checklists: 7 benefits and 4 ways to create content.
by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms
one of the most overlooked marketing channels for accountants is a newsletter. the newsletter first started in print at regional firms.
more small firm growth strategies: technical aspects of video and youtube | why cpas need video | make google adwords work for you | make the most of trade shows | track your online reputation | partnering: referrals on steroids | measure client retention … against yourself | take your client’s pulse | how to determine your ideal client | clients need advisory services more than they know | 10 tips for more energy this tax season | marketing vs. sales and how to plunge in
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
some cpa firms have not changed much and still cling to their printed newsletter. we suggest you send an email newsletter and optionally send a printed newsletter once or twice a year if your clients are used to it.
email newsletters have more benefits than most other marketing channels. the only reason they are not ranked higher is they lack the face-to-face component. but that doesn’t mean there should be a delay in your implementation. just look at all of these benefits.
benefits
a newsletter is one of the few channels that serves multiple purposes and can generate multiple revenue streams:
- it contributes toward client retention by helping you stay in touch with clients on a leveraged basis. think of the time you save not having to email or call each individual client. when you send a newsletter, you touch all your clients at once.
- a newsletter partially solves the biggest complaint clients have with their accountants – lack of communication.
- it warms up leads. ninety-seven percent of clients are not ready to buy from you upon first contact. if you don’t have some way to warm them up, you don’t get that revenue.
- grab your total revenue from new clients in the last year, divide by .03, and subtract your total revenue from new clients. (example: $9,000 is your new revenue. $300,000 is your potential and you’re leaving $291,000 on the table.) that’s how much money you are leaving on the table if you don’t have a followup system.
- it provides upsell opportunities. it’s a low-pressure way to let clients know what other revenue lines you have to offer them.
- it recovers lost clients. it builds back trust you may have lost. it keeps you top of mind with clients with whom you are complete but have future needs.
three other benefits not as directly tied to revenue:
- it’s an easy way for you to invite people into your other marketing channels, such as when you have an open house, a complimentary webinar or a facebook page.
- you can “cut up” or repurpose your article and newsletter content to use on social media, your blog and other channels.
- when you use your newsletter content on your website, it increases your search engine rankings and reduces your seo (search engine optimization) expense.
you don’t have to have a website to have an effective newsletter, but you will have to have another way to generate a list of people who will get your newsletter, such as networking meetings where you collect business cards. a newsletter is actually cheaper than a website, and although it’s not often done first in a new startup, it could be done that way.
costs
this is a low- to medium-cost marketing option depending on how you generate the content for your newsletter. a newsletter requires only two components:
- a list management system such as constant contact
- content for your newsletter
your list management system
one asset that will never be recorded on a balance sheet is your list – the people who subscribe to your writings and your work. for some internet marketing businesses, it’s the most valuable asset they have. if you get good at this like i have and thousands of others, your list will generate revenue almost every time you send an email out.
tip: even if you don’t plan to send a newsletter, put an opt-in on your website to capture leads and to start building your list. i cannot think of one business owner who hasn’t wished they started their list-building earlier. you cannot go wrong, and you cannot get started building your list too early.
for accountants, the software that makes the most sense is constant contact. it allows you to do the two things you need to do:
- grow your list. we’ll talk further about tips to do this, but for now, the two most important ways are to:
- add an opt-in box on your website so people who visit can sign up and stay in touch.
- enter the emails manually into the system. you should add your clients. for prospects and people you meet at meetings, ask them if it’s ok for you to put them on your newsletter. you shouldn’t just add them; this is spamming and is against the law in most states.
- send out the email newsletter. constant contact makes your newsletters look really nice with little effort. the menu-driven screens are really easy to learn and use.
please do not try to do this in outlook. outlook only allows you to send your newsletter to 50 clients at a time. you must include your address and a way for subscribers to opt out per the can-spam laws. plus, it makes your business look cheap and that you are cutting corners, which is a message you do not want to send to clients and prospects about how you do business. constant contact does this all for you.
constant contact offers a free 60-day trial and often runs specials for new clients. constant contact is only $15 per month or $153 per year up to 500 subscribers.
i happen to be a gold partner, which means i do receive an affiliate commission of about $9 per new account (i’m honestly not sure how much it is; it’s not very much) if you go through this link: http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=accountantsaccelerator
last, more disclosure. in-house, i use constant contact for service emails to clients (these are your weekly reminders). i use 1shoppingcart.com for marketing and our shopping cart solution. if you plan to grow your list past about two to three thousand subscribers, i recommend you use one of the heavier-duty list management software packages such as 1shoppingcart, aweber or infusionsoft (use the latter only if you are doing more than $1 million in revenue online). i do not care for mailchimp or icontact.
