In Part I yesterday, we discussed how you haven’t really given yourself a chance if you think your practice can’t evoke client action through your legal marketing emails. You just haven’t used the power of videos, yet. Law practice marketing in India has evolved beyond traditional methods, if you thought nobody reads newsletters because you don’t, think again.
The same audience is spending hours at end scrolling through videos on Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms. In fact on YouTube, it is seeking out videos by consciously inputting search phrases.
In the context of Legal marketing in India, if you do the same old thing with your emails, you’ll have them done the same old thing back. Do not blame universal emotions for the failure of your email newsletter to land even after landing.
Marketing for lawyers requires a shift in approach. Try using some innovative law firm marketing strategies that gives people the information they are looking for, in a digestible and memorable format that builds a connection instead of merely expounding.
Connections breed loyalty. Loyalty keeps mailbox owners from deleting you before reading you.
In Lawfinity’s own example, our video emailers – adopting unexpected tones, honest and (what some may call) cheeky – have had an undeniable impact on email KPIs.
By KPIs we’re not just talking vanity metrics such as ’email opens’ or ‘click rates’, but in fact no unsubscribers and even some (what some may call) cheeky, very welcome reverts back to our video claims.
Want to take advantage of this straight, fast tool at your hands to elevate your legal marketing?
Here’s what more to do, apart from the 5 things we discussed yesterday (here):
5. Pre-action and post-action your webinar and events
You’ve invested in executing a webinar or an in house event? Make sure it doesn’t end up a sunken cost by running a campaign for your event.
The lead up to it should be micro-videos. Implementing effective law firm marketing strategies is akin to laying the foundation for success. They could invite poll responses, Ask Mes, anecdotes and a host of other attractive things that spark interest within 12 seconds each, strengthening the law practice marketing skills. The follow up to it can be bonus content (something only for your subscribers), announcements that are teased during the webinar, among other things.
Technicality: Avoid GIF action buttons, animated headers and other such moving things that not only look gimmicky and distract from the main message, but also slow down email loading times.
6. Holiday Greeting Strategy
In the arena of legal marketing, unless you’re sure your season’s greetings will be amongst the first to land in the recipient’s mailbox, you may consider avoiding the typical format of wishing recipients.
I personally know of many who enable filters with holiday keywords to automatically take greetings to the spam folder and lose them 30 days later without even having to hit ‘send to trash’. To overcome this challenge, consider incorporating some legal marketing strategies seamlessly into the festive spirit.
Consider using a festival holiday as an excuse to align your law firm marketing strategies with a campaign that your audience may be interested in. In that case, your video can be an animated short story that evokes warm feelings and community feelings within your audience. Wasn’t that what you were going for through holiday wishes?
Technicality: Inside your law firm YouTube videos channel, make a sub-channel dedicated to your social campaigns and create a three line textual story linking to all. This will help you find a taker for each campaign, in the intended audience.
7. Keep it Simple
While a fantastic medium of inspired engagement from old and new subscribers, video emails can quickly become complex.
While clever legal marketing strategies around storytelling can lift your newsletters out of oblivion into prime mailbox, it can also go horribly wrong.
In the competitive landscape of law practice marketing in India, ensure the following checks to not convert this opportunity into liability:
a) Analyse, analyse, analyse. To embark on effective law firm marketing strategies, use Mailchimp, Sendinblue and a host of other email software that have detailed reports which can be converted into engagement statistics. Filter out content that doesn’t work and go harder on the one that does, even if its not your favourite. The goal is not to self-indulge on your brand image through your video emails. The goal is to get the most eyeballs and create retention. So that you can at least channel other mediums to highlight your messages, on the back of that retention. Otherwise nobody is interested in what you have to say.
b) Subject line! Otherwise in a sea of auto-delete worthy newsletters how would your audience realise they’re in for a treat in your email? “Watch this”, “Video”, “Play here”, type keywords are a must in your subject line, in the context of legal marketing in India.
c) Landing page SEO. Considering the intricacies of law firm marketing in India, since it is you and not your YouTube who has done all that creative work making video content, link videos back to your website instead of your YouTube channel, through an attractive thumbnail.
d) HTML Embeds emerge as a valuable tool in the arsenal of law firm marketing strategies, for when you want the videos to be watched within the email itself without the audience clicking on links.
e) Ditch autoplay. Your email ‘s fulcrum is the video but it can’t be all video. And if you want your audience to read the light content written to supplement the video as a marketing strategy, an autoplay would distract them to the video straightaway.
f) GIFs. But not always. In the multifaceted landscape of marketing for lawyers, if you can find a way to make short full video content that fits into the size of the GIF, it is a great way to send video content without slowing your email loading time. However, if the GIF has no such purpose, it only looks gimmicky and distracting, while adding to the size of the email. Avoidable.