Educational email courses are a powerful new marketing tool that most lawyers don’t know about.
What they do know is that their financial success depends heavily on a steady stream of new clients.
Most lawyers get some clients from referrals or advertising. But waiting for referrals is too passive. And advertising is too expensive.
Email is powerful and easy
An email list is the most powerful tool for accelerating referrals. Having a list of warm leads and referral sources who know, like, and trust you is a major marketing asset.
And making use of that asset is easy and simple.
All you need do is email folks on the list to stay in touch (i.e., stay “top of mind”). That will inevitably increase the number and quality of referrals you receive.
The only hard part
The hardest part of email marketing is getting strangers who visit your website to sign up for the email list.
Many people offer a downloadable guide as a lead magnet. But the opt-in rates for this tactic are now pretty abysmal (i.e. fewer than 10% of people who visit a website will type in their email)
Why is the downloadable PDF tactic no longer effective?
Because visitors to websites are highly suspicious about providing their email addresses.
They assume you’ll just use it to bombard them with annoying requests to hire you.
They aren’t ready to hire you because they don’t know enough about you or how you solve legal problems like theirs.
The solution?
Offer them something truly valuable – free education about how their legal problem can be solved.
You could offer to send them a video, but watching a video is a big commitment for them, and creating a high-quality educational video is a lot of work for you.
Educational Email Courses
A better tactic is to educate them through a multi-day email course. This is what’s called an “educational email course.”
Educational email courses are growing in popularity very quickly (just google “educational email courses” and you’ll see).
Educational email courses have opt-in rates as high as 70%, which is unheard of in most industries. But it shows that people are eager for useful knowledge, especially before making a decision like hiring a lawyer.
By providing an educational email course upfront, you can establish yourself as a trusted authority and build rapport with prospects in a short time period.
Think about the power of this approach. You’re actually helping them by educating them on important information they truly need to understand.
Over the course of 5 concise emails, you can take a complex area of law and break it down step-by-step, giving prospective clients a valuable “crash course.”
The course could highlight some key issues, pitfalls to avoid, and the benefits of having a lawyer help address the problems in the most efficient, cost-effective way.
Example of an Educational Email Course
For example, consider a 5-day email course like: “Estate Planning Made Easy.” It could follow a basic framework like this:
- Day 1: The 5 Critical Estate Planning Mistakes to Avoid
- Day 2: The Top 3 Reasons Why You Need a Will
- Day 3: How to Protect Your Children’s Inheritance
- Day 4: Tax-Savvy Strategies for Maximizing Your Estate
- Day 5: Your Estate Plan: Upcoming Legislation to Be Aware Of
An educational sequence like this provides immense value upfront and naturally incentivizes prospects to book an appointment with you.
By the time they finish the 5-day course, they’ll have a sense of who you are, how you think, and how you communicate. This creates the sense that they have a personal connection, which is a huge benefit.
How to create an Educational Email Course
Creating an Educational Email Course doesn’t have to be difficult. If you use an AI writing tool like ChatGPT, it’s easy to create a quick draft of such an email course.
- Here’s a link to a good article on how to do this.
Obviously, you’ll have to improve what ChatGPT gives you. But it’s a lot faster and easier if you start with a good framework.
So, if you want to keep your firm’s pipeline flowing with high-quality prospects, stop using ineffective or expensive tactics and start educating through an email course.
It’s an important component of an overall strategy of using email to get more referrals.
P.S. If you want to streamline your practice, check out my Ultimate Guide to Technology for Lawyers.
