Creative Ideas for Law Firm Newsletters

You prob­a­bly know that email mar­ket­ing often gets dis­re­gard­ed or seen as a mar­ket­ing tech­nique that gives poor results. Sure, we are all pret­ty much annoyed when we open our inbox just to see spam­my pro­mo­tions. The lion’s share of these emails will undoubt­ed­ly end up in the trash, and often, newslet­ters will suf­fer the same fate, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they are seen as  boring.

To help improve your law firm newslet­ter approach, Rosy Strate­gies brings you a com­pre­hen­sive guide shar­ing a cou­ple of excit­ing email newslet­ter ideas to attract your clients and revive your con­tact list.

Forg­ing the best legal newslet­ters in your niche isn’t a walk in the park, but these cre­ative ideas can get you start­ed on the right foot and lay the foun­da­tion for your reimag­ined email campaigns. 

Why Bother with a Law Firm Newsletter? 

Research from Law Tech­nol­o­gy Today sug­gests that a stag­ger­ing 86% of attor­neys fail when it comes to col­lect­ing email address­es from their new leads. In this regard, opt­ing for a newslet­ter might be a worth­while approach if you want to expand your email list and turn your cold leads into poten­tial clients.

That being said, you should know that a law firm newslet­ter shouldn’t only be a gener­ic email you send out every month. You should think about it more as a method for cre­at­ing new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Addi­tion­al­ly, an email cam­paign such as this allows you to open a new chan­nel where you can share news, edu­cate, and show­case your exper­tise. This can help you build trust between you and your sub­scribers, estab­lish­ing you as a rep­utable and reli­able brand with­in your niche.

The Benefits of Launching a Newsletter for Law Firms

With­out a doubt, email mar­ket­ing – when done right – can offer sev­er­al ben­e­fits to any firm or busi­ness. It’s more than just send­ing out reg­u­lar updates. When approached cor­rect­ly, a newslet­ter may also bring the following: 

• Estab­lish a clos­er con­nec­tion: With the right legal email newslet­ter, you can build a deep­er con­nec­tion between you and your poten­tial clients. You can tell more about your­self, your expe­ri­ences, and your busi­ness. This way, you offer a more inti­mate way for your sub­scribers to engage with your firm.
• Traf­fic: A smart­ly-craft­ed newslet­ter cam­paign can help you dri­ve more traf­fic to your web­site and social channels. 
• Com­mu­ni­ty: Being con­sis­tent with your legal email mar­ket­ing cam­paign can help you build a stronger com­mu­ni­ty. Some of the leads on the list will even­tu­al­ly start to fol­low your social chan­nels, get­ting even clos­er to your firm.
• Sales: Newslet­ters are also high­ly con­ve­nient for your sub­scribers if they want to reach out to your firm. A well-opti­mized legal email with the right call-to-action but­tons can help turn your read­ers into new clients.
• Bet­ter rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment: Hav­ing a reg­u­lar newslet­ter allows you to get ahead of neg­a­tive PR, build rap­port with your read­ers, and build more trust.

Writing a Law Firm Newsletter

We’ve all writ­ten hun­dreds of emails. Still, if you want to approach a newslet­ter cam­paign the right way, you can’t just sit down and start typ­ing. You first need to learn and under­stand the basics of what it takes to cre­ate a newslet­ter with valu­able con­tent. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing before you start typing: 

Define Who You are Writing to

Who’s your tar­get audi­ence? Being over­ly gen­er­al can kill any mar­ket­ing cam­paign. Sim­ply put, you need to define who you want to tar­get with your newslet­ter pre­cise­ly. You need to think about their per­sona, inter­ests, and prob­lems. You don’t want to risk offer­ing con­tent that your audi­ence won’t respond to. If nobody ends up read­ing your emails, then you won’t be get­ting the num­ber of leads and the amount of traf­fic you want.

So, make sure that you are address­ing the right peo­ple, more specif­i­cal­ly, your ide­al audi­ence. Take your time and brain­storm a few fac­tors before you start typ­ing to deter­mine your tar­get audience:

• What are the legal ser­vices your audi­ence might be inter­est­ed in?
• Which legal issues do you deal with the most?
• Which are the legal prob­lems your audi­ence might be strug­gling with the most? 
• What are the most com­mon ques­tions they might have regard­ing legal processes? 
• What do your read­ers wish to achieve by hir­ing a legal professional? 
• What their inter­ests and lev­el of knowl­edge might be when it comes to the legal sys­tem and law in general?

Gen­er­al­ly, you’ll have a good under­stand­ing of what your read­ers would be inter­est­ed in based on your expe­ri­ence in your field. If you are only at the very start of your legal career, you might need to study your social media fol­low­ers a bit clos­er, ask around in your net­work, review your exist­ing clients and estab­lish your tar­get audi­ence from there.

Grow Your Legal Email List

You might have the best legal newslet­ters, but they won’t be effec­tive if you don’t have an audi­ence who can respond to them. 

