The Quarterly Email That Keeps Your Pipeline Full
Four emails a year will out-perform almost every other marketing activity available to a consultant solicitor.
Most consultant solicitors don't have a marketing problem. They have a memory problem. The people who know them, like them and would refer work to them simply forget they exist for months at a time. The fix is the cheapest, lowest-effort intervention in marketing: a quarterly email to your professional network.
Who's on the list
Former colleagues, referrers, accountants, IFAs, brokers, peers, past clients who are happy to stay in touch. Not strangers. Not bought lists. Not people who never asked to hear from you. The list is everyone who already knows you and might plausibly send you work or refer someone who could. Most consultants have 100 to 300 of these people. That's plenty.
What the email contains
Three things. A short personal note — what you've been doing, what kinds of matters you've been working on lately. One useful piece of substance — a development in your area, a case worth knowing about, a heads-up on a regulatory change. And a clear, low-pressure reminder of what you do and how to refer someone to you. Five paragraphs at most. Plain text, not a fancy HTML newsletter. From your real email address, not a marketing platform.
Why it works
It works because you've replaced “hoping people remember you” with “making sure people remember you four times a year.” That's the entire mechanism. People can't refer to a lawyer they've forgotten exists. They'll happily refer to a lawyer who's top of mind. The email is the cheapest possible way to be top of mind.
What not to do
Don't use a Mailchimp template that screams marketing. Don't send anything resembling a newsletter. Don't include a mass-merge greeting. Don't include an unsubscribe link unless legally required (and if you're sending personal emails to professional contacts, you usually aren't). The whole point is that it feels like a personal note from a peer, not a marketing broadcast from a firm.
The result
Four times a year, every year, forever. The compound effect is astonishing. Most consultants who do this report that within 18 months it becomes one of their largest sources of new instructions — without any obvious marketing “activity”.