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Newsletter Marketing for Law Firms

The Most Important Feature of Any Newsletter - Don’t Be Boring

(back to part 2)

I’m sure you have seen the newsletter services who solicit your business. The vast majority of these services are doing nothing more than slapping your name on a generic, pre-written newsletter and then telling you that “having your name in front of your clients will help them to recall you when its time to refer a new client to you.”

I’ve looked at a lot of these services and subscribed to some in the distant past. The problem with most, if not all, lawyer newsletters is that they are stupefyingly boring. The best way to test is to call up some of these companies yourself and ask for samples. Read the articles. Are they interesting to you? How about your non-lawyer spouse? Your teenage kids? Are all of the articles that are pre-written even applicable to your area of practice?

Here’s a mistake a lot of lawyers make: They claim that their newsletters are directed to other lawyers in an effort to get referrals. They may also claim that they are directed toward “business to business” marketing, thus, they need to be “different.” I get one newsletter from a local business law firm that is so densely packed with legal jargon, case citations, and boilerplate contract language that I glance at it when it arrives only for a quick laugh. They are wasting their money big time.

You see, whether you are writing to the lawyer down the street or the young lady who just raised her hand to ask for some of your information material, remember that you are writing to a human being. We are all wired basically the same. We will pick up and read something that is interesting and, if it’s really good, pass it along to one of our friends. It does you no good to send a fancy four-color newsletter if it is not opened, read, and remembered.

Go to Where Am I Going to Find the Time to Write a Newsletter?