The goal of law firm email marketing is to get your emails read by your clients and other contacts. ClickZ recently published a helpful article ("How to Get Your Mail Past the Inbox Bouncers") discussing the main obstacles you need to overcome to reach that objective.
The first hurdle is technical - getting your emails into subscriber inboxes instead of relegated to their junk folders. The best way to avoid getting filtered is to maintain a "clean" email reputation. As we've stressed in the past, this means securing a private IP address unsullied by the email marketing practices of other accounts, and getting your email authenticated so the mail servers receiving your emails know you are a legitimate sender. As ClickZ explains:
"once a receiving mail server verifies your identification through authentication, it applies what it knows about your sender reputation (mainly, how many spam complaints your e-mail generates) to determine whether to send your e-mail to the bulk folder, the inbox, or the virtual wastebasket. Unauthenticated e-mail is more likely to be rejected or sent to a bulk folder."
ClickZ recommends using multiple authentication protocols, including SPF, Sender ID, and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to ensure your email message will get verified no matter which authentication protocol the receiving mail server uses (download our Advanced Deliverability brochure to learn more about our authentication solutions for law firm marketers).
The likelihood of reaching subscriber inboxes is also maximized if your company's "reply" email address is added to client address books (also known as Safe Sender or VIP lists). To encourage this, include a short message in your email header asking recipients to add your reply email address to their address books. An additional benefit of getting added to address books is that the images in your emails may be displayed by default instead of blocked.
Once you reach the inbox, the second hurdle to clear is to get your emails opened and read, instead of deleted. This is a branding issue.
ClickZ offers a number of recommendations:
1. Populate the "From" line with a recognizable brand - typically your firm's name. Additionally, make sure to display your firm name prominently inside the email itself in order to reinforce your brand once the email is opened.
2. Make sure the "reply" email address included in the "From" field uses a domain that contains your brand name (e.g., newsletter@yourlawfirm.com). Although to avoid risks to your day-to-day email domain, it's advisable to use a variation of your domain in your mass marketing emails (e.g., newsletter@yourlawfirmnews.com).
3. Use a compelling subject line that complies with "best practices."
The third, and last hurdle, after getting your emails opened is to get them read. Since email newsletter subscribers spend, on average, about 51 seconds scanning an email newsletter they have just opened, you don't have much time to attract readers' attention. Following email design best practices will keep your readers engaged, instead of bailing out to the next email in their inbox.
In the end, email marketing is not just about clicking "Send." It's about getting your emails delivered, opened and read.
Read the full ClickZ article.
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