What is an Email Drip Campaign?

It sounds like a dream: you wake up to the sound of your phone buzzing, only to find multiple messages from prospective clients who need your services…and the phone just keeps buzzing. While you slept, an assistant categorized all your potential clients and reached out to them, sending information relevant to their needs, tracking those who responded positively.

It’s not a dream; it’s an email drip campaign. 

Email drip campaigns are a cost-effective choice to keep in touch with clients and leads, keeping your firm top of mind without constant effort. They’re the digital version of “tickler files” that law firms used pre-internet to remind them to send mailers to clients. And they can help you build your client base and enhance your customer service without spending all your time managing lists, emails, or phone calls. 

Why Should Lawyers Use Email Drip Campaigns?

Despite the increasing array of digital advertising options, email advertising has a consistently high return on investment: many sources cite an ROI of $36-$42 for each dollar spent. One reason for this impressive stat as it applies to law firms may be the way drip campaigns work.

An email drip campaign uses automatic triggers to send a series of emails over time (drip, drip, drip) to a client or prospect. The pace and repetition builds familiarity, and the helpful information provided builds trust. And trust is critical, because the decision to hire a lawyer is rarely a quick or impulsive one. 

Legal decisions tend to be high-stakes, and it can take weeks, often months, for someone to actually retain an attorney for their needs. That’s true for consumers, and may be even more so for prospective corporate clients evaluating outside counsel. An email drip campaign gives your prospective clients the time they need to make their decision, while reinforcing your expertise and trustworthiness.

Anatomy of a Successful Email Drip Campaign

The point of an email drip campaign isn’t just to communicate with a prospective client; it’s to build a relationship. As with relationships in real life, the pace and content of communication matters. If someone repeatedly called you by the wrong name on the first date, went on and on about themselves, or kept bringing up the prospect of marriage, you would probably run for the hills, not the altar. Similarly, your email drip campaign should draw people in, not insult, bore, or overwhelm them. 

Here’s a sample of how a successful campaign might unfold. Let’s say your personal injury firm offers a lead magnet such as a free downloadable guide called “What to Do After a Car Accident.” In order to receive the guide, of course, a prospect needs to provide their email address. Now the stage is set for ongoing communication that looks something like this:

Email 1 (Day 0-1): Immediate Value Delivery

A prospective client has trusted your firm with their contact information to receive a benefit (the downloadable guide). The role of the first email is to deliver that value, as promptly as possible. Now you’ve followed through on a promise (sending the guide), and can set expectations for future communications (letting the prospect know you’ll email again with information that should be helpful for someone in their shoes).

Email 2 (Day 3-5): Providing Relevant Insight

This email typically offers some insight that is relevant to the prospect’s area of interest (what to do after a car accident). It might be something along the lines of “The Most Surprising Mistake People Make After a Car Accident Injury.” Ideally, this insight is new information to the reader, helping to further establish you in their mind as someone who has knowledge they need.

Email 3 (Day 10-14): Offering Social Proof

After another week or so, another email is appropriate, this time offering a different type of helpful information to the prospect: social proof. That might take the form of a case result that shows what you achieved for a real (but anonymized) client with a case like theirs, or perhaps a testimonial from a client you helped. The point is not to boast, but to build credibility and help the prospect picture themselves as someone you could help. You are not asking the prospect for anything at this point.

Email 4 (Day 21-30): Soft Call to Action

This email gently moves the reader toward contacting your firm, perhaps by acknowledging how much there is to do and process after an accident, but reminding them that waiting too long to contact a lawyer can limit their options. This email might invite them to schedule a no-cost, no-obligation call (with a convenient scheduling link provided) if they have any questions you might be able to answer.

Email 5 (Day 45+): Re-Engage or Step Away

At this point, you’ve delivered value to the prospect and taken the time to build trust. They may be getting ready to hire an attorney, or they may have decided to go in a different direction. This email allows you to check in one last time, offer one more useful resource (like some FAQs or an article on how long a personal injury case takes), and encourage them to contact your firm if they want to follow up. Remind them they can unsubscribe if they’re no longer interested (but be clear you’re always available if they ever need your help).

What Most Law Firms Get Wrong When Creating Drip Campaigns (and How to Get it Right)

Email drip marketing for lawyers has the potential for great success, but when it fails, there is often one primary reason: the emails focus on how great the law firm is, not on what matters to the reader. Here are four tips for creating marketing emails that resonate with prospects:

• Write in the first person; it’s warmer and more personal.
• Lead with the client’s problem or situation, not the law firm’s credentials.
• Keep paragraphs short to maintain interest and readability.
• Send the email from the account of a real person at the firm to improve deliverability and create a personal impression, but only if the firm has a system in place to receive and respond to an email back from a prospect.

