Once upon a time, email marketing was the equivalent of a widely distributed direct mail campaign: Create a deliverable, and blast it out to your entire database of contacts. But as audiences became more sophisticated and content volumes turned into a flood, such scorched-earth tactics appeared as crude and were ineffective. Today, for email marketing to be successful, it must focus on relationship-building. (In fact, there is a push in the greater marketing community to abolish the term “email marketing” and slot it under the umbrella of “relationship marketing.”)
The key to capitalizing on email marketing as a relationship-building tool is segmentation. You have to be able to narrowly target your email campaigns so your content speaks directly to a specific audience. To do this, you need a quality CRM with customizable fields and at least one individual with responsibility for database management for quality assurance purposes.
Of course, we all know the standard information to capture from those who sign up to receive your emails: name, company and contact information. But that is the absolute bare minimum, and failing to capture more detailed information will hinder your ability to create targeted campaigns. Consider requesting subscribers to self-identify other attributes that could be relevant for segmentation, such as:
- Practice areas of interest
- Legal topics of interest
- Industries of interests
- Interest in networking and professional development
By capturing more details about your subscribers, you will be able to create and distribute campaigns more effectively, which will result in more ROI from your relationship-management efforts.
How Can Jaffe Help Your Law Firm with Email Marketing?
Jaffe provides comprehensive consulting services to help your law firm maximize its email marketing efforts. Our business development and digital strategy experts can work with you to assess gaps in your current CRM processes and help you implement new, integrated tactics that will enable you to capture more-precise information from your subscribers. We also have award-winning designers, content strategists and copywriters to assist you with developing quality content that provides real value to your audience segments.
Want to learn more about how Jaffe can help you improve your email marketing campaigns? Contact Alan Singles, Director Marketing & Graphics Services, at asingles@jaffepr.com.