Legal Commentary

Lessons from Blast Emails

By Patrick J. Lamb

Every two weeks, I receive an email from a legal staffing vendor.  Each time I receive it, I deleted it.  Each time I went through that short process, I was annoyed.  Today, I finally unsubscribed.  It is highly unlikely I will ever choose to do business with this company, and the annoying blast emails, which send me information I don't want at a time I don't want it, will be one of the principal reasons why.  I have to believe that the company did not intend to trigger this reaction: to the contrary, they probably view these emails as an important part of their marketing.  But I also have to believe that my reaction is not unique.  But I am not writing to tell this story--instead I am wondering what lessons  I should learn about my own marketing efforts.

Here are my top lessons:

1.    As enamored as I am with our story, the prospective client doesn't care about our story. He or she cares about his or her issues.

2.    Talking about "us" is not useful--it is counterproductive.

3.    Selling solutions is much better than selling pieces with the idea that the client will assemble a solution.

4.   If my goal is to get on someone's radar screen, my outreach has to be either useful or funny.  Serious and sales-y, not so much.

Now, to put those lessons to work.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on February 19, 2010 (boomark / email).