10 Must-Have Email Marketing
Capabilities for Law Firms

Email marketing has evolved. Law firms have embraced it, realizing how effective and low cost it can be. But law firms are also realizing some of the issues that email marketing brings to all organizations, and the challenges that are unique to law firms specifically. Moreover, ever-changing technology is presenting new challenges and taxing the capabilities of firms' email marketing systems.

Today people are using more devices than ever before to receive and read email messages – tablets like the iPad, internet-enabled book readers, and a variety of mobile smartphones. The rise of social media technology has also had an impact on email marketing, adding an extra layer of content management for marketing professionals. Finally, the implementation and use of CRM software has changed the way that law firms record and manage information about clients and other firm contacts.

To face these challenges today's email marketing software must be flexible, incorporating features that address these important issues.

Here are 10 must-have solutions to the email marketing problems facing law firms today.

1. Subscriber Management Automation

A successful email marketing program depends on accuracy and consistency. Managing large lists of contacts using a CRM system, spreadsheets, or databases requires a great deal of work by one or more people in an organization, and the process is prone to error.

Integration between a website subscription form and the email marketing system addresses this problem.

• When someone subscribes through the website their contact information is sent directly into the email marketing database. This means no manual entry by marketing staff.
  
• When an existing subscriber wants to change their subscription they do so using the website subscription form. Changes are automatically saved into the email marketing system.  This means no manual entry by marketing staff.

Result: Eliminates time-intensive manual entry of contacts. Avoids data entry errors and inaccurate contact information.

2. Opt-Out Management

To comply with spam laws and practice good client service, an error-proof Opt-Out List is important. Managing an opt-out list manually is prone to human error, and is a time-intensive process.

An automated opt-out solution prevents common opt-out management problems.

• Automated opt-out enables subscribers to remove their email address from the email marketing system by clicking a Remove link in every email they receive.
  
• The opt-out is recorded into the email marketing system automatically and permanently.   
  
• The email marketing system prevents marketers from accidentally adding opt-out contacts back into the system, and prevents email from being sent to opt-out contacts each time a new email campaign is sent.  

Result: Ensures compliance - people who have opted out will never receive your emails. Avoids manual data entry processes which are time-intensive and prone to human error.

3. Tracking a Complete History of All Email Marketing

Law firms have special obligations when it comes to electronic marketing. Firms must keep accurate and accessible records of all advertising to satisfy many state bar rules. Many firms store email messages from specific email campaigns as digital copies on employee computers or shared server directories. While this method may seem like it would be effective, it is prone to human error, as people forget to store messages on occasion, employees leave the firm and no one takes over the responsibility of storing messages, or emails are deleted from shared folders on servers by accident. Most firms cannot produce an accurate and complete record of all email marketing campaigns, who received them (a list of recipients), or the actual content that was sent to subscribers.

An email marketing system that automatically stores a complete history of all email campaigns can solve this problem. For each campaign that is sent the system should record:

• The email message itself, exactly as sent to subscribers, with all content, links, images, etc.
  
• A list of all subscribers the email campaign was sent to
  
• The date and time each campaign was sent
  
• A count of how many people successfully received the message, and a list of those subscribers

Result: The law firm can locate any and every previously sent email campaign in minutes, view or print the email, and see a complete list of all recipients and all recorded metrics.

4. Campaign Reporting and Success Metrics

Effective email campaigns reply on metrics. Sending email legal alerts, newsletters, and event invitations has a cost, in time and resources. This investment should be measured to assess ROI. Metrics should also be used in order to improve each successive email campaign by identifying what works well and what doesn't.

An effective email marketing system should provide these important metrics for each and every email campaign.

• A list of all recipients
  
• A list of all successful deliveries and the total number
  
• A list of all failed deliveries, the total number, and the reason for each failed delivery
  
• A list of all people who responded, when they responded, and what links they viewed
  
• Reports for excluded contacts due to delivery rules purposely set by the law firm

Result: The firm can measure success rates, responses, assess effectiveness of each campaign, and make improvements to future campaigns to improve success rates.

5. Sending Using Authoritative Domains

Much email marketing is never received by subscribers because of spam filters. While most email marketing systems provide some level of spam filter avoidance, they do often send emails from plain IP addresses or from domains that do not match the domain of the company sending the email campaigns.

For example, the ABC Company has been sending email campaigns using the email address news@ABCCompany.com, but sending from an email server hosted by the XYZ Company under the domain of XYZCompany.com. Because the domain name used in the email address is different than the domain of the server that is actually sending the emails, many of the emails will be flagged as spam and never received by subscribers.

An email marketing system that allows a firm to send email from authoritative domains will solve this problem. The system should be able to send mail through the mail firm's server, or from a specific domain name owned by the company that will resolve to the domain used in the email address.

