How To Follow Up Email Leads For Law Firms
When someone signs up for your email list, they're interested in what more you can offer them. After all, they decided to keep connected with you outside your law firm website. They might be interested in learning more about your law firm, consuming more of your content, or considering working with you in the near future.
That said, just because you got them to sign up for your email list doesn't mean they're set on becoming clients. Some people who sign up for law firm email lists subscribe to keep in touch with you just in case they need you or are about to make their choice.
Hence, it's important to ensure you're giving them the best impression and gradually build trust. In addition, you want to make sure that your warm leads eventually convert.
So, for a more successful law firm lead generation strategy, here are a few tips on doing lead follow-ups:
Tip #1: Avoid Generic Emails
Bland emails aren't going to deliver the best impression. You don't want your emails to sound like generic ads blasted to hundreds of people.
The easiest way to personalize your emails is by addressing your subscribers by their first name. This is a common tactic employed by almost every email marketing strategy, and you could easily do it with the right tools and email drip services.
Although an address and greeting seem like a relatively small change, it helps make your emails sound more sincere and less like an insistent advertisement.
The same principle should apply if you correspond with a potential law firm lead. Avoid using very dry language, address the potential client by their names, and don't use template responses. The more human you sound, the more welcoming you'll come off.
Tip #2: Respond To Inquiries Right Away
Some potential clients are going to send your emails and inquiries. When they do, you want to ensure you get back to them immediately. You don't want to be known as the law firm that takes days to respond.
Not to mention, some clients will need lawyers as soon as possible. In addition, some of them might be looking into multiple law firms at a time and find one from a list of law firms they're currently reaching out to. So, you (or someone in your law firm) need to be on the lookout for subscribers responding to your emails or sending you inquiries.
Of course, it's not always possible to respond mere minutes after every time. However, you also want to ensure potential clients aren't waiting an entire day just to get a response. An ideal response time would be in a few hours—this means clients who reached out to you in the morning can hear back from you in the afternoon at the latest.
Tip #3: Personalize Your Strategy For Different Leads
Some leads are "cold", which means these subscribers might not be interested in working with you right now. However, some "warm" leads might be close to hiring you for their legal concerns.
So, make sure you're categorizing your leads and sending them emails to help draw them closer to converting.
For warm leads, you want quick follow-up time and more personalized content. For example, if a warm lead is very interested in Personal Injury, you should try sending them more relevant content on that topic. You could adjust your engagement, CTAs, and offers accordingly.
As for cold leads, you should try sending them more interesting and informative content. For example, if you notice that cold leads are opening specific emails on a particular topic, try sending them more of those.
In other words, you want to make sure you're not just blasting emails to everyone. Each lead will have their own preferences. And since we're at the final steps of conversion, it's worth putting in the effort to do so.
Tip #4: Stay In Contact For As Long As Possible
If a potential client reaches out to you, keep the conversation going. Ask about how you can help them, whether that's information about the law or your law firm. This is why responding quickly is crucial, so you'll be able to engage with the potential client longer.
The more potential clients engage with your law firm, the more familiar they'll be. This is a great way to build trust, as communication fleshes out your law firm outside of your well-designed website and well-written content.
Tip #5: Always Offer High-Quality Content
Whether it's an announcement, a short listicle, or a piece of news, leads still need to get something that's in some ways valuable to them. But, again, they're not going to immediately hire you just because they've expressed some interest in your law firm and your content.
So, even when personalizing emails and categorizing leads, ensure you're still giving them quality content. This isn't a blog, so you won't be able to provide the same amount of information as you did before. However, you can make up for the lack of length in the quality of the things you send them.
Remember, providing consistent and high-quality content is a great way to build trust. After all, no one will trust a law firm that sends poorly-written, unedited, or bland emails.
Bottom-line
Contrary to popular belief, people still use their emails quite frequently. Your social media accounts, bank transactions, and online activities are linked to emails, so people check them more often than you think. Just being able to send them an email or two will remind the subscriber of your law firm, which can come in handy should they need a lawyer in the future.
More importantly, emails are a direct link to your potential clients. You're communicating with them even when they aren't on your website. Not to mention, they'll be able to quickly send you an inquiry should they want to ask about something.
You want to leverage this communication channel, optimize your strategy, and boost your lead generation capacity.
Author’s Bio
JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.
