Law Firm HTML Email Marketing
eLawMarketing offers an "agency" approach to email marketing that provides our law firm clients with the following important advantages:
>> Cutting edge design: we won't limit you to "cookie cutter" stock templates. Our designers can develop custom HTML email templates that match the look-and-feel of your law firm's website and reflect your firm's brand and focus.
>> Strategic and tactical advice tailored to the needs of law firms: our "value-added" approach rooted in "best practices" and legal industry expertise differentiates us from cheaper email blast services like Constant Contact that offer just software, don't understand law firms, and will not work closely with your firm to maximize ROI (for an example of some of the insights we bring to the table, please visit the law firm email marketing section of our LawyerCasting blog).
>> Exclusivity for optimal deliverability: unlike most email blast services, we don't make our mail servers available to every mom-and-pop business that wishes to sign up (think Joe's Floral Shop). We screen all of our clients and only work with top law firms and other legal industry clients who commit to "best practices." This is a critical consideration since the deliverability of your emails and reputation of your domain can be affected by the practices of other accounts sharing your mail server. By supporting email deliverability best practices, we preserve your digital reputation and optimize your ROI.
>> Sophisticated software. for law firms launching a new HTML email marketing program, we offer a rich set of core features that will meet the needs of most firms. As your email marketing program grows in scope and complexity, we offer upgrades to advanced features (generally not available with the cheaper email blast services) that address specific challenges such as integration with CRM systems, maximizing deliverability, and centralized brand and message management for the largest law firms with multiple offices spread across the country or even the world.
Read below to learn more about our email communication services, then visit our HTML email portfolio to see sample email alerts, newsletters and invitations created and deployed for some of our law firm and legal industry clients.
CORE FEATURES
Email Marketing Strategy
Template Design
Campaign Creation and Distribution
Core Deliverability Features - Getting Past Filters
Campaign Analytics
List Management
Online RSVP and Surveys
ADVANCED FEATURES
Advanced Deliverability Features
Integration with Interaction and other CRM
Centralized Brand Management and Compliance
Email Marketing Strategy (back to top)
As legal marketers (and former lawyers), we understand that technology must serve the business needs of the firm, and not vice versa. Accordingly, before clients embark on an email communications program, we help our law firm clients to:
- Identify the firm’s target audiences, and assess what types of email content will deliver the highest value to each audience, and promote continued, loyal readership
- Analyze how various forms of email communication - newsletters, alerts, invitations, etc. -- will advance the client's business goals
- Discuss the structural aspects of the client's email marketing program - centralized or decentralized
- Plan how campaign statistics will be leveraged into new business development opportunities
- Assess how email marketing will integrate with other online marketing initiatives such as websites and blogs
- Review the business case for various email marketing features from both a business development and cost standpoint
The outcome of our strategic and tactical advice is a roadmap that will guide subsequent design, development, and content decisions.
Further, after a firm launches an email marketing program, we remain available on an ongoing basis to help:
- Monitor and interpret results
- Refine a law firm's email marketing strategies and tactics in light of past results in order to maximize ROI.
Template Design (back to top)
Using an appropriate layout, and the right mix of graphics, colors, and font styles, our professionals will design and code an email newsletter template that:
- Projects a firm's brand image and business focus
- Promotes loyal readership and high response rates
- Is optimized for readability and deliverability
- Matches the look-and-feel of your law firm website
We offer a full spectrum of flexible templating options ranging from automated stock templates to completely custom HTML templates.
Click the thumbnails to the right for a full size view of a sample custom template (top) and stock templating options (bottom).
Campaign Creation, Distribution and Tracking (back to top)
Individual campaign creation and distribution can be outsourced to our team, or handled in-house on a self-service basis by your own staff. For clients electing the self-service route, we offer software with the following features, among others:
- 24/7 secure account access: to create, edit, distribute and track campaigns on self-service basis
- High capacity mail servers: your IT folks will love the fact that you no longer need to use the firm's own mail servers to distribute your email communications. Our servers can handle millions of emails a day and are available 24/7 for distributions.