Result: Fewer email marketing messages will be caught in spam filters, and the firm's overall deliverability, subscriber responses, and conversions will increase. 

6. Testing and Review Tools

Information contained in a law firm's client alerts and newsletters must be accurate and true. Testing and review tools are very important to law firms, much more so than many other types of organizations.

A good email marketing system should provide a method of testing and reviewing campaigns. The method should mirror the process used to send email to subscribers.

• Send test emails to reviewers within your organization using the method identical to that which is used to email send to subscribers
  
• Allows changes to the campaign after review
  
• Provides the opportunity for multiple instances of testing and review
  
• Allows the firm to send test emails to one or more people in the firm, as needed
  
• Enables the firm to send to a standard list of reviewers, or to designate specific reviewers for each individual email campaign

Result: The firm can review email campaigns with anyone in the firm before campaigns are sent to subscribers, to ensure accurate information is presented to every subscriber.  

7. CRM Integration

Law firms maintain internal software systems to manage contact information for clients and other people (CRM software.) These systems are typically integrated with many other firm software systems, so maintaining a single, accurate record for each contact is crucial. It is, therefore, also crucial that each contact be synchronized with the firm's email marketing system.

Email marketing often sheds light on inaccurate or outdated contact information for clients and other contacts. This information needs to be updated or corrected in the firm's internal systems. Without integration between the email marketing system and CRM, this process of updating and corrections is time and resource-intensive.

Integration between the firm's email marketing system and CRM system can solve serious problems related to accuracy that have far-reaching effects. It can also streamline contact management, and save a great deal of time and effort. The email marketing system should integrate with the firm CRM system in order to:

• Send to lists of subscribers kept in the CRM system (avoids manual updates to the email marketing system)
  
• Track bad email addresses and provide reports to the firm so corrections can be made to CRM records to ensure accuracy
  
• Add new subscriptions (via the website) and subscriber contact information into the CRM system automatically
  
• Update subscription options selected by each subscriber via the website and save selections back into the CRM system
  
• Save contact information updates (name, email, phone, company, etc.), made by subscribers via the website back into the CRM system
  
• Write activities for each contact back to the CRM system (for example, when a subscriber RSVPs Yes to an event invitation, or responds to a client alert)

Result: Cleaner CRM data, less manual data entry, fewer contact information mistakes, better email marketing deliverability, more intelligence about firm contacts saved and available in the CRM system.

8. Mobile Email Message Compatibility

Many people use mobile phones to read and reply to email. Blackberries, iPhones, various phones that run Google's Android OS, and other phones are used to read email by millions of business users in the United Sates every day. Many email marketing messages sent to these business users are not readable on these phones, and are deleted quickly when those messages do not load correctly. This incompatibility results in lower response rates for each email campaign sent from the firm.

To solve this problem firms can use email marketing systems that support mobile formats for each email campaign, including text versions of email messages and mobile friendly versions that retain graphics and formatting for advanced phones like the iPhone or Android phones.

Result: More subscribers are able to read emails sent to them, resulting in higher response rates.

9. Social Media Automation

Law firms spend a great deal of extra time posting various news, announcements, alerts, etc. to social media sites. In addition to the usual distribution channels, law firm marketers must take extra steps, and extra time, to post to each successive social media site they use. The manual process is slow and prone to human error.

To solve this problem firms can use an email marketing system that is capable of posting to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Firms can prepare an email campaign and send it while simultaneously posting to one or more social media sites.

• Post links to social media sites at the same time email campaigns are sent
  
• Reduce human error when manually posting to many different social media sites
  
• Provide metrics on effectiveness of social media posting via responses

Result: Saves time and ensure accuracy. Enables the tracking and reporting of social media success.

10. Event Invitations and RSVP

Any email marketing software can be used to send event invitations. However, many systems do not allow for truly personalized invitations. Moreover, email marketing systems do not typically include online event RSVP for invitation recipients, or a method of gathering those responses into attendee lists. Finally, because these systems do not include any event management capabilities, a firm cannot measure invitation success rates or campaign success using reporting. All this leaves law firms with a tremendous amount of manual work to accomplish. 

Firms can solve this problem by using an email marketing system that includes event management capabilities. The system should include the ability to:

• Send an event invitation to a list of contacts
  
• Personalize each invitation with the contact's name and personalized links
  
• Provide customized RSVP links to allow each recipient to RSVP with a single click
  
• Provide an online event RSVP form where the attendee can choose options like sessions, meals, special needs, additional attendees, etc.
  
• Provide metrics and reports for campaign success 
  
• Save all responses to invitations and create accurate attendee lists that can be viewed, printed, and exported to MS Excel

Result: Firms can save time and resources by automating event invitations and RSVP. Provides clients with a simple, convenient way to respond to invitations. Enables firms to measure success.

Learn more about Saturno Email Marketing Center >>