5 Tips On Building A Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy
When done right, law firm content marketing can yield great ROI. However, content creation isn't an easy task. Besides quality, you also have to make sure you're coming out with content consistently. While it's not advised to force yourself and rush daily legal blogs, you also want to avoid abandoning your blog, social media, or emails for months at a time.
In short: You need to have a reasonable content creation schedule to see a steady rise in traffic and lead generation. If it takes you a week or two to plan, research, write, and edit new content, then stick with that schedule and make sure you're publishing something new within that week or two.
A law firm content strategy helps you plan and structure this process, creating a system that allows you to be more productive. To help you plan and create this system, here are a few easy but vital tips from years of Lawyer SEO experience:
Tip #1: Define Your Goals
Like most law firm marketing strategies, the first thing you need to figure out is what you want out of it. Is it to find more clients? Is it to target specific demography? Is it to get your law firm's name out there and boost visibility?
You need to figure out these goals before you even start writing. Here are a few example scenarios where law firm marketing goals could influence your optimal content:
- If you want to target Spanish-speaking communities in Los Angeles, you should try planning for localized Spanish legal content.
- If you're looking for clients from an older age demographic, you should write about elder law, use less slang, and incorporate an easy-to-read site layout for those with vision problems.
- If you need more traffic on your legal blog, you should cross-promote it to social media and email drips.
Setting goals helps you define your target ROI and monitor your performance. If you're not achieving your goals with the current process, it's time to change it up.
Tip #2: Study Your Target Market
For content to be successful, it needs to appeal to your target audience. For example, a blog post with too much modern slang might not appeal to older readers. On the contrary, slang and modern references might work if you're looking to find younger clients.
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources for you to look into your target market. Tons of research has been done to study almost every demographic, from age, sex, and employment status to more niche aspects like hobbies and lifestyle.
For example, if you're looking to target motorcyclists, you need to appeal to their needs and questions, like the prejudice they face in vehicular accidents. This would also help you create content that's actually valuable to the readers who might come across them.
Tip #3: Stake Out The Competition
If you're new to law firm marketing, the best way to learn fast is to stake out your competitors. If you're running a legal blog, try looking through the highest-ranking competitors' content, look at what they're doing right, and take inspiration from them. After all, they're ranking high on the SERPs for a reason, so you should apply the same strategies, too.
That said, we're talking about your competitors on the SERPs, so it's not just law firms. Remember, you're competing to rank for the same keywords, so you should also look at non-law firm websites ranking high in the SERPs.
Your competitors could be:
- Law firms
- Online encyclopedias
- Independent blogs
- Legal news sites
- Law guides
Although some aren't law firms, they're still using the same keywords. And since they're ranking high, that means Google or other search engines deem their content the best out of all competitors.
Tip #4: Determine The Best Channel Or Platform
Now that you've planned out how to create your content best, you now need to decide where they'll be posted. This applies to every type of content you'll be making—including blogs, social media posts, emails, etc.
The success of your content also depends on the platform you're using. While you're advised to always consider multichannel content marketing (or posting on different platforms) for maximum ROI, some channels simply don't work. For example, you might do really well on Facebook but won't yield too much ROI on Twitter. For your blogs, some settings might be too complicated for beginners, so a simple content management system might work. Some of your posts might do well on YouTube but not on Facebook if you're creating video content. In other words, some channels simply don't work for everyone.
In some cases, choosing to successfully market on four or five platforms is better than managing twelve at once while spreading yourself too thin. Remember, you're pouring time into these different channels, and it might not be wise to keep sinking resources into the ones that are simply incompatible with you.
Tip #5: Audit Your Law Firm Content Marketing Strategy
As briefly mentioned in the previous tips, some strategies, channels, and tactics don't always work. Some need to be changed. Some need to be reoptimized. The point is that content marketing for law firms is a continuous process. Auditing should be a part of this content marketing process.
You don't just post blogs and be done with it. You need to pay attention to your traffic, click rate, and rankings. If you have a high bounce rate, you might need to look at your pages and look for reasons people would click off right away.
The same applies to social media and email drips. If your Tweets aren't getting impressions and social shares, you should reevaluate your social media marketing strategy. Likewise, if people aren't clicking on your emails, it's time to look into improving your subject lines.
Bottom-line
When starting any digital marketing strategy, you need to create an efficient and sustainable plan that allows you to streamline your content creation process. Not only should you worry about creating the actual content, but you constantly have to make sure it's yielding the results you want. After all, you're pouring time and energy into this, so you need to make sure it's successful.
Author’s Bio
JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.