Email Marketing for Lawyers: Strategy + Real Examples

Looking to advertise yourself as a lawyer, generate new leads, and grow your legal business?

If you've landed here, you probably already know that email marketing can be a great way to achieve that.

Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about email marketing for lawyers, including some email marketing basics, tips for getting started, email marketing ideas, templates, and real-world examples from other lawyers’ successful campaigns.

Let’s dive in.

Benefits of Email Marketing for Lawyers

The benefits of email marketing depend on how you use it. Here are a few key potential benefits for law firms:

High ROI

The average ROI of email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent, which makes it a very cost-effective way to advertise overall. And there are a number of cheap email marketing software platforms that’ll take care of most small businesses’ needs.

There are even some free email marketing platforms to try out if you don’t want to spend anything getting started.

Brand Awareness

Email marketing can be a way to help you put your most unique and relevant attributes front and center. You can use your email marketing to tell your story, including who you are, who you help, and why you’re the right choice for that group of people.

Lead Nurturing

Email marketing provides a direct line of communication with potential clients, allowing you to move them down the “sales pipeline” toward reaching out or scheduling a consultation.

Client Retention

Email marketing is one key way to keep lines of communication with clients open, whether by automating client feedback, providing additional education and value, or just staying in touch. It matters: according to a 2021 survey by LexisNexis, 22.8% of law firms surveyed cited lack of communication with clients as one of the key client retention challenges law firms are facing.

Boost the Impact of Content Marketing

Email marketing can help distribute and redistribute content to potential customers. Email subscribers also tend to be a more engaged audience than those who find your content through search as this is not their first touch-point with you and your brand.

More than one-third of law firms maintain a blog and use content marketing as part of their strategy. Email marketing can help ensure those efforts really move the needle.

Provide Value/Answer Questions

Providing information and answers to some common preliminary questions you tend to receive can help you build trust with potential clients. Lawyers looking to market themselves have to strike a balance between promoting themselves and providing too much legal advice free of charge. Email marketing can help address this by answering questions and educating clients on a broader scale, rather than one-on-one.

Establish Trust/Credibility through Thought Leadership

Establishing yourself as a thought leader and a source of knowledge can serve as a strong differentiating factor between you and your competition. Distributing this content by email can be a key part of this strategy. If you create valuable content and distribute it well and widely enough that people begin to recognize you as a trusted source, it can go a long way toward building your brand.

Law Firm Email Marketing: Tips to Get Started

Ready to get started with email marketing for your law practice? Here’s a step-by-step guide.

Pay Attention to Legal Compliance

Legal professionals have to pay careful attention when it comes to complying with regulations and laws governing email marketing.

While these laws vary by jurisdiction, a few of the key ones to look at include CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL.

Although it’s important to understand the laws that apply to your marketing, a few general tips to follow include:

• Ensuring that marketing emails are always sent to people who clearly opted in to receiving them.
• Providing an obvious, one-click way for people to unsubscribe.
• Including your business name and address in all your emails.
• Using clear and honest subject lines.
• Including the originating domain name and email address in the header.

Fortunately, most email marketing software handles much of this compliance work for you. You can get a more in-depth view of email compliance in our Email Compliance Guide.

Set Clear Goals

Email marketing is an expense, which means you should be setting clear goals around what you want to achieve to ensure there is adequate ROI for your investment. Are you looking to get more clients? Or increase awareness around your brand name and the services you offer?

Whatever it is, decide exactly what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. This should also align with your overall marketing strategy.

Overall, we recommend using the S.M.A.R.T. approach to goal-setting.

A few examples of goals you might set for your campaigns include:

• Book X client consultations from email this month.
• Grow email referrals to the blog by X this quarter.
• Increase client retention by X this year.

Choose Email Marketing Software

If you’re a lawyer looking to generate and nurture leads, the first step will be selecting the right email marketing software. This software will allow you to easily collect and segment leads, create content, set up automations, and track results.

Deciding which email marketing software to use depends on your level of experience, your needs, and your budget. That’s why we researched more than 230 email marketing software providers to come up with the best email marketing software based on a number of key factors, including marketing automations, key features, pricing, integrations, and more. You can also check out our top picks for the best email marketing platforms for small businesses - like yours!

Grow Your Email List

Once your email marketing platform is set up, it’s time to start collecting emails. In email marketing lingo, this is often called “lead generation.” Here are a few effective strategies:

• Creating a lead magnet: Add free resources to your website, such as whitepapers or useful checklists, or provide incentives for people to sign up, such as a free consultation.
• Add sign-up forms to your website: Place these forms in strategic locations like blog posts, footers, or pop-ups. Test different placements and calls to action to see what works best over time.
• Engage existing clients: Give existing clients the option to sign up when they fill out paperwork or visit the office.
• Create a dedicated landing page: Design a dedicated landing page for signing up and promoting your newsletter via social media channels.

Monitor Analytics and KPIs

Setting goals for email marketing will not only help you push yourself to improve, but it will also ensure that your efforts are having a measurable impact.

According to Clio, 26% of law firms do not track their leads at all. If you're spending money to acquire leads, you might be wasting resources without seeing any results.

