You have an email list, for your newsletter, podcast, or seminars, or a list of your clients and prospects and professional contacts. You mail to that list regularly, or plan to, because you know that the more you stay in touch with people, the more clients and revenue you get. 

Everyone tells you to segment your list, to separate people by status (client, prospect, professional, blogger), or profile (consumer or business, big or small, type of services they need or want), because doing that lets you send targeted emails to each segment, thus increasing your conversion rate. 

Segmented lists allow you to speak more directly and specifically to each segment, addressing their needs in the context of their background and experience. You’re able to use more relevant examples and success stories for each segment, and speak to them in ways they relate to. You get more people accepting your offers, and fewer people opting out because your message doesn’t apply to or interest them.

Maybe you do this now. “Why send a newsletter about the benefits of a living trust to people who’ve already hired me to do that?” 

It makes sense. And it doesn’t. Let’s look at the math.

Let’s say you identify 100 people on your list who have not hired you to prepare a living trust. By writing just to them, let’s say you get 20% of these subscribers to hire you. On the other hand, if you write the same message to your entire list of 2000, and get only 2% to sign up, you get 40 new clients, double what you get from the smaller but more targeted list. 

You might also get other business by writing to everyone. 

Your message might prompt someone who has already hired you to do X to update X. Or it might prompt them to ask you about your other services, or refer a friend. Business clients need consumer legal services; consumer clients have friends who own a business, or want to. 

And so, segmenting your list and mailing to fewer people might be very costly.  

Are there exceptions where segmenting your list is warranted? Sure. But these are usually best addressed by using autoresponder messages that go out to specific segments of your list, in addition to your newsletter. Prospects who inquired about a living trust, for example, would receive follow-up messages about that subject. 

Send your newsletter to everyone, because you never know what might interest them or someone they know. 

Email Marketing for Attorneys

They came (to your website), they saw (what you do), are interested in hearing more, and subscribed to your newsletter. But they’re not ready to make an appointment or contact you with questions. 

What should you do? 

As soon as they subscribe, you should send them your “Welcome Sequence”–a series of emails that tells them who you are and how you can help them, invites them to learn more, and tells them what to do if they have questions or want to speak to you. 

A “Welcome Sequence” is a series of 5-7 emails (but it could be more, or less), that everyone gets as soon as they sign up for your newsletter, sent automatically by your email service provider via an autoresponder. 

Your welcome sequence acknowledges their problems and your solutions, provides information about you and your services, and tells them what to do to learn more.

And it’s important. It’s their second (third, fourth, fifth, etc. impression of you, the first being when they visited your website or blog, and it is the key to getting them to take the next step. 

More than providing information, your welcome sequence needs to make the new subscriber feel a sense of relief about finding you. It should make them feel good about you and be hopeful about getting the soluton to their problem. 

You do that by talking about them and their problem more than you talk about yourself. You also talk about your other clients who are like them or have had similar problems. 

The good news is that you don’t need brilliant sales copy to do that. In fact, the best thing you can do is to “be normal”–talk to them the way you would if they were sitting in your office or talking to you on the phone. 

Normal is vastly underrated.

Don’t try to impress them. Don’t make your messages all about you. Ask them questions about them and their situation and give them general guidelines about what’s possible via “If/Then” statements. 

Tell them what to expect about your newsletter—what you’ll be sending them, how often, where to go to get more information, and what to do if they want to speak to you. 

Tell them enough, but not too much. Whet their appetite to learn more. 

You know, be normal.

Email Marketing for Attorneys

I’m subscribed to an email list and every time this company writes to me, they make the same mistake. They change the name of the “sender”. 

One week it’s Mary, the next week Sally and Melinda, people I don’t know. The only way to tell that the email is from the company I know is to open it.

Why make people do that? Why take the chance of confusing people, getting people to delete the email unopened, or sent to spam.

Not good. And completely unnecessary.

If you’re smart, and I know you are, you put your name in the sender field, not your firm’s name, not your administrator’s name, your name—first and last—because the email is from you. 

You want people to recognize your name and read your email because it is from you. Even if the subject doesn’t promise a benefit or make them curious.

Even if it’s click-bait-y or goofy like many of mine. 

Your email isn’t just a conveyer of information and offers. It is also a means by which to build relationships with people who can hire you or refer you.

Which they will do if they know it is you who is writing to them.

Email Marketing for Attorneys