6 Tips for Keeping Your Law Firm’s Newsletter Out of the Spam Trap
One of the most common problems law firms encounter when launching an email newsletter is the spam trap. You put together a great email, send it out, and it goes straight to your readers’ spam folders.
This can spell doom for a newsletter campaign. After all, if none of your emails ever reach your audience’s inbox, nothing you have to say will do anyone much good.
The good news is that you can escape the spam trap. In this guide, we’ll show you how.
1. Follow List-Building Best Practices
Finding subscribers for your newsletter can be a challenge. When starting a newsletter, you may be tempted to add every address you know and start sending out unsolicited emails. Worse still, you may consider buying lists from a third party.
Either approach would be a mistake. Not only are they illegal, but they also make it more likely that your emails will get tagged as spam.
To avoid that outcome, always follow best practices when expanding your email list. We recommend reviewing the CAN-SPAM Act and your state bar guidelines to ensure you’re compliant with the relevant regulations.
2. Clean Your List Regularly
Even if people subscribe to your newsletter voluntarily, not everyone will stay interested forever. When your readers lose interest, they may unsubscribe. Others will remain subscribed but delete your emails without opening them. They may even mark your newsletter as spam.
This will hurt your sender reputation and make it harder to keep your emails out of the spam trap. To prevent this, you have to clean your list and boost your open rate. Go through your list at least once a year and remove any subscribers who aren’t receiving or engaging with your emails.
3. Use a Clear Sender Address
Your sender address is the email address you use to deliver your newsletter. If your sender address is seemingly random or unclear, spam filters may flag your emails. Instead, use your name, the name of your firm, or another branded title for your address.
4. Ask Subscribers to Whitelist Your Sender Address
Another way to stay away from the spam folder is to ask your subscribers to whitelist you. This simply means adding your law firm’s address to their contacts. When Gmail, Outlook, or any other email service sees that your address is listed as a contact, it will direct your emails to the inbox rather than the spam folder.
If you do ask subscribers to whitelist your address, be sure to include clear instructions for how they should do it. You can do this as part of your welcome email when a new subscriber signs up.
5. Proofread Your Emails
Poor grammar and excessive typos can show up as a red flag for spam filters. Before hitting send, make sure that your emails look clean and professional. Some other problems that could get your emails flagged include:
- Too much content in the email body
- Overuse of exclamation marks
- Writing in all caps
- Using red text (green text can also alert some spam filters)
- Including too many links
6. Make It Easy for Readers to Unsubscribe
As we mentioned above, cleaning your list regularly is a key part of avoiding the spam trap. You can make this easier on yourself by helping readers unsubscribe whenever they choose. To do this, add an unsubscribe button or link to the footer of every email.
Let Us Optimize Your Law Firm’s Newsletter
A newsletter can bring a host of benefits for any law firm. However, getting the most out of your newsletter takes time, energy, and patience. If you’d rather let someone else handle the headaches, we can help.
At Let America Know, we give attorneys across the nation the support they need to grow their practices through email and social media marketing. We operate a monthly email newsletter, “You Should Know,” which we customize for every firm we work with.
Just contact us, and we can:
- Design your newsletter
- Write valuable content to promote your firm
- Publish a fresh newsletter every month without fail
- Raise awareness for your brand
That way, you can focus on serving your clients.
Learn more about our fully customizable e-newsletter service for trial attorneys.