Remember: prospective clients want to feel seen, understood, and cared about, not marketed to. (Come to think of it, that’s probably pretty solid advice for a first date, too.)

Choosing Software for Automated Law Firm Email Marketing

Email drip marketing works well for bringing new clients into the fold, but it can also be useful for staying in touch with past or current clients, such as letting them know of new services the firm offers or recent legal developments that could affect them.

There are plenty of software options that make reaching both past, present, and (hopefully) future clients easy. Email management platforms such as ActiveCampaign and MailChimp are among the best known, but there are a growing number of options. How do you choose? Some considerations:

• How easy is it to use?
• How much does it cost?
• How does it integrate with existing practice management software such as Clio or MyCase?

Some legal-specific practice management tools have email marketing built in or available through native integrations, so you may not even need to choose a standalone platform. If you do, the cost might be lower than you think, since many platforms are inexpensive at small law firms’ typically low list sizes.

How Online Platforms Track Marketing and Save Time and Money

Effective email marketing is automated but feels personal. The email management software The Modern Firm uses can change the text of an email dynamically, send an email in response to someone browsing our site (if they previously provided an email address), and even text our clients. 

It would take a huge amount of effort and resources to do all that manually and to keep track of each contact. Software makes sending and tracking emails and managing email campaigns easy after initial setup. After you build your drip campaign, the software can:

• Add and remove customers at their request
• Send emails based on time or user interaction triggers
• Record user open rates, click-through rates, and more

One thing that makes email an excellent tool for marketers is the low marginal cost. Once you’ve created the design, content, and rules, it costs the same to send an email to 200 clients as it does to two; the software and servers do the heavy lifting.

Setting Up an Email Drip Campaign

Setting up your campaign is something like building a website, in that there’s a certain amount of up-front cost and effort, and a significant payoff when it’s done. Here’s a quick walk-through of how to start and set up your email drip campaign:

• Choose a beginner-friendly platform like Mailchimp or ConvertKit and create an account.
• Create a simple sign-up form following your platform’s instructions; this is how people get into your drip campaign.
• Place your sign-up on your website’s homepage and contact page.
• Offer something of value (like a downloadable guide or e-book) for people who sign up
• Write a series of short emails (like the ones described above)
• Create an automated sequence for the emails inside your platform, add them in order, and schedule delays between them.
• Connect your sign-up form to the sequence; this is what automates sending.
• Test at least once using your own email address before going live to spot glitches.
• Ensure that your email complies with email laws and professional ethics rules.

There’s little as off-putting to a prospective client than getting emails that clearly don’t apply to their needs (Think “Estate Planning for Your Young Family” when they’re looking for help probating a spouse’s estate).

Remember, too, that an automated campaign doesn’t mean a campaign you can ignore. Campaigns need periodic reviews and tweaks, and if a prospect actually responds to an email, they should receive a prompt, appropriate response. If setting up and maintaining an email drip campaign seems like too much for your already busy firm to handle, the marketing team at The Modern Firm can manage the details for you. 

Attorney Advertising Rules, CAN-SPAM, and Your Email Drip Campaign

If you’re all ready to get started creating a drip campaign (or hiring an agency to help you), there are a few more things to take note of. Unsurprisingly, one of them is your state bar’s Rule of Professional Conduct about attorney advertising and direct client contact and solicitations. 

The details of the rule vary from state to state. Your state may require that a prospect opts in to receiving emails, or may require a disclaimer that clearly marks the email as “Attorney Advertising.” Some states are even more strict, requiring you to submit your proposed messages to the state bar for pre-approval or wait a certain amount of time after an accident or incident to contact a prospect. 

We can’t emphasize strongly enough that you should consult your own state’s RPCs before designing your campaign; don’t rely on general advice. 

In addition to your state bar’s rules, however, you must be aware of the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which applies to commercial email. CAN-SPAM requires your email to have:

• A clear, accurate “From” name and subject line for your email
• A physical mailing address in every email
• A working “unsubscribe” option that will take effect within 10 business days
• No deceptive headers or routing information.

While CAN-SPAM allows you to email anyone who hasn’t opted out, state bar rules may be more stringent; it’s possible to comply with CAN-SPAM and still violate state bar rules. One doesn’t preempt the other. 

You’ll want to pay attention to both: each individual email in violation of CAN-SPAM can carry a penalty of up to $50,000, and the penalties for violating state bar rules can range from reprimand to disbarment, along with fines and restitution.

Finally, we also recommend that you ensure that your website itself includes a privacy policy that makes visitors aware of your site's use of cookies to collect data such as the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of visitors.

Launch an Effective, Ethical Email Campaign

The Modern Firm's online marketing team for law firms has built extensive email campaigns for clients to use with their customers. If you think automated email outreach would help you reach the people who could benefit from your services, you can schedule a marketing call with one of our specialists by emailing marketing@themodernfirm.com.