Exactly 50 years ago, a technology that will disrupt the way we communicate was invented.
Apart from being convenient, email marketing has a very strong return on investment – for every pound you invest in it, you can expect to earn £42, which makes it one of the most cost-effective marketing approaches for accountants.
And while it seems there’s nothing easier than composing an email and sending it to your potential clients, there’s much more to this strategy than meets the eye.
This blog post will share a couple of tips to help you get your email marketing efforts right.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Accounting Firms
As of 2020, the number of email users globally reached 4 billion, which means that this channel is great for getting in touch and communicating with your potential clients. Especially now that social distancing rules prevent people from attending trade shows and similar networking events.
Email can help accounting firms grow by allowing them to connect with new leads. For example, you can set up a referral program and encourage your existing clients to recommend your accountancy services to their friends, family, and business associates.
Sending valuable content to your prospects and existing clients will turn your accounting firm into the go-to source of information when it comes to tax tips, financial matters, and money management strategies.
Finally, the fact that this strategy is easy to track and monitor in terms of results and performance is another big benefit of using email marketing for accountants. There are metrics and KPIs that will tell you whether your email marketing campaigns work or not so that you can tweak and adjust your approach.
Here are some useful tips that will make your email marketing efforts successful.
Build and Maintain Your Email List
Having an email list packed with clean, relevant, and verified leads is fundamental to the success of your email marketing efforts.
This means that you should regularly remove hard bounces, unsubscribes, and unresponsive prospects from your email database. Otherwise, you risk being marked as a spammer, because sending out email messages to defunct or inactive email addresses frequently will raise red flags with your email service provider. And if you’re blacklisted, all your emails will be automatically directed to your recipients’ spam folders.
When it comes to building your email list, start with setting up lead magnets. In a nutshell, this tactic boils down to creating valuable content that’s relevant to your potential clients and encouraging them to subscribe and receive regular updates from you.
Besides crafting superb content that will address your target audience’s needs and pain points, there are some technical details that you should have in place:
- A personalized call-to-action button for each blog post or landing page. That way, you’ll communicate your message more precisely and make it resonate with your potential clients. Therefore, if your blog post is about tax returns, your SEO optimised copy should be something along the lines of “Subscribe to get more tax tips.”
- A timed pop-up web form. It’s more likely that your website visitors will decide to subscribe to your newsletter and express their wish to start receiving emails from you if you ask them to give their consent after they remain on a page for more than 10 seconds. The odds are that they’re already invested in reading your content and that they have seen its value.
- More landing pages. Every visitor who comes to your website needs something different, and if you create an individual, personalized landing page for every particular offer or service you provide, you’ll appeal to a wider audience.
These simple tactics will help get more opt-ins and build a high-quality email list.
Craft Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines
Your potential clients get plenty of emails every day. To be more precise, stats say that 121 business emails are sent and received on a daily basis.
Your subject line is the first thing that your recipients see in their inboxes, and it’s your chance to make a great first impression, pique their interest, and get them to open your email.
These couple of words can make or break your email campaign, so it’s essential to be very careful when creating your every subject line.
First of all, ensure that your subject lines are between 30-50 characters long because you don’t want them to get truncated in order to fit mobile phone screens.
Since your potential customers don’t have to be acquainted with accounting terminology, it’s best for your subject lines to reflect some of their issues and problems instead of talking about your services. For example, accountants can see decent open rates with “How to reduce your taxes” or “X Tips for setting a business.”
Share Educational Content
As we’ve already mentioned, many business owners aren’t well-versed when it comes to accounting and financial matters.
That’s why it’s your mission as an accountant to educate and help them make long-term plans, set financial goals, and develop their business.
Communicating all this in your email campaigns and sharing valuable content that your clients can use in order to overcome their daily challenges, will allow you to build loyalty with them and present yourself as a professional associate they could benefit from.
That’s why your every email should be packed with useful information and resources.
Another way to add value to your clients could be by sending seasonal reminders and informing them about upcoming deadlines.
Automate Your Email Marketing
Email marketing for accounting firms can work only if it’s streamlined and automated.
Your marketing campaigns should be created and scheduled in advance using MailChimp or a similar automation platform.
This way you’ll be able to personalize the customer experience, save a lot of time, scale your email marketing strategy, and improve your retention rates.
There are different ways for accountants to use email marketing automation, and some of them include:
- Welcome emails sent to new subscribers
- Drip email campaigns used for nurturing those who occasionally visit your website but haven’t turned into paying clients
- Offering discounts and special promotions.
Accountants who automate their email marketing efforts will experience improved engagement rates. Instead of sending generic, mass emails to your prospects, take advantage of this personalized, triggered approach as it results in 119% higher click rates.
Declutter Your Email Copy
Your customers are busy people, so don’t waste their time by making the email copy longer than it needs to be.
Keep it short and to the point, if you want them to read your emails.
Also, have the goal you want to achieve in mind when you’re composing your email campaigns. This means that you should stick to one offer per email and create your entire narrative around it.
If you offer two or three things in a single email, you’ll distract your customers and confuse them. Think about what you want to achieve with each email and stick to that – get your prospects to read a new blog post, schedule a meeting with you, or sign up for your referral program.
This way, you’ll boost your response and conversion rates, because your clients will understand what you want action you want them to take.
Include a Call to Action
A powerful call to action is a must-have element of effective email copy.
Its role is to capture your recipients’ attention and prompt them to take the desired action. Use this persuasive phrase to let your customers know what you want them to do after reading your email.
An effective CTA is action-oriented, meaning that it features one of the so-called power words such as download, subscribe, schedule, or read. It also has to be prominent and stand out from the rest of the email copy.
Finally, use the same call-to-action button multiple times in a single email to reinforce your offer and make sure that a client will notice your CTA even if they’re just skimming through the copy.
Don’t Talk About Yourself
Instead of talking about yourself or your accounting firm, you should focus on your clients, their needs, problems, and pain points.
Such a customer-centric approach is more likely to keep your clients interested and engaged. Give answers to some of your audience’s commonly asked questions and solutions to their most pressing issues.
This also means switching from the I/we/me/us perspective to using you and yours. However, it’s worth noting that in your calls-to-action, using the first person performs better.
According to an A/B test conducted by Unbounce, “Start my free trial” had a 90% better click-through rate than “Start your free trial.”
Email marketing is an indispensable strategy for accountants. It’s cost-effective and allows you to easily connect with your new accounting clients, keep the existing ones engaged, and stay top of mind to your target audience. These simple tips can help you create an effective email strategy that will show your clients you’re a trustworthy expert they can trust when it comes to the financial stability, profitability, and value of their business.
I am the founder and manager of BeFound SEO and the main consultant. I started offering SEO services back in 2007 when I had to explain SEO, as most people had no idea what it was and how much it could help their business online. I still love seeing the results from SEO.
When I’m not creating great strategy, I am usually out hiking up a mountain.
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