Blogs

In a recent post from one of my favorite marketing news sites Clickz, Rick Buck addressed a number of superstitions and myths that haunt the world of email marketing. 
 

Here’s a short summary together with my take for legal marketers who missed Rick’s excellent post.
 

The first myth concerned subject lines. Despite the majority of legal marketers' subject lines being extremely safe (and not that thrilling) I’ve always sensed many have spent too much time worrying about certain words that could get them caught in a spam filter. As Rick correctly states “…in today’s deliverability climate whether or not emails get delivered is based more on overall IP reputation than specific words in the emails themselves.” Just concern yourself with whether your subject line will motivate your recipients to open the email. ‘The Lawyer’ often entices me with their subject lines like ‘BLG, Gaddafi and a spot of office bother’ unlike ‘Above the Law’ with their ‘Above the Law Daily – October 17 2011’ subject line (Much imagination needed here!). I won’t comment on law firm subject lines here but I'm sure you can get my point. Have a look at your own subject lines and ask yourself "would I open my own email campaign with its current subject line?"
 

The second myth is more critical and this concerns ‘List Growth’. The demand for list growth has led to some questionable practices in many markets according to Rick and this certainly is the case in legal marketing. In the BtoC and low value BtoB world many still trade email lists with other businesses. I’ve not heard of many law firms doing this however, many have said they’ve purchased marketing lists in the past. A practice that just won’t die in legal marketing. It is strange that naturally risk averse businesses have been taking serious risks with their own email marketing. When using purchased lists it is highly likely that your spam complaints will spike because the people getting your email don’t know why you (or your partners) are speaking to them. The answer is simple - don’t buy lists!
 

“Don’t pin the success of your email campaigns on the time of day or particular days of the week you send them”, according to Rick. This is true. I am still puzzled why some legal email marketers still send campaigns 5pm on a Friday in a state of panic. I wish this is a practice that would go away and my team would be happy to help marketers make the case to their attorneys why this is not always best practice. Perhaps some of my clients know something I don’t about that time of day but I can’t think many clients would appreciate a legal alert during their Friday happy hour! On the whole however, it’s more important to focus on the relevance of the content rather than the send time. If it’s relevant people will open it.
 

Rick’s last myth concerns the practice of over emailing inactive subscribers. Law firms are huge culprits when it comes to sending too many emails to clients who have never opened any emails previously. According to Rick “If they haven’t opened your emails in the last 9 months, they aren’t going to start now”. In the case of law firms I believe there are many things marketers could try before they give up on a client subscriber – firms just don’t try in most cases. If you must continue to send emails to inactive subscribers (we know your attorneys will ask you to) then try to make changes to the subject line, content and time of day you send the email. These are very simple solutions that don’t require too much effort. Please pay attention to the reporting data of your email campaigns and test what changes could be made to increase engagement. My team and I have had success with firms by helping them deliver re-engagement campaigns to clients. Where in essence, you simply ask your clients/subscribers to tell you what they want to receive.
 

Here’s the link to Rick’s original post title ‘What haunts email marketers’ http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2116052/haunts-email-marketers

Cheers,
 

James