How to Select an Email Marketing Program for Your Law Firm
By Robin on November 3, 2022 in Email Marketing Internet Marketing
When you’re ready to start an email marketing program or campaign, the first step is recognizing what you want out of the program. There are a multitude of different applications on the market for varying prices. Instead of sifting through hours of research and a large volume of programs, we have a quick list to help:
What Are Your Goals?
What are you hoping to achieve with your email marketing? Are you looking to set up a drip campaign, newsletters or simply build your audience? Would you consider a combination?
As many attorneys may not be aware of the goals of various email marketing options, below is a quick summary of the most popular choices.
Drip Campaign
Traditional drip campaigns are meant to be a source of lead generation. These are automated emails sent in different intervals (days, weeks, months) in order for you to purchase or convert as a client. Some examples may include new promotions, discounted services, new services or product recommendations. You likely see this all the time when you subscribe to a service provider, and they send emails weekly promoting some service of theirs. This is a great way to constantly keep in touch with your audience.
Newsletters
These are meant to share recent updates, information or certain topics that may pertain to their audience. This is purely informative to update their client list of weekly or monthly happenings within the company. It’s the best way to keep your audience informed without overwhelming them with too much information. Law firms may want to use newsletters to discuss recent cases, news about the partners and helpful legal tips. At PaperStreet, we send our subscribers monthly newsletters such as the below:
Build Your Audience
If you are looking to increase your audience, there is a simple and effective way to do this. Simply create a call to action on your website that enables new visitors or inquiries to subscribe to your newsletter or drip campaign. We have the below popup after a client submits a contact form, but you can put this anyway on your website. The most effective places are up high or on a sidebar. This will take them directly to the signup.
Understand the Essentials Features You Need for an Email Marketing Program
Now that you know WHY you are creating an email marketing campaign, you need to pick a program that is easy to use and will help you achieve your goals. There are three essential features you need to look for when selecting a vendor: volume control, multitude of templates, and a way to perform A/B testing.
Volume Control
Each vendor is different, but most will allow a certain number of contacts or emails before they charge you a monthly fee. As you grow your audience, the fee’s will rise, and you’ll need to consider how frequently you’ll be sending newsletters, as well. Finding the right combination to fit the size of your audience and budget is crucial.
Templates
Most email programs will have various built-in templates. The really good ones, however, will provide a variety of templates as well as the ability to create your own custom templates.
The applications that allow custom creation should include drag and drop features (images, text, sliders, video, animation) as well as the ability to edit in a HTML version. This will allow beginners and more advanced users to choose the best path.
A/B Testing
This is very important for determining the most effective way of sending out your emails. This method is simply creating two versions of an email template and testing on your audience. We recommend a longer, more robust version and a short and simple version. You can look at testing metrics to determine open rate and click through rate.
Additional Criteria to Help You Make a Final Decision
If all of the above seem comparable between programs, how do you determine which is the best? Look at which ones provide a free trial period, come with built in analytics, allow for segmentation, and the ability for integrations.
Free Trial Period
It’s free! Need we say more? Different programs will come with various free trial periods (1 week, 2 weeks or 30 days). The important thing is that you get a trial period to go through the entire application and test thoroughly. Make sure you set aside time to test the platform to the fullest and have a list prepared to test on – i.e. a small batch of clients or people within the company.
Analytics
This should be a completely standard feature with every application that does email marketing. If there are no analytics, don’t bother. If there is no way to determine the action taken when clients receive your marketing, there is no way for you to improve. The key is finding the best metrics that will assist you in creating a better campaign.
Segmentation
This is a feature that is a must. Segmentation means you can create multiple audience lists based upon a person’s interest, behavior or service. This provides valuable insight into your audience, and you can hyper target your email marketing to exactly what each audience needs. Ultimately segmentations help improve your marketing going forward by helping to cut down on losing subscribers while increasing signup, click through and open rates.
Integrations
This is very important as your campaign grows and scales over time. Audiences can vary from a 100 subscribers to hundreds or thousands. You need a marketing application that has the ability to integrate other softwares easily. Most integrations help further automate a user’s experience and help you market smarter. The more tools you connect will provide more data, and ultimately, help define your campaign.
While you have many options for email marketing, the best will echo what is outlined in this article. In our opinion, the three best on the market are MailChimp, HubSpot and Constant Contact. While each has its merits, the PaperStreet team has found – through years of testing, research and more testing – that Mailchimp provides the best service. Not only do they encompass the best features, their platform is the most intuitive and user friendly. It’s perfect for a novice and advanced user.
If you need help choosing the best program contact us today for a free consultation.
