is direct fee generating opportunities. The opportunities may not arise frequently, but when they do, you should try to exploit them. Look for services that will clearly save clients a defined sum or will generate clearly defined revenues. Examples include new filing fee or custom refunds. Another example is a tax stratagem, that results in clear and specific tax savings. If attorneys are trained to look for such opportunities, its surprising how many you can find. Writing about such opportunities builds mailing lists, makes clients pay attention, and brings in new clients.

Identify Your Audience And Their Interests

If you first define 1 or 2 purposes for your newsletter. Identifying the audience is much easier. If your audience is business people, then you need to focus on items that effect their bottom line. If you are focused on your present clients, more so then new clients, then you should address issues you have been working on with your clients. The best way to find out what to write about and at the same time build strong client relations is to go to lunch with them. Find out what worries them as well as what costs them money and get them involved with helping to design the newsletter.

Focus on the clients’ underlying emotions and motivating factors, not necessarily what they say. If you do, your writing will be much more readable and your newsletter will get read. If you are writing for individual clients then definitely look at emotional issues. Lawyers are trained to take the emotions out of their analysis and focus on the law and the facts. As a result, lawyers can take the most emotional issues, people's businesses, their jobs, their families and their marriages and make these highly emotional issues boring. In your writing, fight this tendency. Acknowledge, your clients feeling and be supportive.

Do not open your article as many attorney/authors do by giving the complete appellate history of the case or a recitation of the history of the statute. Figure out what your audience is most interested in and then tell them this in the first sentence.

Two audiences that are somewhat specialized are other attorneys and reporters. When writing for other attorneys you want to be more formal, but don’t forget their emotions. Will this article get them promoted, will the solution make their life easier, will they look smarter if they know this. So write formal but not dull.

For reporters the approach is just opposite. Focus on the tension, conflict and controversy even more. Write the reporters lead for them. Put the who, what, where and why in the first sentence. Let them hear "their" article being written as they read your article. If you are appealing to the electronic press, let them see and hear the audio and video that they will need for their stories by describing it in your article. For web reporters, point them to on-line resources, preferably on your own site, that they can link to.

Conclusion

Email newsletter marketing works and is more cost effective  than practically any other form of marketing that a firm does. Every firm of any size, and even solo attorneys, should have the ability to send out an email newsletter, even if it is just a basic text newsletter. If you have the ability to send HTML email newsletters that use the graphics and sophisticated layouts, then do so because they are more effective.

Once a firm decides to have a newsletter they should do the proper analysis and planning, so that they do not do excessive amounts of research and writing, or outsource to the wrong vendor. Most clients are not looking for long scholarly articles, but articles that provide useful information. Newsletters that are subscriber focused generate leads and opportunities, and the firm follow-up the leads generated, they will get new clients and other benefits from email newsletter marketing.