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| JANUARY 2011 |
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Happy New Year!
Wasn't 2010 a whirlwind year? Yellow Pages continued to fade as SEO, PPC, and email marketing continued to rise. Facebook reached new heights and Twitter became a major player. Video marketing became much more affordable than ever before. Coupon sites became massive hits with Google offering to buy Groupon for $6 billion. Mobile applications (such as ones for the iPhone and iPad) are on the rise and reliable tracking and testing is more important than ever.
The world is changing -- more information, tools, and applications are being developed all the time to help you do your job better. In this month's newsletter, I'm going to show you how to maximize your email marketing through better tools, processes, and methods.
You'll also find a lawyer joke, recommended marketing event, and a powerful referral opportunity.
How to Improve Your Email Marketing
By John Bisnar
Many law firms have already adopted email marketing and experienced the impressive ROI that is possible. Email is fast, easy, inexpensive, measurable, and leads to results.
But there's always room to improve, and the truth is that most law firms are looking at all the wrong things in hopes of better results.
They're looking at subject lines, spam words to avoid, email length, plain text vs. HTML, the best time of day to send an email, which day is best, and so on . . .
But while they're busy worrying about the details, they're missing the big picture -- the clients who are receiving prospect-oriented messages, the prospects who sign up for a newsletter but don't receive one for three months in a row, the opt-outs from people who don't believe they're receiving any value.
Instead of worrying about open rates and deliverability, you need to focus on the critical practices that will take your email marketing to the next level.
Critical Practice #1: Use a Third-Party Email Company
Don't try to manage your own email lists. Your email marketing will suffer.
A reliable third-party email company can help you manage your email lists and maintain the quality of the lists and emails you send. They will verify the email addresses you receive as well as information about your clients and prospects. And most importantly, they will offer analytics -- allowing you to see opens, clicks, bounces, deliveries, unsubscribes, and message forwards for each of your emails.
So who should you use?
At BISNAR | CHASE, we use iContact.com for a few reasons. The company does a great job of list management, they offer beautiful email templates, their email deliverability rates are over 99%, their analytics are accurate and thorough, and their service can integrate with a number of applications including ones to connect with the iPhone, Android phones, Wordpress, and more.
Other popular email companies include AWeber, MailChimp, Infusionsoft, and Constant Contact.
Critical Practice #2: Segment Your Lists
If you're a legitimate email marketer (not a spammer), you know that permission-based marketing is important. You know that you cannot send emails to prospects and customers without their permission.
However, unless you're segmenting your lists you may still be making one of the biggest mistakes in email marketing -- sending emails to people who don't want them!
Is your law firm sending irrelevant emails to too many prospects and clients? Before you say no, think about it for a minute -- have you ever sent an email to your entire contact list?
Instead of blasting emails to your entire contact list, you should send highly targeted emails to specific client or prospect profiles. In order to do this, you need more than an email address on file. You should know their name, gender, email address, location, and status within your law firm (client or prospect).
No single email will be relevant to everyone on your list. So use this information to send highly targeted messages that your clients or prospects will want to open.
Critical Practice #3: Deliver Unsurpassed Value
Many law firms use company emails and newsletters as a means of selling their services. Your goal should be to deliver value regardless of whether your readers choose to come into your office or not.
Know, like, and trust -- right?
You may want to consider a weekly tip, monthly newsletter, or even an email video series. There are many ideas. Dream big and make them happen!
Personal Injury Mastermind Group
The tool that has worked best for me over the last four years in growing my practice has been my mastermind groups. BISNAR | CHASE has grown over 300% (as measured by net profit) since I became an active member of a law firm mastermind group.
For the past three years, I was a member of Ben Glass's GLM Mastermind group. Every attorney that I know in the group, who has been with the group more than a year, has experienced dramatic growth in their practice.
For the better part of the last two years, I lead a mastermind group with Stephen Fairley. Both Ben and Stephen teach law firm marketing and management at two-day conferences. If you want to grow your firm, check out one or both of their conferences. I did them both. They worked for me.