Build­ing an organ­ic email list can take a long time, but ask any expe­ri­enced mar­keter; it’s well worth cre­at­ing a list of valu­able con­tacts who will actu­al­ly show inter­est in your content. 

Avoid buy­ing sub­scribers. They are pri­mar­i­ly dead accounts, or the users will nev­er actu­al­ly care to open your mes­sages. Instead, try to invest in web­site mar­ket­ing, blog­ging, and oth­er tech­niques to grow your email list. 

Con­sid­er the following: 

• Pub­lish reg­u­lar blog arti­cles to dri­ve more organ­ic traf­fic from search engines and your social channels.
• Cre­ate an embed­ded signup form on your site to cap­ture con­tact infor­ma­tion (name and email address.
• User email mar­ket­ing soft­ware to add signup forms to arti­cles and pages on your site.
• Offer down­load­able mate­ri­als. Info­graph­ics, guides, and dif­fer­ent PDF doc­u­ments – behind a signup form can help you cap­ture more info.
• Ensure that the con­tent you cre­ate and offer is valu­able. Ensure that you show­case your knowl­edge and author­i­ty, and peo­ple will like­ly sub­scribe to you for fur­ther infor­ma­tion and updates.

Create a Content Strategy

After you’ve man­aged to define your tar­get audi­ence and have cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial list, it’s time to plan what you’ll put in your legal emails. 

Some experts rec­om­mend choos­ing a gen­er­al “theme” and build­ing your newslet­ter strat­e­gy around it.

For instance, for one month, you can choose to talk about the most com­mon mis­takes that clients usu­al­ly make when look­ing for a lawyer. Dur­ing the course of that month, you can write sev­er­al emails address­ing those dif­fer­ent mistakes.

Keep the con­tent orga­nized and plan ahead for at least a month. This can help you from falling behind your sched­ule and can give you enough time to come up with real­ly cre­ative legal newslet­ter ideas.

Write the Newsletter

You don’t have to be a nat­ur­al-born writer to craft a good law firm newslet­ter. If you fol­low these sim­ple steps, you can write engag­ing con­tent encour­ag­ing your read­ers to click.

• Ensure that the sub­ject line alone is cap­ti­vat­ing. Come up with eye-catch­ing head­lines and sub­ject lines to engage your read­er imme­di­ate­ly. Stay away from sub­ject lines such as “newslet­ter” and such.
• Opt for a “scannable” form. Avoid typ­ing a gigan­tic wall of text. Instead, break your legal email into sec­tions, short para­graphs, bul­let lists, etc. This makes it eas­i­er for your audi­ence to scan the email and find the infor­ma­tion they are look­ing for.
• Open with a hook and close the loop – start with a tip, a sto­ry intro, or a ques­tion and resolve the theme at the very end of the newslet­ter. Struc­tur­ing your email this way can keep your read­ers inter­est­ed through­out the email.
• Throw in a few links to your relat­ed blog posts, videos, social posts, and so on to dri­ve more traf­fic to your channels.
• Don’t for­get to include at least one call to action. Ask them to con­tact you direct­ly, respond to a ques­tion, sched­ule a con­sul­ta­tion, or vis­it one of your platforms.

Use an Email Platform

Newslet­ters for law firms can sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit from email mar­ket­ing pro­grams. They can make writ­ing, for­mat­ting, sched­ul­ing, and deliv­ery more stream­lined and orga­nized. You don’t need to mess with end­less CC chains and send every­thing man­u­al­ly. The tools enable you to deliv­er your con­tent at scale, simply.

Double-Check and Test

Re-read your email to make sure that there are no spelling mis­takes or any oth­er errors. Also, send the newslet­ter to your­self first to ensure there aren’t any deliv­ery prob­lems. By this, you can also check out the for­mat of the email and how it looks on dif­fer­ent screens. 

Send the Email Out

Once you’re all done with the steps above, check your email once more and click on “send.”

Track the Newsletter’s Performance

More com­pre­hen­sive email mar­ket­ing soft­ware will also pro­vide you with the nec­es­sary ana­lyt­ics to track the results of your newslet­ter cam­paigns. You will be able to see how many peo­ple have opened your let­ters and how many sub­scribed or unsubscribed. 

By look­ing at these met­rics, you can make adjust­ments to your cam­paigns. For instance, if you are deal­ing with a low open rate, you might need to exper­i­ment with more entic­ing sub­ject lines. If a lot of peo­ple are unsub­scrib­ing, chances are you might need to redo your con­tent strat­e­gy a bit.

Creative Newsletter Ideas for Law Firms

In all hon­esty, com­ing up with strate­gies, per­sonas, sched­ules, and grow­ing sub­scriber lists can get a bit bor­ing. How­ev­er, com­ing up with cre­ative email ideas for your newslet­ter con­tent will always be a fun and engag­ing chal­lenge. Some mar­ket­ing experts encour­age attor­neys to veer away from the same old ideas and explore their options more freely.

