Are you looking for creative ways to engage with prospects or current clients? Do you need to send timely updates regarding tax season or tax law updates? Email marketing is arguably the most powerful channel an accounting firm can use to engage and communicate with clients. The right campaign can deliver a high return on investment and help foster stronger relationships with your clients.
If you own an accounting firm and want to start utilizing email marketing, we’re here to help. In this article, we’ll teach you how to use email marketing to attract new clients, nurture existing relationships, and build long-term trust. Here’s everything you need to know to get started:
How to Use Email Marketing for Accountants
Before you can start sending emails out to your audience, you’ll need to know the basics of email marketing. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
Create Segmented Lists in Your CRM
Segmentation is key to ensuring your strategy is engaging and effective. The investors you work with during tax season don’t want to receive the same information from accounting firms as labor unions or the general public. To ensure your content resonates with your audience, you’ll want to create segmented lists inside your CRM. You can segment these lists based on interests or industry. You’ll also want segmented lists for new, past, and existing customers.
Add a Strong CTA
Every CPA marketing email should include a strong CTA. CTAs are necessary to ensure your customers take action after engaging with your content. When creating a CTA, consider your campaign’s main goal and priority. You’ll also want to ensure the CTA is clear, concise, and easy to read.
Automated Workflows
With a business management platform like Townsquare Interactive, you can automate email marketing workflows, ensuring that your customers receive birthday messages or tax season reminders. This is an effective way to streamline everyday tasks. Workflow automation can be used for welcome series, lead magnet campaigns, and win-back series for past clients.
Add a Lead Magnet to Your Website
If you’re struggling to gather contact information or need more leads, add a lead magnet to your website. You can add a simple newsletter pop-up on your website or have people enter their email address to download a how-to guide. This is a small, effective way to ensure you always have a flow of prospecting leads into your CRM.
Get Creative
Once you have a segmented list of people you want to email, it’s time to get creative with your marketing. You’ll want to brainstorm compelling copy, subject lines, and CTAs for your campaigns. You’ll want to use visually interesting images or video content to ensure your emails stand out in the inbox. When creating campaigns, consider your audience’s interests and find a way to turn everyday accounting content into an engagement tool.
Seven Email Marketing Ideas for Accounting Firms
Ready to launch your first marketing campaign? Here are seven simple yet effective ways you can get creative with your CPA marketing strategy:
1. Tax Season Updates
Scheduling reminders about tax season deadlines is an effective way to keep your accounting firm top of mind. It also ensures your clients will submit all necessary paperwork before the deadline. Deadline reminders and tax season updates can also be used as a prospecting campaign to attract last-minute customers.
2. Birthday Messages and Holiday Cards
A simple way to nurture existing relationships is to create personalized content that keeps your accounting firm top of mind throughout the year. Consider sending automated birthday cards or holiday messages during Christmas or Thanksgiving. This will show your customers you care and help humanize your brand.
3. Monthly Newsletters
A monthly newsletter is an engagement tool for sending reminders and updates to your existing customers. The monthly newsletter can highlight new employees, holiday hours, or recently published blogs. You can also add subtle CTAs throughout the newsletter, encouraging your audience to schedule appointments or to start their taxes early.
4. Tactical Advice
Not every email needs to be about selling your services. It can also be about sharing tactical advice, such as guides to tax compliance or an overview of new tax laws. A great way to make these emails more effective is to focus on a niche industry and send your campaign to a segmented list.
5. How-to Guides and Tool
Did you recently publish a how-to guide for small businesses navigating tax season? Did you create a downloadable checklist for new filers? Create a compelling campaign that encourages people to download it on your website. This is a great way to drive more traffic to your website and to increase downloads of your guides.
6. Meet the Team
Clients want to know their taxes are in good hands. An effective way to humanize your brand and to introduce your employees to your customers is with a Meet the Team series. This will help your clients get to know your team’s likes and interests, so they feel more comfortable allowing you to manage their personal finances.
7. Welcome Series
A welcome series is an automated workflow that focuses on highlighting all the necessary information a new client needs to know. These workflows operate in the background of your workweek, ensuring your clients have all the information on tax season deadlines, documentation, and next steps in the process.
Improve Your CPA Marketing With Townsquare Interactive
If you’re ready to get serious about marketing and client communication, we’re here to help. Townsquare Interactive is an all-in-one business management platform. Our platform has all of the tools you need to develop compelling email marketing campaigns, send invoices, and communicate with your clients. With our tools, you can boost workplace productivity while nurturing relationships with current and potential customers. No matter the size of your accounting firm, we have reliable tools that businesses can benefit from.