How a newsletter can help grow your accounting firm
Email marketing is powerful and should form the foundation of your accounting firm’s content marketing strategy.
With 3.9 billion daily email users, an e-newsletter is an ideal way you can reach your clients and prospective clients, providing them with high-value educational content on a regular basis.
Discover why an email newsletter is a worthwhile tactic to grow your accounting firm, with some tips to get started and succeed.
Keep your firm front of mind
By communicating to your clients and potential clients on a regular basis, you’re keeping your accounting firm front of their mind. Depending on the type of content you include, this has benefits including:
Your current customers are reminded of the additional services you can offer them.
If you include customer testimonials and/ or customer stories, prospective clients are frequently reminded of the value you can bring them.
Even if a potential client doesn’t need your services right now, you’ll be the first firm they think of when they fo
Aim to include high-value accounting tips, industry trends, strategies to grow small businesses, or company updates that are genuinely useful.
It’s important to establish a sending frequency and then stick to it. It can be monthly, weekly or bi-weekly, whatever works for your accounting firm’s capacity. The important thing is maintaining cadence.
Tip: To increase engagement, you can personalize your email newsletter messaging by segmenting your database. If you segment based on current clients and prospective clients, you can tailor two separate emails with messaging that is directed to each of these audiences.
Email newsletters build trust with your clients and prospects
An email newsletter is a gateway to a more in-depth look at what your accounting firm does.
Sure, you might have great content and service information on your website. But if you don’t deliver this information directly to your audience’s inbox, you’re missing opportunities to connect with them.
Aside from clients and prospects wanting to know exactly what you can do for them, they’re interested in you, your team and your accounting firm.
They need to trust you first. An email newsletter is a great way to share details about your team and how you’ve helped people and businesses just like them and theirs.
So, it’s important that you do it the right way. Here are some tips for creating a trustworthy email newsletter experience:
Request permission—this makes sure you’re emailing people who want to be emailed. If you skip this step, you’re jeopardizing your delivery, open and click rates for your email newsletters.
Set expectations—make sure subscribers know what they’re signing up for so they aren’t surprised by what you’re sending, when and how often. You can easily set expectations in your subscription form by calling it a ‘Monthly email newsletter, covering industry news and tips’. Now they know what to expect and when. And it makes sure people are signing up for what they actually want to receive.
Provide insight—don’t use your newsletter as a hard selling tool. This is a platform to provide value and education to your ideal clients. Your goal should be to make them think of you as the expert in their space.
Don't mislead—make sure you keep your email body content in-line with what you’ve alluded to in your subject line. Don’t trick your audience with misleading subject lines.
Make it personal—clients and prospects want to feel special, so use your email marketing software’s personalization variables to make your emails feel more intimate.
Demonstrate to prospects how you are helping your clients
One of the best ways to show how you are helping other clients is through reliable communication.
By sharing customer success stories in your email newsletters, you’re not only demonstrating to prospects how you’re actively providing value to you customers, but you’re also showing other current customers how you can help them in other ways.
Consider showcasing one client per email newsletter. You might even begin to create a following for your customer stories, eventually creating it into something your clients strive to be involved in.
Newsletters help with promotions
Your email newsletters can also provide a platform for you to share your accounting firm’s upcoming promotions, pricing updates and special offers.
It’s important that you don’t turn your email newsletter into a hard sales tool, so keep this type of content to a minimum. If you’re looking to increase your promotional marketing efforts, consider asking people to opt-in to receiving emails about your monthly discounts.
A solid marketing tool
Along with your firm’s other marketing strategies, a newsletter is an ideal marketing tool to help build trust and grow client relationships.
Remember to track your efforts, including metrics like delivery, open and click rates. This information will help you to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for growth.