Your email program, such as Constant Contact® or I Contact®, should have a report showing how many recipients unsubscribed and opened your law firm e-newsletters.  It will also show how many clicked through to your site.  If you get 20% or more of recipients to open your alert, that’s pretty good.  Sometimes we see 40% open rates but that’s pretty rare.

Lower rates are seen when alerts are all about firm accomplishments.  Alerts about firm accomplishments—awards, rankings, rating, case successes–are fine from time to time and they do build credibility.  Eventually your recipients will open “all about the firm” emails less and less often, however.  That’s why it’s a best practice to combine firm news in your e-alerts with short blurbs about changes in the law that may affect a recipient’s immediate or near-term business interests.  For example, a reminder about the $10 million gifting exemption opportunity expiring December 30, 2012 from your tax/estate lawyers would have been in order in late 2012.   E-alerts can be on a single topic.  In fact, most are.