3 Reasons Why Your Law Firm E-Mails Aren’t Getting Read
A friend and fellow law firm coach Charley Mann wrote an excellent article in his print newsletter about how your e-mails to clients, prospects, and referral sources, may not end up in the spam folder, but they might not get read either. Is that happening to you? Check your open rates. Are they below 25% – 30%?If they are, you have some work to do, including understanding why.
Here’s the problem: You spend time putting together an email for your law firm. Maybe you include a recent article, an update about the firm, a helpful legal tip, or a reminder about your services. Then you hit “send” and . . . almost nothing happens.
A few people open it (less than 25%), and even fewer click on any of the links (1% or 2%). The phone doesn’t ring. No one replies. Eventually, you start wondering whether email marketing even works for law firms.
It does, but only if you do it properly.
Many law firms make the same mistakes over and over again. They treat email as something they’re supposed to do rather than as a way to build relationships with clients, former clients, referral sources, and prospective clients.
If your emails are being ignored, there’s a good chance you’re making one or more of these three mistakes.
1. Your Subscribers Barely Remember Who You Are
One of the biggest problems we see with law firm emails is inconsistency.
A firm sends a newsletter in January. Then everyone gets busy, and the next one goes out in April. Maybe another appears sometime in September.
By then, the recipient may barely remember subscribing, or worse, even remembering who you are!
Think about your own inbox. When you receive an email from someone you recognize, you’re far more likely to open it. When an unfamiliar name suddenly appears after six months of silence, your first reaction may be, “Who is this?”
And then: delete.
The lesson here is that you can’t build familiarity by showing up three or four times a year.
That’s why we recommend emailing your list weekly, or at least every other week. That may sound like too much, particularly if you’re used to sending a quarterly newsletter. But consistency keeps you familiar.
And familiarity matters.
You’re not necessarily trying to make someone hire you every time you send an email. You’re staying visible so that when they have a legal problem (or someone asks them for a referral) you’re one of the first people they think about (and hopefully the first!).
2. Law Firm Emails, Email Marketing, and the Temptation to Look “Professional”
Here’s another mistake we’ve seen law firms make: They turn their emails into miniature magazines.
There are banners, stock photographs, multiple columns, colorful boxes, firm announcements, four different articles, social media icons, awards, disclaimers, and enough links to keep someone busy for an afternoon.
It may look impressive, but what it really does is scream MARKETING EMAIL.
That’s not necessarily what you want.
The emails you actually read from colleagues, clients, and friends probably don’t look like professionally designed brochures. They’re usually simple:
- A subject line.
- Black text.
- A white background.
- A message written by an actual person.
Your emails should feel the same way.
Simple formatting also keeps the focus where it belongs: on what you have to say.
Instead of asking, “How can we make this newsletter look more impressive?” ask, “What would make someone want to keep reading?”
Good law firm emails and good email marketing aren’t design contests. They’re about earning and keeping attention.
Write like a person. Make one useful point. Tell a story when appropriate. Give the reader something worth thinking about.
You may be surprised how much more effective “plain” can be.
3. You’re Trying Too Hard to Keep Everyone on Your List
Lawyers tend to be cautious by nature, and that caution often carries over into marketing. You don’t want to
- Email too frequently because someone might unsubscribe.
- Express a strong opinion because someone might disagree.
- Be too specific because someone might decide the message isn’t relevant to them.
So you water everything down, and you’ve created an email that offends no one, but interests no one either.
Don’t be afraid of someone unsubscribing. That isn’t necessarily a failure.
If someone has no interest in what you have to say, doesn’t value your perspective, or would never hire or refer business to your firm, having that person leave your list may actually be helpful.
It gives you a more engaged audience and helps you focus in on them.
Personally, I’d rather have a smaller list of people who regularly read my emails than a huge list of people who automatically delete them. I curate my list regularly and remove those not paying attention.
Your goal shouldn’t be to keep every subscriber. Your goal should be to become valuable enough that the right subscribers want to stay.
Bonus Mistake: Your Subject Lines Are Boring
Here’s something Charley didn’t mention in his article, but I’m sure he’d agree with me on this. Your e-mail subject lines may be bland, spammy, and not something that compels the recipient to open it.
If your e-mail newsletter’s subject line is something like: “[Law Firm Name] Newsletter, Volume X, Issue Y,” I can almost guarantee most recipients won’t open it.
Make the subject line provocative, make it spark curiosity. Then be sure to deliver on it in the content. You don’t want the reader to feel tricked into opening it.
For example, in one issue of my newsletter, I talked about how that day had been designated “National Working Naked Day“ on the web site DaysoftheYear.com. It was actually about the celebration of the benefits of working from home. But the subject line of the newsletter was: “Discover Why Your Coworkers Shouldn’t See You Naked Today!”
Would you open that e-mail? Sure you would!
Keep it tasteful; you are a lawyer. But you are allowed to have some fun, and your readers will be entertained.
Stop Treating Email Like a Chore
Effective law firm emails and email marketing don’t require elaborate designs, huge mailing lists, or clever tricks. They require consistency, useful ideas, and a willingness to communicate like a real person.
Show up every week or every other week. Keep the design simple. Say something worth reading. And don’t panic when the occasional person unsubscribes.
That’s how you stop being another piece of inbox clutter and start becoming someone your audience recognizes, trusts, and remembers.
Want More?
If you’d like to see what this looks like in reality, subscribe to my newsletter. I practice what I preach, so you won’t be getting an over-designed newsletter that appears in your inbox once every six months. You’ll get practical ideas designed to help you build a more profitable, productive, and efficient law practice every other week.
And if you’d like help improving not just your email marketing, but the systems, marketing, productivity, and technology behind your firm, click here to schedule a call with me. We can talk about where your practice is now, where you want it to go, and how I may be able to help you get there.
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