Now that you know what type of campaigns and email marketing your company will implement, you need to determine who your company will send emails to.
Your email list will vary depending on the type of email marketing campaign you decide to run (drip, newsletter, or webinar, etc.). The email marketing strategy you choose will inform the type of list you build. We'll look at the different options, which campaigns they work best for, and how to build them (if at all).
Current and past clients
The first email and contact list you want to consider collecting is from your current and past clients. This pool is valuable for a number of reasons. First, these are people who have already worked with you and are therefore most likely to trust your company and refer other business to it. Second, you already have the contact information. You can go into your Outlook or email address book and pull these contacts from there into your list. You'll want to dump this data into a spreadsheet where you can record their names and email addresses.
Please note: This list is also useful if you want to get online reviews on your profile listed on Google, Facebook, Avvo, and zalo database other popular online and attorney review sites.
If you are starting an e-newsletter, your client list will be the list you are most likely to use. Depending on the nature of your practice (i.e. full service vs. single or multiple areas of law), you may want to segment your client contact list into multiple lists based on practice area. This can help provide them with more helpful information and content related to the legal matters you assist them with when creating a customized newsletter or dynamic content to inject into your newsletter. If this is the case, then you will also want to keep a check mark or label column in your spreadsheet with the legal area of each client's legal matter. If you use a powerful modern LPM suite, then this can help you export this data in greater detail.
In other cases, where your goal is to increase revenue in a specific practice area, it may be wise to put them on the same list and educate them on the area of law you seek to promote. Ultimately, your client list is best used for email communications that keep them informed of your practice and priorities.
Leads and Prospects
Leads and prospects are great for email drip campaigns. These contacts are the most likely to reach out to you and voluntarily provide you with their email in one of a number of ways.
First, is through their desire to obtain or download a lead magnet – which we saw before. Using an email marketing automation software tool like MailChimp or Infusionsoft, you will be able to automatically collect and start running drip campaigns to them. These email marketing tools are relatively cheap to start with, and some offer free options.
If you use a website CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, then much of this is easily streamlined and integrated. Most of these email marketing platforms offer integration plugins that you can install into your WordPress website. This will allow you to build an email capture form or integrate into an existing form to deliver emails and contact details directly into your MailChimp or other email marketing tool to start a drip campaign sequence.