As I wrote yesterday, staying connected with referral sources and clients you want to hire you again and again is imperative.  In my experience over the past decade of working with more than 10,00 attorneys, I’ve found one simple solution that will help you achieve this goal without much effort or expense on your part:

A Simple Solution – Newsletters


One of the easiest, and most overlooked, tools in your arsenal is creating and distributing a monthly newsletter. This is an easy way for you to reach out to your entire network at the same time and to keep your name and your firm in their mind.

Firstly, when I say newsletter, I mean an electronic newsletter. Like all contact in today’s age, newsletters have gone digital. This is an obvious solution for several reasons:

No Print Costs – Since this is a digital only product, you can send it out to a never-ending list of contacts (just make sure they opt-in). There is no cost associated with the digital format.

It Establishes a Dialogue – When someone receives something in print, they need to take a few extra steps to contact the advertiser. With the Internet, consumers are able to respond instantaneously to digital communications. Most email marketing companies make it easy to provide links to email and social media. The easier you make it for a contact to share information, the more likely they will share it.

It’s Easy to Track – With email marketing companies like Constant Contact and Vertical Response, they will make tracking your effectiveness simple. They know who opened your email, who opted out, who clicked through. It’s an easy way for you to find out if the newsletter is working.

Keeping Them Informed – With a newsletter, you can include information about other marketing highlights you want to share. Did someone just get an award? Did a case just settle? Did someone new join the firm? Consider doing a profile on a different employee each month. It’s another way for your contacts to feel more connected to the firm.

Keep in Touch – Use the newsletter to keep in touch with former clients. It will reinforce the positive impression you had on them and ensure that you are top of mind if a new issue arises. The more people you have on the list, the further your reach. There is a direct correlation between the size of your contact database and the size of your bank account. Make sure that you have a system in place to capture all contacts – prospects, clients, referrals, leads, etc.

Educate Your Clients – If you handled my divorce, then I may not think of you when it comes time to hire an estate planning attorney. That isn’t my fault though, it’s yours. I didn’t know that you are also an estate planning attorney. When I think about you, I think divorce. Make sure that this doesn’t happen to you. Your past, current and future clients and referral sources need to know about all your practice areas. A newsletter is a good way for them to learn that you are knowledgeable on more than one topic. Don’t let them put you in a box.

By sharing pertinent information with your network of contacts, you will ensure that you are at the top of their mind. The more valuable and relevant you make the information, the more positively they will think of you and your firm. By giving them information that is relevant to their legal needs or industry, then they will see you as a constant asset to them. It is a long road of small interactions, but by focusing on creating a solid relationship with your network you will benefit in the end.

There are a growing number of skeptics in the marketing world, who question the effectiveness of email marketing. Whenever a law firm comes to me and tells me that they’ve issued newsletters, but pigeonholed them as ineffective, I know they’re doing something wrong.

Here are 4 cardinal mistakes that you need to avoid:

1.  Not sending the newsletter frequently enough – an annual newsletter isn’t enough;

2.  Your newsletter is too long – people are busy, get to the point;

3.  Not checking the effectiveness of the newsletter; and

4.  The worst sin of all, running promotional, uninformative content.

The benefits are obvious and the risks nearly non-existent. I highly recommend you start your monthly e-newsletter campaign as soon as possible.