A new survey reveals 82 percent of legal industry emails go unopened.

THE TAKEAWAY:  Firms would be well-served to set thresholds that must be met before newsletters or legal alerts are sent to clients, prospects and referral sources, or posted to social media.  The same is true for news releases and story pitches to reporters, editors, producers and bloggers.

Here’s a simple policy that may be helpful:

“Alerts, releases, posts and coverage pitches should be:

1. sent only to those individuals and executives whose legal decision-making, retention or referral patterns would be directly affected as a result,
2. sent only to editors, reporters, producers and bloggers whose audiences’ legal decision-making, retention or referral patterns would be affected as a result, and
3. posted only to social media read by those whose legal decision-making, retention or referral patterns would be affected as a result.”

Otherwise, it’s just noise.

Don’t worry that some people may see your communications more than once over time.  As Dale Carnegie famously said:  “Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.”  And, as Carnegie also pointed out, speak in the other person’s interests to garner their support.  That’s what the policy above accomplishes.

Oh, the survey.  It was by Constant Contact and included an analysis of 200 million emails.

And, this issue was recently touched upon by Jay Harrington writing in the influential blog, Attorney at Work: “In a world filled with immense complexity and noise, old marketing tactics based on interrupting prospective clients by shouting brand messages at them no longer work.  Instead of trying to drag clients away from what interests them, you need to become what they are interested in by providing them with valuable content.”