At a minimum, we recommend you keep track of these email marketing KPIs:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Unsubscribes
• Spam complaints
• Conversions

Tracking conversions here is key. Determine in what way email marketing can have a measurable impact on your business success and track your performance.

Email Marketing for Legal Firms: Real-World Examples

Looking for examples of how lawyers are using email marketing to connect with clients and boost their business? Here are a few firms who are leveraging email marketing to its full potential.

Re-engaging Past Clients by Sharing Updates and Successes

Thom Pryor, the founder of Lawsuit Legal, found success by sharing firm updates and successes with past clients. His emails have open rates of up to 50%, with clickthroughs as high as 19%.

“Nobody really wants to hear from a lawyer unless they are in a crisis situation,” Pryor said. “We recognize that and email no more than once a quarter, just as a reminder that we are still here, still active, still helping injured people.”

How did he do it?

• Restricted emails to quarterly sends and put the focus on human connection.
• Provided useful statistics and recent legal successes to help people understand the firm’s services and promote referrals.
• Thanked clients for their business and wished them well to continue to maintain the relationship.

Increasing Client Enquiries with Authentic Storytelling

Mark Shayani, the managing attorney at Pacific Attorney Group, and his team used client success stories to increase client engagement and build trust and credibility for his firm.

“Our goal was to highlight our expertise and the positive outcomes we achieve for our clients,” Shayani said. “We wanted to create a campaign that would resonate personally, demonstrating our services' real-life impact. By sharing client success stories, we aimed to build a deeper connection with our audience and attract new clients who could see the tangible benefits of working with us.”

It worked. The strategy increased open rates by 30% and clickthrough rates by 25% over previous campaigns. It also doubled client inquiries with the firm.

How did they do it?

• Used success stories from real clients to inspire potential clients and promote trust in the firm.
• Sent short, personalized emails with concise copy to grab subscribers’ attention.
• Linked the email to a full write-up of the client’s success story for complete context.

Building a Community with Local-Focused Content

Kaylee Anchulis, marketing director at Larson Larimer Schneider, a law firm that focuses on personal injury, wanted to keep clients informed and demonstrate the firm’s commitment to the community at large.

To do this, her team built an email marketing strategy that promoted their services while highlighting local medical resources and relevant current events.

The strategy has contributed to consistent above-average open rates of 35% and a notable increase in engagement around local highlights.

How did they do it?

• Leveraged video Q&A to answer the most commonly asked questions. This provided useful content and personalized the firm by putting faces to the names.
• Created content that put a spotlight on local medical professionals or companies that clients may want to access. This supported other local businesses and gave a boost to the firm’s local SEO strategy.
• Created content based on current events, such as staying safe during the Fourth of July celebrations. This content was engaging, but also relevant to the firm’s focus on personal injury.

Read: Email Marketing Success Stories

5 Key Email Marketing Ideas for Lawyers

If you’re wondering what types of emails a legal firm might send out, we’ve got a few ideas to consider:

Welcome Email

This is the initial email a subscriber will receive when they subscribe. This is your chance to introduce yourself, your firm, and your philosophy. More than 80% of people will open a welcome email, so this is your opportunity to get subscribers’ attention and develop some name/brand awareness around the services you offer.

Appointment Confirmation

This type of email is practical but also powerful as a marketing tool. It helps ensure people arrive on time for their appointments and know what to expect. What's more, it provides an opportunity to introduce them to you, your firm, and what you represent.

Promotional

Whether it’s a free consultation for new clients or a seminar on a topic potential clients would find useful, email marketing can be a great way to reach out and spread the word. Promotional emails are also an opportunity to educate people on the services you provide and in what situations you are likely to be able to help them.

Case Study Emails

There’s nothing like a successful case study to educate prospective clients about what you can do for them. Share recent success stories (anonymously, of course!) and how you were able to help others through your practice.

Educational/Thought Leadership

Email marketing doesn’t always have to be about converting leads. Sometimes, it’s about providing something of value to build a better relationship with people who may become clients (or re-engage your services) in the future.

Educational or thought leadership content can be a great way to do this. In this case, the goal is to educate people in an area that will be helpful to them. At the same time, you can showcase your firm’s expertise in the area. This is a way to begin to build trust.

Survey Emails

Sending out client satisfaction surveys is a good way to stay in touch and maintain that connection in case they need your services again.

It’s also a good business move in general, as it’ll help you better understand your clients, where you’ve succeeded, and where you could improve.

Compare Your Email Marketing Options

Ready to start email marketing for your law firm? We hope you found all the information you need to get the initiative off the ground.

Remember that choosing email marketing software is one of the first steps and finding the right fit is key to your success.

Check out our top picks for the best email marketing software on the market. You can filter this list based on a number of different factors so that you get the best email marketing software for your needs.

If you’re stuck and don’t know where to start, try our Finder Tool. Just answer a few key questions and our tool will suggest email software just for you.

Check out our guide on the basics of email marketing for more helpful tips. You can also read about how other small businesses, like photographers and dentists, are successfully using email marketing.