Tough economic times has everyone looking to cut costs. But a recent MarketingSherpa study shows that cutting back on email marketing during the current downturn would be a serious mistake.
The upshot of the recent study is that organizations who have an "investment-oriented" view of email marketing - that is, as a tool to build and nurture long term relationships with existing clients and customers - are finding that, even during a recession, the ROI from email marketing continues to increase as measured by higher open, clickthrough and conversion rates.
MarketingSherpa's conclusion?
"Modest investments in testing, best practices, measurement and, most importantly, providing relevant content will generate powerful ROI [from email marketing] - especially in a time when selling to existing customers will be a key to survival."
What lessons can law firms take away from this? The first cardinal rule to recall is that it is always preferable (and less costly) to generate new business from existing clients than to find and sign up new clients (especially during a recession). Second, email marketing remains perhaps the most effective tool for communicating with existing clients. This is because existing clients are accustomed to receiving emails from your firm, often on a day-to-day basis, and also value insights from your firm into breaking legal developments that are relevant to their businesses and industries.
So the lesson to take away is that as your competitors cut back on branding initiatives, email alerts and newsletters remain the perfect mechanism to cost-effectively reinforce your firm's expertise with clients on an ongoing basis. You want your existing clients to continue to think of your firm first when an opportunity for new business arises, and you encourage that by regularly reminding clients that your attorneys are experts who continually monitor developments in their respective practice areas.
Of course, your law firm's email alerts and email newsletters must remain RELEVANT - don't blast out an email about the Supreme Court's latest tax ruling to ALL the firm's clients. That's annoying to the 95% of subscribers who couldn't care less, and thus counterproductive to building long term relationships. Instead, send email alerts about emerging legal issues to those who really care about these developments, and need to know about them to assess the impact on their business operations. By sending relevant email content to targeted client lists, your firm reinforces the notion that it is staying abreast of new legal developments and stands ready to provide advice as needed.
Finally, make sure to track metrics. When clients click a link in a "teaser" in a law firm email newsletter to read a full article, those clients are demonstrating interest in the subject of the article. Your software can tell you exactly who they are. Make sure your attorneys are following up appropriately. If needed, we can show you how.
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