Email is a critical component of any digital marketing campaign. Even if your firm doesn’t focus on digital marketing, you’ll still need to be email savvy to ensure potential claimants see your reminders for upcoming hearings, online retainer packets, and more. One metric all email marketers and businesspeople strive to improve is an open rate, or percentage of recipients who open an email. You should be able to track your open rate within most CRM systems, or you can install third-party apps to monitor open rates for Google or other servers. Here are some top tips you can use to ensure your legal messages are opened and replied to accordingly:

1. Use a Recipient’s Name in the Subject Line

Personalization is one of the best ways to increase your open rate. You’ll already know a claimant’s name ahead of time, so why not plug it into your email’s subject line? This could be a great tactic for Social Security disability attorneys in particular. Disability claimants often have poor vision and may have a challenging time seeing emails to begin with, so something as attention grabbing as their name will stand out among the myriad of junk mail and promotions.

2. Keep Your Subject Line Short

A good rule of thumb is to keep subject lines short, particularly under 50 characters or so. When a subject line grows too long it’ll be truncated on mobile devices, meaning the recipient may not know what your email is actually about. For example, would you open an email with the subject line “more information to review about your upcoming […]”? It’s a lot harder to understand than “Information on your 1/17 SSDI hearing” Marketo found that subject lines with the highest open rates (18%) had 4 words or less. While you should err on the shorter side, always remember that you should rely on your own open rate data before making any final decisions!

3. Pay Attention to the Time of Day

While it’s not shocking that emails sent at 3 AM have a low open rate, you’ll want to consider who you’re emailing when choosing the best time of day to get those retainer packets out. For example, Social Security disability claimants aren’t working so they may be more likely to see a 1 PM email come through. On the other hand, employment law claimants will likely have a job and could miss the lunchtime notifications.

4. Make Sure You’re Not Blacklisted

If you send too many emails, or emails that seem like spam, it’s possible you could become blacklisted. This essentially means that servers will immediately flag your message as junk, even if it’s relevant and important to the user! A good way to ensure you’re not blacklisted is by sending less than 100 emails of the same subject per day. That’s the maximum we offer on eLuminate, our lead and case management software.

5. Keep Up With Current Trends

Legal email marketing techniques from 2011 are long outdated, and the fact of the matter is that this blog itself will someday not be relevant! By following legal marketing blogs and paying attention to industry trends, you can ensure that your emails are still opened for years to come.