Don’t stop yet. Clients want more and want something different.
Yes. They are swarmed with emails, alerts, webinars, and e-newsletters — but they are still searching for more answers. Every top legal decision maker has their favorite alerts. They don’t read much beyond those, but will scan a few new ones when the right headline grabs them.
Here is what is getting engagement, attention, more opens, and new readers:
Shorter
Clients are reading the bullet points. The shorter your opening paragraph the better. Clients don’t want to commit to a long read unless they know it’s compelling. It takes time to write something compelling and brief — but if you invest your time to write short, clients will invest their time to read long.
More Frequent and Smaller Bites
Clients will read a small number of bullet points or short paragraphs more often than one long email. While law firms say they don’t want to bother clients with too many alerts — short frequent messages are less of an intrusion than one long email.
Topical
Put your conclusion upfront where clients can see it before they dive in. Clients read about insights and conclusions — even when they disagree — because they can learn and expand their thinking. A descriptive title makes clients want to dive in to find insight.
Partner Curated
Top legal decision makers open personal emails from trusted partners. Always. Especially the emails pointing out the hand-picked relevance to the reader. You not only prove you care and make their life easier — you educate them. Dedicate an associate to find the relevance for your clients if you don’t have the time yourself.
The Current State-of-the-Art is Moving
Clients report some firms are publishing daily or several times a week. These tend to be short and the email/alert has a theme. They are easy to digest, and require minimal investment by the client. They also lead to more inbound client phone calls and discussions — and new business.
COVID-19 Resource Centers and related email communications are an enormous client development and branding tool. You can quench your client’s ongoing thirst for new insight and information and start a dialogue. More importantly, you can maintain a dialogue.
This is a silver lining coming out of the pandemic — high-value dialogue personalized for clients; otherwise known as fuel for high-powered client development.
It’s not easy to change your communications to meet evolving client expectations. But the rewards well exceed the effort to change. The first firms to implement change will enjoy the most benefit.
Be safe. Be well. Be cautious.
MBR
The MAD Clientist
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