- Flexible HTML template options: contract with eLaw or a third party designer to build custom HTML email templates, or use our automated "template generation" tool to build 1 or 2-column templates on-the-fly on a self-service basis with no technical experience required
- Easy email campaign creation with HTML editor: user-friendly interface that looks and functions like MS Word enables non-technical users to easily assemble campaigns on-the-fly using stored templates and text from documents or Web pages. Icons in toolbar automatically format text: easily apply bolding, italics, hyperlinks, bulleting; insert tables; and more. For more experienced users, the underlying HTML code in an email can be accessed at the click of a button (click thumbnail screenshot to right to see detail).
- List management: easy upload of subscriber data (up to 10 custom fields with Core package). Supports automatic unsubscribe (with all removals tagged to avoid inadvertent inclusion in future campaigns), deduping, and bounce management. Supports an unlimited number of lists. Lists can be organized into folders and subfolders (read more below).
- List filtering: create sublists based on database queries (e.g., all clients whose industry equals "Energy") for more targeted mailings and better response rates. Includes option for A/B testing of factors such as subject lines using random list generation.
- Image hosting: all images in emails hosted on our servers. This eliminates bandwidth issues caused when images for email campaigns are hosted on your own web server. Folders and subfolders can be created for simplified image management
- Campaign tracking: system tracks opens, clickthroughs, bounces (hard and soft), and unsubscribes by individual subscriber name and email address with easy comparison across multiple campaigns (see screenshot to right). Mine campaign data for business development leads! (read more below)
- Plain text support: for subscribers who do not want or cannot read HTML emails
- Personalization: subject lines and body of emails can be personalized with data from subscriber fields (e.g., Subject: John Doe Invites You to Join Us at a Seminar)
- Embedded surveys: create and embed surveys within emails; prepopulate survey fields with subscriber data to maximize response rates
Core Deliverability Features - Getting Past Filters (back to top)
Since current spam filtering software may at times erroneously block legitimate emails, we've taken several steps to ensure our clients achieve the highest possible delivery rates.
Content Detective: available as a "core" feature, "Content Detective" is a proprietary tool that mirrors the logic used by anti-spam software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters, and then recommends a resolution to each identified problem before an email is sent (click thumbnail to right for a full view of the interface).
Abuse Desk: One way to get in trouble with the anti-spam community is to avoid responding to email complaints. Our mail server host maintains an in-house abuse desk that is managed by a team of full time email delivery and privacy experts who promptly respond to spam complaints received and thereby minimize the impact of complaints on deliverability.
ISP Agreements: Our mail server host has "white list" relationships with key ISP's (e.g., AOL, Yahoo, etc.), and anti-spam organizations. White list status allows mail sent by our clients to be appropriately delivered without filtering.
We also offer more advanced solutions for firms interested in maximizing deliverability.
Campaign Analytics (back to top)
After your email campaign launches, you’ll want to measure its success. Our advanced tracking tool presents campaign reports on the following metrics in an easy-to-read, highly visual format (click the thumbnail to the right for a full view):
- Opens and open rates
- Clickthroughs and clickthrough rates
- Unsubscribes and unsubscribe rates
- Bounces and bounce rates (including differentiation between "hard" and "soft" bounces)
Each of the above statistics can be drilled down to the individual recipient level so that you can see precisely who opened your emails, and which content was most popular with which readers. This level of detail provides unmatched opportunities for “rainmakers” to engage in followup business development efforts tied to clients' demonstrated interests.
List Management (back to top)
Our list management tools ensure that your subscriber lists will remain "clean" and current. Features include:
- Deduplication of emails so no subscriber will receive more than one message in one campaign
- Color coding of emails for quick and easy identification of status
- Centralized capture of bounces
- Removals "remembered" by system to avoid resending emails to subscribers that opted out
- Easy import and export of lists (real-time integration with CRM such Interaction is available as an enterprise feature)
Online RSVP and Surveys (back to top)
The Form Builder enables your in-house staff to easily create online RSVP forms and other online surveys, and incorporate them directly into your emails. Fields can be pre-populated with invitee data pulled from your subscriber database, thereby reducing the amount of information that an invitee must enter to complete a successful registration (click thumbnail to right).