That being said, here are a few cre­ative ideas to craft the best legal newsletter.

Think in “Topic Series”

Come up with a series of let­ters that cov­er a larg­er top­ic. For instance, you can address every­thing your read­ers should know regard­ing DUIs and the asso­ci­at­ed legal pro­ce­dures. By divid­ing a larg­er top­ic into small­er, more digestible sec­tions, you make your sub­scribers’ job eas­i­er as the let­ter gets more digestible; plus, you are build­ing antic­i­pa­tion as they look for­ward to read­ing your fol­low­ing email.

Interviews

Do you know some­one with­in your niche who has an excit­ing sto­ry or per­spec­tive? Offer val­ue to your audi­ence by inter­view­ing them in your upcom­ing newslet­ter. If you have sev­er­al inter­view can­di­dates, stretch them out through­out your cam­paign. This way, you can improve engage­ment and deliv­er­abil­i­ty at the same time. 

Questions and Answers

The best legal newslet­ters will always include a Q&A series. Why? Because the law and the legal sys­tem can be real­ly con­fus­ing for the gen­er­al pub­lic. Use your knowl­edge of legal process­es to answer sev­er­al com­mon (and even sub­scriber-spe­cif­ic) ques­tions to keep your read­ers inter­est­ed. Make sure to use sim­ple lan­guage and be cau­tious of legal jar­gon. The bet­ter you man­age to explain these process­es, the bet­ter the results will be.

Embrace Email Courses

There are sev­er­al top­ics that need more expla­na­tion and, thus, can’t be ful­ly cov­ered in your law firm newslet­ter. If you see a demand for fur­ther expla­na­tion on these top­ics, offer a small mul­ti-step email course that will war­rant that your read­ers open each email newslet­ter to get the com­plete picture.

Templates

If you use an email mar­ket­ing tool, you can use pro­fes­sion­al tem­plates that can help you with craft­ing and design­ing your newslet­ter. A nice-look­ing email tem­plate will make your con­tent more engag­ing and may also help you dri­ve more traf­fic to your social chan­nels, as they often have unique icons that may encour­age them to visit. 

Embrace Video

Who says that legal emails can’t make good use of video con­tent? Inter­net users love video con­tent, so incor­po­rate video in your newslet­ter cam­paigns. If you use video con­tent, don’t for­get to add “video” to your sub­ject line.

Get to Know the Attorney/Team

Most sub­scribers won’t know much about you when sub­scrib­ing to your newslet­ter. Make good use of “get to know me” emails every now and then to intro­duce your­self to your new read­ers. Keep things fun and relaxed, and share a few inter­est­ing facts about your­self, your inter­ests, hob­bies, dis­likes, or some­thing that you sup­pose might be inter­est­ing to your readers.

On that note, you can also intro­duce your entire team in your newslet­ter. This is an excel­lent way to gain more trust with your read­ers by adding anoth­er lay­er of human connection. 

Share Stories

Audi­ences on the inter­net love a good sto­ry, and email sub­scribers are no dif­fer­ent. The best legal newslet­ters will also have a good share of sto­ries. Still, you should remem­ber not to share con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion regard­ing your cas­es, but there are always a few valu­able lessons you can share from the indus­try. On the oth­er hand, you can always share a few fun­ny sto­ries from the office or from your per­son­al life. 

Make Good Use of the News 

Just take a clos­er look at the news; you’ll often find a few excit­ing sto­ries where celebri­ties have to deal with legal issues or when large com­pa­nies get into legal trou­ble. You can always use these news arti­cles and turn them into valu­able legal lessons and offer your own unique per­spec­tive on them. This can help your read­ers under­stand the legal process bet­ter, as most peo­ple will prob­a­bly be talk­ing about these events any­way. So, why not turn them into content?

Connect with Your Audience

Start­ing a legal newslet­ter is an excel­lent way to build trust and a more mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion between your grow­ing brand and your exist­ing and poten­tial clients. 

All in all, you need to remem­ber that peo­ple who sub­scribe to your emails don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly care about mar­ket­ing con­tent in a tra­di­tion­al sense. They are more inter­est­ed in the val­ue you and your firm can offer them, along with the help you give them to under­stand legal issues better.

Still, deter­min­ing a tar­get audi­ence, com­ing up with a com­pre­hen­sive newslet­ter strat­e­gy, grow­ing your email list, and research­ing the best ways to keep your sub­scribers enter­tained demands com­mit­ment and time. As an attor­ney, you might not always have the time nec­es­sary to com­mit to these deeds. This is where we come in. Our team of ded­i­cat­ed experts is well-versed in law firm mar­ket­ing and will be able to help you come up with a detailed strat­e­gy that will help your email mar­ket­ing efforts.

That said, feel free to reach out to us so we can talk about improv­ing your newslet­ter strat­e­gy today.