According to a recent survey of marketing executives, email marketing was the top online marketing tactic with 80.4% of more than 3,000 executives surveyed chosing email as a strong performer, compared to 56.8% who chose search, the second leading performer. A different January 2009 survey showed that 58.5% of marketers expect to increase their budget allocation to email in 2009, more than any other category.
Why is email such a popular online marketing tool? Dun & Bradstreet's AllBusiness site gives these 5 reasons (to which we've added our own two cents):
- It's inexpensive (certainly, for law firms, considering the potential ROI of getting even a single new piece of business from an email alert or newsletter, it's almost a joke that more law firms still don't distribute them)
- It's effective (to paraphrase the AllBusiness article, email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing clients instead of passively waiting for them to return to your law firm's web site).
- It's targeted (send tax alerts to tax clients; energy alerts to energy clients; etc.)
- It's immediate (with our own clients, for example, we see a flood of registrations within minutes of sending out an email invitation for a law firm webinar or seminar)
- It's easy (no HTML knowledge required - if you know how to use MS Word, you can create and send email alerts with our software in minutes)
Actually, one of our readers reminded us, there's a 6th reason: email is trackable - that is, you know exactly who opened your emails, and who clicked which links, so your attorneys can follow up appropriately with individual clients based on their demonstrated interests.
See past LawyerCasting "email marketing" blog posts for insights into how to do law firm email marketing right.
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