Law Firm Email Marketing Benchmarks and Best Practices for 2013

We wanted to share the most recently computed average rates for key performance metrics for law firm email marketing campaigns in 2013 (based on the approximately 4.8 million emails sent by our law firm accounts during 2013).

Here's what we found for the first half of 2013 (i.e., emails sent by our law firm accounts between January 1, 2013, and June 30, 2013):

• Average Open Rate: 19.37%
• Average Clickthrough Rate: 2.88%
• Average Conversion Rate: 14.85%
• Average Bounce Rate: 2.98%
• Average Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%

And for the second half of 2013 (i.e., emails sent between July 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013):

• Average Open Rate: 18.56%
• Average Clickthrough Rate: 2.77%
• Average Conversion Rate: 14.94%
• Average Bounce Rate: 3.31%
• Average Unsubscribe Rate: 0.20%

In a nutshell, while open rates and clickthrough rates trended slightly downward as 2013 progressed, conversion rates -- i.e., the percentage of readers who opened emails and were interested enough in the content to click through to read more -- trended slightly upward.

For further detail on the numerators and denominators used to compute the above rates, please download our report -- The State of Law Firm Email Marketing: Benchmarks, Trends, and Best Practices (documenting benchmarks for key performance metrics for law firm email marketing campaigns between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2011; while the data in the report is dated, the computational methodology and concepts are the same for the 2013 rates above).

If your firm's own rates fall below the above metrics, do not be alarmed. There are many valid reasons why the rates experienced by a particular law firm may differ from the averages. Please feel free to contact us to discuss these factors if you have any concerns.

If you are looking to improve the ROI from your email marketing campaigns, please consider an email marketing audit. Among the key areas covered in our email marketing audits are:

• Measuring email marketing reputation across multiple metrics that affect deliverability (authentication, IP address and domain reputation, etc.)
• Assessing compliance with design and distribution "best practices" that maximize readership, and minimize the impact of technologies such as filters and image blocking. 
• Reviewing use of campaign statistics for business development.