Is it time for you to join a law firm mastermind group? There are a number of them around. Ben Glass (http://www.greatlegalmarketing.com/faqs/what-is-a-mastermind-group.cfm) and Stephen Fairley (http://www.therainmakerblog.com/tags/bisnar-rainmaker-mastermind-gr/) offer mixed attorney mastermind groups. They are very effective. Check them out.
As of this month, I have left my previous attorney mastermind groups and formed a group for personal injury attorneys only. Our first meeting is Febuary 18th and 19th in Las Vegas. I am very excited about the potential of this group because of the quality of members who are hosting it with me and the members who have joined. To date there are over a dozen firms committed.
If you are a personal injury attorney and serious about growing your practice, you might consider joining this group. There are some requirements for joining and there is a fee. There is also a "no competitors" policy, so if your competition is already in our group, you won't be able to join.
Participation in mastermind groups has been my single most valuable tool in growing my law firm. I know dozens of attorneys that will tell you the same thing. Check out what Napoleon Hill has to say about mastermind groups in his classic book "Think And Grow Rich." Many of the great industrialists of the 20th century participated in mastermind groups in order to build their empires.
Out of all the tips I have ever given attorneys for growing their firms and experiencing the life they want to live -- participation in a good mastermind group is the single most effective. Join a mastermind group or build your own. There are a number of guides on the Internet for growing your own.
Here's the Secret
You refer them out, right? What if you don't know where to send them -- then what do you do? I have an answer for you.
Call Mrs. Carey Wagenblast in my office (800-956-0123). Carey maintains an extensive list of attorneys across the country in almost every practice area. And, if they are on our list, we have done at least a preliminary check of them and know, at a minimum, they have no disciplinary action against them and that they carry E&O insurance. Many of them we know personally, have worked with in the past, and trust their skills and ethics.
We are interested in referrals for catastrophic injury cases, especially injuries due to defective products, including defective automobiles. The vast majority of our income each year is fees earned in product defect cases, especially auto defects. In 2010, however, the majority of our fees came from product defect cases other than autos. Due to those darn confidentiality agreements, I can't tell you anything about who, what, where or when.
What I can tell you about referring cases to us, you'll receive a referral fee in keeping with the law of your state and ours.
We have not yet paid a single attorney a million-dollar referral fee on a single case. It sure would be fun if you were the first. The most paid to date to one attorney on a single case is $666,666.67. Next time it could be you. It just takes a phone call. You don't even need to buy a lottery ticket and the chances of collecting are exceedingly better.
Call Carey if you have a case you want to refer to us. Call Carey if you need a name of an attorney to refer a potential client. We'll help you out.
The Rainmaker Retreat 2-Day Boot Camp -- Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 28-29, 2011 & Orlando, Florida, on February 25-26, 2011.
The Rainmaker Retreat has had a major impact on my life, changing the way I market and manage my practice.
In fact, after the two-day boot camp, I had 19 action items on my list: specific tips, tools, and techniques I could immediately put into my practice. And today, most of those action items are up, running, and contributing to my bottom line.
The Rainmaker Retreat showed me how to
- Reduce my marketing expenses while increasing my return on investment (this one is saving me over $100K)
- Leverage technology to attract and follow-up with prospects
- Build a strategic referral network with former clients -- in 2010 we experienced a 321% increase in referrals from clients (past and present) from what we were doing before this workshop
- Generate more clients through low-cost tools and methods
And it can do the same for you! The Rainmaker Retreat is scheduled for January 28-29 in Las Vegas and February 25-26 in Orlando. Visit RainmakerRetreat.com for more information.
Just One Copy
A young attorney was leaving the office at 6 pm when he found the Managing Partner standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in hand.
"Listen," said the Managing Partner, "this is important, and my secretary has left. Can you make this thing work?"
"Certainly," said the young attorney, keen to impress. He turned the machine on, inserted the paper, and pressed the start button.
"Excellent, excellent!" said the Managing Partner as his paper disappeared inside the machine. "I just need one copy."
To Your Success!
John Bisnar
BISNAR | CHASE
www.BestAttorney.com
1-800-561-4887
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