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| June 2010 |
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If you're reading these words, then you understand the importance of email marketing. It's a great way to get in front of prospects, stay in touch with clients, and strengthen relationships with all your recipients.
In this month's newsletter I'm going to share a few of the most powerful email marketing strategies you can use in your law firm marketing.
Beyond that, you'll see a fee structuring tip, joke, upcoming event and a special invitation to my LinkedIn Mastermind Group.
Are You Ignoring These Powerful Email Marketing Strategies?
By John Bisnar
You already know that email marketing is a powerful tool in build your law firm. It allows you to stay in front of your prospects, nurture relationships with your clients, put your firm in a position to receive referrals, improve your sales process, and help others get to know you better. It provides a useful outlet for your creative thoughts and a way to share your knowledge and experience. In fact, you're probably already on quite a few "lists" yourself. But have you started your own? Maybe you have ...
You might have a monthly newsletter, you may send your clients questionnaires, or maybe you broadcast client testimonials to promote your services. You might want to publicize a recent win or accomplishment. You might want to send everyone on your list a copy of a press clipping or press release. The fact is that you can always take email marketing a step further. It is a great way to purpose your materials.
Here are three ways to get more out of your email marketing efforts ...
1. Build A Great List
Marketers spend hours analyzing every detail of email deliverability. Was the headline strong enough? Does the sender's name carry enough trust? HTML or plain text? How many images? One column or two column? How wide? What day should you send emails? What time of the day? And so on ...
While every detail is important, email marketing begins with one thing: building a great list.
If you have pulled together random names and email addresses from business card draws and purchased lists, you're going to struggle with email deliverability from the start. Why? Because they all might not want to hear from you on all subjects.
However, if you build a strong list of people who want to hear what you have to share and will somehow benefit from your sharing and/or will be entertained by it -- then you're well on your way! Give people a compelling reason to read your emails.
2. Segment Your List
Nobody likes to receive an email that doesn't educate or entertain them. So segment your list! You should have separate email lists for prospects and clients so you can be specific when addressing their needs. Do you offer a range of services? Segment your list even further based on their needs and interests. Do you cover a number of regions? Segmenting geographical may be helpful as well.
The more you know about your recipients, the more powerful your email marketing strategy will be. Instead of writing to a bunch of people that signed up and have a variety of needs, you can write directly to a well-defined audience -- such as qualified estate planning prospects that live in Sacramento.
3. Educate Your Readers
Beyond using email marketing to develop a relationship with your readers and providing special offers in hopes that they act (such as a free consultation), use it to educate your prospects and clients. Provide them information that is helpful to them.
Set yourself apart in your specialty by providing great tips and advice, especially in your area of expertise that can be easily implemented on a regular basis. If you can provide real-world value your readers will trust you, will consider you an authority and they are much more likely to come to you when they're in need of advise or representation.
4. Be Yourself
You can learn a lot from the experts. You really can. But you should never try to be them! You've been able to build your practice to where it is now by being yourself -- and there's no reason to change who you are just because you're sending an email, as if you could.
Your emails shouldn't be overly formal or stilted. You can maintain a highly professional image while still relaxing and allowing your personality to shine through.
Over time your personality will show through. Who you are really are will eventually come across. Use who you really are to your advantage. Be yourself, don't try being someone else. It will work for you over the long haul and that's what you are looking for.
Bonus Tip: Don't Overpromise
It happens time and time again. A newsletter is started with high hopes and huge expectations as a great marketing tool that will bring in lots of new clients. Issue one goes great and you get a few new clients and a bunch of inquiries that waste your time. But by the time four, five, or six months go by the newsletter seems like a lot of work, the special offers to generate those new clients start becoming overly generous, and you end up pulling your hair out trying to create quality content. That's how I went bald by the way.
Be careful not to over-promise or make unproductive offers/promises! Start small and make sure the entire process of producing your material as manageable and easy to repeat as you move forward. And no matter what you do, make sure you have fun with your email marketing, because people can tell when your emails were fun to make and when they were a chore. And believe me, when you're having fun you'll see much better results!
  Fee Structuring Tips
Attorneys need to decide on their fee structuring before a settlement agreement is signed.
Many attorneys take advantage of fee structuring agreements for tax and retirement planning purposes. Their attorney fee on a particular case is used to purchase an annuity that pays off at a later time, usually after retirement in a series of payments over a number of years. They are not taxed on the income until it is actually received. The money inside of the structure therefore grows without incurring a tax liability until the funds are actually received by the attorney.
Structuring an attorney's fees in this way can save taxes and build your retirement account.
What many attorneys don't understand, until it is too late, is that in order for income taxes to be deferred, the original settlement agreement must provide for the structured pay out of the attorney's fee.
Attorneys therefore need to be prepared, before a settlement agreement is reached, on the fee structure they want, so they are prepared to make the structured attorney fee a part of the original settlement agreement.
Joke
Something You've Been Longing For ...
Ed finally decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeded to have the time of his life -- until the boat sinks. He finds himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies ... nothing ... only bananas and coconuts ...
After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, "Where did you come from? How did you get here?"
"I rowed from the other side of the island," she says. "I landed here when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing," he says. "You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you."
"Oh, this?" replies the woman. "I made the rowboat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches. And the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree."
"But, but, that's impossible," stutters Ed. "You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?"
"Oh, that was no problem," replies the woman. "On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware." Ed is stunned. "Let's row over to my place," she says.
After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As Ed looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, he could only stare ahead, dumbstruck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, "It's not much, but I call it home. Sit down please. Would you like to have a drink?"
"No, no, thank you." he says, still dazed. "Can't take any more coconut juice."
"It's not coconut juice," the woman replies. "I have a still. How about a Pina Colada?"
Trying to hide his continued amazement, he accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces, "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom."
No longer questioning anything, Ed goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. "Wow! This woman is amazing!" he muses, "What next?"
When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines-strategically positioned and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her. "Tell me," she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, "We've been out here for a really long time. You've been lonely. There's something I'm sure you really feel like doing right now, something you've been longing for all these months. You know ..." She stares into his eyes.
He can't believe what he's hearing. "You mean ...", he swallows excitedly, "I can check my email from here?"
By John Bisnar
Search Engine Strategies, now in its 12th year, is one of the world's leading search and social media marketing events. The conference focuses mostly on search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing with sessions on PPC management, keyword research, social media, local and mobile marketing, link building, video optimization, website optimization and usability, and more.
The San Francisco event -- which is sponsored by Google, iContact and Bing -- features high-profile marketing experts such as Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Eastman Kodak Company; BJ Fogg, author of Persuasive Technology; Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners.com; and more.
Visit SearchEngineStrategies.com for more information.
LinkedIn Mastermind Group
Join us for the fun and learn something too!
Do you have burning questions regarding your law firm's marketing plan? Or perhaps questions about management? If you do, please visit my LinkedIn profile page and sign up for Bisnar's Lawyer Marketing Mastermind Group.
Recent discussions include:
- Lights, Camera ... BISNAR | CHASE in Action!
- New law firm marketing video series
- New social media marketing book
- Why you should use testimonials to market your law firm
- Web 3.0: Are you a relic of the old economy?
There are currently over 375 lawyers asking and answering important questions and sharing ideas for growth! And if you haven't yet signed up for LinkedIn, register today! It's quick, easy, and free ... and loaded with great opportunities to network with clients, attorneys, family and friends.
Don't Miss Out!
Get a copy of Brian Chase's book Still Unsafe At Any Speed while it's still available at no cost.
To your success,
John Bisnar
BISNAR | CHASE
www.BestAttorney.com
1-800-561-4887
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