Creating a Successful Drip Campaign for your Law Firm

A successful email drip campaign can help law firms stay present in the minds of both existing and potential clients which creates a greater potential to generate future referrals and foster client relationships that lead to repeat business. This post explores the benefits of drip campaigns and offers strategies to create a campaign that pays off for your law firm.

How Drip Campaigns Boost your Firm’s Presence

The primary goal of an email drip campaign is to attract the subscribers that are most likely to accept your call to action and become firm clients. But within the walls of a busy law practice, this needs to be completed in the most efficient way possible.

A well thought out drip campaign can attract prospects, inform leads, and reward clients all at the same time. It maintains a high level of engagement without requiring more effort from firm members. With this consistent communication, your firm remains top of mind with recipients through ongoing conversations. You can demonstrate the legal services provided by your firm to build trusting relationships.

Establishing a Successful Drip Campaign

Identify your Target Audience

The first step in creating a successful drip campaign is identifying and defining your firm’s target audience. A thorough examination of your current client list can provide insight into which demographics are most likely to bring in new business. Consider the following questions:

• Who needs the legal services your firm provides?
• Where are these individuals likely located?
• What content and information will interest them?
• What methods are they likely to use when assessing the information they need?

After identifying your target audience, separate your email subscriber list into segmented groups classified by characteristics such as age, profession, location, or previous service provided. Remember that some subscribers may fit into more than one segment.

Establish Triggers

A well implemented campaign targets each group to receive tailored automated emails sparked by specific triggers. For instance, two common law firm triggers are action and demographic triggers.

• Action triggers occur when subscribers take certain actions. For example, if your firm sends out a general email about the different legal services offered, you may include links to more information about these areas of law. Each link could be considered an action trigger, and clicking the link automatically assigns the individual to a specific audience segment for receipt of targeted future correspondence.
• Demographic triggers target subscribers according to their demographic information. For example, a subscriber may be on your list for some time with no trigger engagement. This subscriber can be sent targeted emails aimed at re-engaging them.

Craft your Firm’s Messaging

With triggers established, it’s time to consider what to say. When crafting messages, make sure they are clear, concise, and aligned with the established triggers. In other words, don’t send a message focused on your firm’s criminal law practice to a subscriber who clicked on a family law link. Also, be sure to incorporate your firm’s brand voice and a call to action within the messaging. Both should be consistently present throughout your law firm’s drip campaign.

Plan the Campaign

 Generally, there are three options for your firm when reaching out to prospects:

• Manually sending out composed emails to each of your subscribers
• Sending pre-composed automated messages to your list
• Contacting your list through a combination of option 1 or 2.

Of these three, the third choice is optimal in most cases because you can automate tailored messages to the different segments of your subscribers according to their interests. For instance, your firm can send welcome emails to subscribers based on the service they’re interested in. Leads needing immigration services will receive a different message from others interested in family law. Another option is the creation of mass emails tailored to specific groups based on interests and actions.

Other considerations for planning your drip campaign include how often emails will go out, how many will be sent overall, and in what order they will be sent for maximum impact.

Start the Campaign

Once everything is in place, it’s time to start the campaign. Choose software that helps your firm automate the process and customize your campaign options. Once programmed, your drip campaign should run independently. You also want a platform that examines your intended audience and accurately segments your subscriber list for an even more streamlined drip campaign process. Another useful software feature is the ability to monitor the campaign’s progress and make necessary changes, which brings us to the last step.

Evaluate Campaign Effectiveness

A drip email campaign is a tool in your marketing toolbox, and like any tool, success depends on the way you utilize it. No drip campaign runs successfully on its own without evaluation and maintenance. Measure each campaign’s results to pinpoint any adjustments needed to boost future results in audience engagement.

A detailed review of the campaign is even more effective when you utilize analytics provided by your email provider and your firm’s website. This data can be very instrumental in your analysis of the ways in which your audience is interacting with your firm through your email messages.

Some Final Thoughts

Although drip campaigns take some time and effort to create, this marketing tool has consistently proven efficient and effective for automated targeting of law firm prospects. Once established a performing optimally, a drip campaign can help bring in the new clients you need to build your firm’s revenue-earning potential.