LawyerCasting

Getting Subscribers to Open Your Law Firm Email Newsletter: Top 6 Subject Line Best Practices

One of key drivers of the open rate for a law firm email newsletter is the subject line. If it catches the attention of your subscribers, they are more likely to open the email.  Here are some "subject line" best practices designed to maximize open rates.

1. Mind the Space. When crafting a subject line, you should assume that recipients will only see the first 55-60 characters (including spaces). While many email applications allow users to expand the space devoted to the subject line, it's best to assume that words beyond the above range may get cut off, and therefore include your most compelling language within that space. To measure a proposed subject line, you can copy and paste it into a new document in MS Word, click "Properties," (under "File") and then click "Statistics." (Note: MS Word 2007 has a new interface that has a different path to the same information). Remember to look at the number of characters with spaces (rather than without).

You can also send a test email to yourself and see how it looks in your email inbox (assuming the space allocated in your inbox interface to subject lines is not overly stingy or generous, and thus representative of your readers' configurations).

Finally, make sure there is no word at a possible cutoff point that could prove embarassing if only part of the word was displayed in the subject line (consider this example that led to some red faces: Case Study: How One Client Used Senior Executive Assessments to Predict Performance).

Given space limitations for subject lines, the next few tips will teach you how to make the best use of that space.

2. Avoid Redundancy. It's a bad idea to repeat the name of your law firm in the subject line. That information should already appear in the "From" field. Repeating it in the subject line is duplicative, and thus wastes valuable space that could otherwise be used to craft a compelling subject line.

It's also a waste to include the date of the publication in the subject line since most email applications allow users to sort email by date.

3. Be Descriptive. Make sure the subject line accurately describes the content of each issue (if there are several topics covered in an issue, mention the most compelling one (e.g., "Supreme Court Strikes Down New York Tax Regulation"). Alternatively, summarize key issues and conclude with "And More" (e.g., Tax News: New IRS Reg, Supreme Crt Decision, and More").

Subscribers appreciate descriptive subject lines since it helps them quickly decide upfront whether they want to read a particular email. While this gesture may initially reduce the number of opens, descriptive subject lines build trust over time since readers know you value their time and aren't trying to entice them with vague subject lines, or worse, subject lines that don't reflect the subject matter of the email. Indeed, nothing does more to annoy readers and shatter trust than to "tease" them with a subject line and then speak about an entirely different topic in the email.

Website Performance Monitoring Solutions That Will Alert You If Your Law Firm Website or Blog Goes Down

You've invested alot of time and money in your new law firm website (or blog, which is really just a specialized kind of website). The performance of the site, in terms of lead generation, branding and other objectives, obviously depends on the site remaining up and running. Maybe your firm even has an Services Level Agreement (SLA) with your site hosting provider promising that the site will be up some percentage of time (usually 99% or higher) (a/k/a "guaranteed uptime").

How can you remain informed about the availability of your website or blog? How can you monitor your host's uptime guarantee? Consider investing in an online website monitoring service.

These services will automatically check in our website or blog at specified intervals ranging from every minute to every 60 minutes.  They'll also let you specify contacts at various devices (email, text messaging, cellphone, etc.) to be notified so corrective action can be taken if the service detects that the site is down.

Some services to consider: AlertSite Web Site Performance Monitor, WebPerform (from Gomez), and IP Checkpoint. AlertSite is the most expensive of the three, but we've recommended it to clients because of the easy-to-use, intuitive interface and exceptional customer service (which includes a dedicated account representative).

Law Firm Podcasts: The Nuts and Bolts

With the explosion of audio downloads on the Internet (in 2007, Apple's iTunes services sold an average of more than 5 million songs a day), lawyers should be looking carefully at Internet audio as a vehicle to market their practices in 2008. One obvious option is podcasting, which Wikipedia defines as the distribution of audio over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. That is, what distinguishes a podcast from other digital media formats is its ability "to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS."

In layman’s terms, podcasting provides publishers with the ability to create their own audio broadcast and store it on the internet for download by interested individuals to listen to at any time and anywhere they want. 

Why should lawyers be interested in podcasting? Because of the increasing popularity of personal listening devices, attorneys can use podcasts to:

• showcase their expertise
• build a loyal audience
• generate new leads
• drive website traffic

The podcast format is especially appealing to the approximately 10% of the population who are “auditory,” that is, they prefer to absorb news and other information by listening instead of reading.

This post will explain the "nuts and bolts" of podcasting for lawyers.

Study Finds That Simple Word Change in Email Newsletter Hyperlinks Raises Clickthrough Rate by 8.53%

MarketingSherpa (a leading publisher of marketing case studies) recently considered whether the wording used in email newsletter hyperlinks (i.e., the "read more" links that take readers from the "teaser" summaries in your email newsletter to the full articles on your website) makes a difference in clickthrough rates.

The answer, they found, is "yes." In fact, an experiment revealed that using the right words in the hyperlinks in your email newsletters or alerts can boost clickthroughs by more than 8%. Click the link below to learn what they found.

Note: you can easily run the same test on your own law firm email newsletters or alerts if you are using email marketing software that allows multivariate testing where you split your lists into random "nth name" segments and distribute different versions of the relevant newsletter or alert to each segment.

Using Google Analytics to See What's Happening on Your Law Firm Website

Wikipedia defines "web analytics" as the collection and study of data related to the behavior of website visitors. Such data includes site metrics such as unique visitors, unique page views, referring sites, and keywords used by visitors to locate a website.

Any law firm with a website should be using web analytics software to study the source and patterns of traffic on the site. Such analysis can help a firm identify issues that are impeding site usability or performance, as well as determine the success of different marketing initiatives aimed at generating increased site traffic.

Fortunately, Google offers a free analytics program called Google Analytics that is powerful, flexible and customizable. However, to make the most of Google Analytics, one must invest time learning the "ins" and "outs" of the program.

Before getting started, read this article on Ralph's Wilson's website entitled 10 Tips for Getting Better Data From Google Analytics for advice on getting better and more meaningful results from Google Analytics.

Lawyer Blogging Best Practices

There is no question that lawyers are embracing blogs as a business development tool in record numbers. Their expectations are not off the mark. Blogs are an excellent marketing tool because they deliver exactly what search engines want: targeted content updated on a regular basis that attracts inbound links. The high search engine visibility of blogs, in turn, attracts media visibility, which helps lawyers build their reputations as thought leaders in niche practice areas.

However, as the number of lawyer blogs proliferate, obtaining a high search engine ranking may longer be enough to realize the business development potential of a blog. As the use of blogs among attorneys proliferates, differences in quality between blogs will become more evident. Clients, prospects, jouranalists and other individuals targeted by a lawyer can only read so many blogs a day (and this includes blogs on politics, gadgets, health, etc.), and will therefore start to become more and more discriminating about which lawyer blogs they follow on a regular basis.

It is therefore critical for a lawyer launching a blog to follow "best practices" that will distinguish his or her blog from the competition.

At eLawMarketing, we recently published a white paper entitled Attorney Blogging Best Practices, that will get you started with an overview of "best practices" in the areas of blog design, content development and promotion.

Download the white paper here.

Welcome to LawyerCasting(TM)

Welcome to LawyerCasting^TM, a new blog from eLawMarketing (edited by attorney/Internet marketer Joshua Fruchter) covering "best practices" in online marketing for lawyers and law firms, including websites, blogs, podcasts, webcasts, email marketing and much more!

Read the posts below and in our archives to learn all the latest tips and strategies for using the Internet to market your law firm and develop new business. Enjoy and prosper!

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