1shoppingcart and infusionsoft are bundled online marketing solutions that include integrated email, affiliate and online shopping cart modules with a merchant account and paypal connection. infusionsoft is far more expensive and is called confusionsoft in the industry. if you plan to get into more internet marketing features in the future, you may want to consider these options.
content for your newsletter
the purpose of your content should be to add value for your reader.
accounting or general business topics
the big challenge for accountants using this marketing approach is to keep prospects interested and on their list. although we as accountants love what we do, the people who hire us likely hate it: that’s why they hire us! so we have to constantly think of ways to write interesting articles that help our clients save time and money, rather than list the new tax changes or an accounting rule or even a quickbooks tip.
we have to remember the wiifm – “what’s in it for me” that our readers will be asking. also, we need to be clear on who our reader is. some of you have bookkeepers on your list, but what you should really have is the small business owners. you want to write for them. they are the ones making the final decision on hiring you and they sign your check.
i suggest thinking broader than accounting and tax topics. include money, time management, process improvements, workflow, technology and even marketing advice. the top issues of small business owners include things like finding enough time, getting enough clients and motivating employees. if they’ve hired you, they likely don’t care anymore about tax deadlines because that’s what you are supposed to do.
open rate
the “open rate” of a newsletter is a common metric you will see in email marketing. the software is able to determine which readers actually “open” their emails. the open rate is the number of people who open their emails divided by the total number of people you send it to. the open rate is not the same as the read rate. software cannot measure that. it could be the email was opened, they read the subject line and immediately deleted it.
the average open rate for newsletters across all industries is 20 percent. in accounting, it’s 15 percent. that’s another reason to provide broader content than accounting, tax and auditing news.
frequency
i recommend you send a newsletter at least once a month. every two weeks or twice a month is ideal, and weekly is a good frequency if you also do a lot of promotional emails like i do.
the best time of the day to send your newsletter is first thing in the morning. the worst time of day to send one is after lunch because you will get far more unsubscribes. i see so many of you finish your newsletter on friday afternoon and send it out. that’s the worst time to send it. it’s much better to wait until the following week.
the best day of the week to send one out is wednesday or thursday. you can also experiment with sending newsletters on saturday morning. you will get more unsubscribes but you may also get more engagement.
your constant contact software (or whatever you choose to use) has a scheduling feature. i highly recommend you write, post and schedule several issues at once to save time. i do it quarterly, at least for bizboost news clients.
format
there’s no reason that a newsletter should be long these days. attention spans are getting shorter every year. remember the newsletters that were multiple pages and multiple articles? if they are too long to read, they will likely get filed into a to-be-read folder instead of read right away. after a few weeks, the subscriber will not have time to go through those emails, so it will be deleted without being read.
avoid all that by doing a couple of things to get your reader to read it right away:
- have a great subject line.
- keep it short and sweet – one 300- to 500-word article for the whole newsletter is just fine.
i know copywriters who spend as much time on their subject lines as they do writing the entire article. that’s how important they are.
i recommend and use a three-part newsletter:
- a very short personal greeting
- the article
- your bio or your company description. this part is the same week after week.
here’s a very old sample without the header and without graphics, but it will give you an idea.
where to get content for your newsletter
there are many solutions for finding content for your newsletter.
- you can write it yourself.
if you choose this option, a great way to come up with topics is to survey your clients and prospects regularly and find out what they would like you to write about.
- you can ask others to write guest posts for you.
i don’t recommend this 100 percent of the time. prospects and clients need to be exposed to your views and voice, or something that mimics them that you can put your name on.
- you can have them ghostwritten.
if you are not a writer yourself or you are too busy, this is a great option.
- you can choose a combination of all three options above.
our industry offers several client newsletters that are pre-packaged that you can use. i’ve listed a few of them below, including what we offer. most of these subscriptions allow you to publish them as if you were the writer.
- bizactions – open rate is 22.25 percent
- clientwhys – open rate is unknown
- mostad – open rate is unknown
- cpasitesolutions – i am not sure if you can get the newsletter separate from the website
- ghostpartner – open rate is unknown – this is quickbooks training focused for bookkeepers
the tax newsletter i recommend (and receive a commission on) is ed lyon’s wire service, which has a 26 percent open rate. i believe we receive a 20 percent commission: http://ly/taxwire
our own newsletter is bizboost news, with an open rate of 29 percent: http://bizboostnews.com/
one question i get a lot is what happens if a client of yours gets the same article from two different places? the odds of that happening are pretty low. they go up when you use the more highly circulated articles, such as from bizactions. but in my opinion, the downside from this is far smaller than the benefits and upside you get from sending any newsletter out. it shows your client you cared enough about them to invest in content you think they will benefit from.
build your list
once you have your newsletter in place, it’s equally, if not more, important to focus on building your list. over time, your list will be a huge asset to your company. here are several tips to get started building your list.
- start your list by either asking clients’ permission to add them or just add them. it’s legal in either case.
- develop a routine for adding new clients. include the task in your onboarding procedures.
- as you collect business cards at events, ask people if they would like to be added to your list. if they are not a client, you must ask permission.
- add an opt-in box on your website.
- do offer a free report, because hardly anyone will opt in without a prize or incentive to do so.
- if you are active in social media, invite your connections, friends and followers by either posting your newsletter link or sending them a message.
- add a line to your signature line advertising your newsletter and include the link to the opt-in box, which could just be your home page link.
- include a note about your newsletter on your business card and indicate where to go to subscribe.
hopefully, this information will allow you to decide whether this channel is right for you and how to get started.