Online RSVP forms can revolutionize your seminar and other event registration by:
- Boosting response rates
- Expediting response time
- Reducing administrative hassles associated with paper-based registration such manual data entry
- Reducing mailing costs
- Facilitating capture of additional event information (e.g., meal preferences, accommodation needs)
The results from form submissions are stored in the same location in the “tracking” module as other campaign statistics.
The only caveat is that email applications such as Outlook 2007 no longer support embedded forms. We have therefore rolled out a tool that allows law firms to build forms on-the-fly for deployment on their websites (or at a unique URL hosted by us) for easy online registration. Ask your account executive for further details.
Advanced Deliverability Features (back to top)
Increased use of filters impacts deliverability of even legitimate email communications. Our advanced deliverability solutions maximize the deliverability of your email communications. Optional advanced deliverability features include:
Private IP address: every mail server has an address identifying the origin of the emails sent from it. If you share a mail server with mom-and-pop businesses and they generate complaints, your firm's deliverability will suffer. Our private IP address feature provides law firms with their own unique IP address not shared by any other client. This helps insulate a firm from the email practices of other accounts, and can help a firm negotiate "whitelisting" arrangements with any clients who are filtering the firm's email communications.
Custom domain integration: if the domain a firm uses for day-to-day email (the "Core Email Domain") is also used in the reply address for 1-to-many mass email communications (e.g., email newsletters, alerts), then complaints filed by recipients against the Core Email Domain with anti-spam organizations may adversely affect the deliverability of the firm's day-to-day email. As such, we STRONGLY recommend that our law firm clients register a separate domain ("Custom Email Domain") to be used solely for one-to-many email marketing campaigns. For firms following this advice, we can incorporate the Custom Email Domain into all of the addresses (e.g., reply address, bounce address, HELO address) appearing in the headers of your email communications. This insulates the firm's Core Email Domain from any possible negative "reputational" effects from the firm's email newsletter and alert program.
Our custom domain integration can also help a law firm pass filters at clients utilizing a reverse DNS lookup test. This test checks to see whether the domain used in addresses in the email header matches the hostname of the IP address of the sending mail server. If the domains used in the header differ, there will not be a match and the email fails the test. With a custom domain, all the domains used in the email header will match the hostname of the IP address of the sending mail server - and pass the test.
Authentication: we support Sender ID/SPF authentication (i.e., we will publish the correct Sender ID and SPF records for your account to ensure compliance at Hotmail and other ISP's using this form of email authentication), and DomainKeys (DKIM) authentication (i.e., we will assume responsibility for "key" implementation and updates, encryption, and publication of records to the DNS for your domain.
Integration with Interaction and other CRM (back to top)
More and more law firms are deploying Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions to manage their client relationships. We now offer real-time integration between leading CRM packages such as Interaction and our email software application using a proprietary Application Program Interface (API) that employs remote procedure calls written in XML to transfer data back and forth between the two applications.
For example, data such as email addresses and other contact information can be passed in real-time from the CRM database to your email account while campaign statistics such as open and click through activity can be passed back from the email account to your CRM system.
Centralized Brand Management and Compliance (back to top)
Our enterprise solution allows senior marketing and business development personnel to enforce branding guidelines in all emails published by the firm without compromising marketing innovation at the local level.
Known as "Lock And Publish," the solution gives senior marketing personnel the ability to "lock down" specific design and compliance-related elements in email templates, which can then be published to local offices. Local offices can then customize and personalize those elements of the message to which they have been granted access in order to meet the needs of their local clientele.
“Excellence is not an act, but a habit”
Aristotle
Download recent white papers on law firm marketing technology:
Attorney Blogging: Best Practices
Upgrading a Law Firm Website
