These days more firms are sending accountancy newsletters. They are a great way to engage with your clients (and others). This article explains why newsletters are essential and what to consider when sending them.
Why send an accountancy newsletter?
Client care
It’s a great way to keep in touch with your clients (and prospective clients). Sending out relevant and timely newsletters keeps them up to speed with the latest news from the firm and gives them appropriate tax and accounting news. For other ideas on improving your client care activities, read my article “What’s your keep in touch strategy?”
Branding
There will be many clients with who you may only have dealings once a year. Don’t ignore them, or your competitors may entice them away with their newsletters! Sending them newsletters throughout the year reminds them of who you are and why they should continue to use you.
Demonstrate your expertise
If you plan to write your own content for the accountancy newsletter, this can be an excellent way to show your understanding of a particular subject. This gives your clients confidence that you are the person to speak to if they have a question or issues relating to that subject matter.
Cross-sell different services
Your newsletter is a great way to highlight forthcoming tax, accounts, or business changes and how you can help your clients with these changes. This can be approached by seemingly keeping clients up to date. Still, in many cases, it can generate opportunities to provide additional services such as tax planning, helping them access funding, etc.
How often should you send an accountancy newsletter?
This primarily comes down to how much time you must dedicate to creating a newsletter, whether writing it yourself, outsourcing it to a third party, or buying the content.
Consider a monthly newsletter if you aim to provide a short and sweet update of relevant news and tips. But if you intend to have a more diverse range of topics and practice news, many firms opt for quarterly.
Depending on the nature of the newsletter contents, you could do an annual or six-monthly newsletter. For example, if you provide probate services or Will reviews, a yearly newsletter would remind them of what you do and make them aware of topical issues across these areas.
What format should be adopted for an accountancy newsletter?
Due to increased postage costs and the environmental drive to reduce the amount of paper we use, many firms prefer to send out email newsletters these days. Systems such as Mailchimp and DotDigital send out emails from your uploaded client list and will give you reports on who has opened the newsletter. If they have to click on a link from the newsletter to access the relevant article on your website, it will show you what they have clicked on. By tracking what links people click, you can get a feel for what your audience prefers to read about, which can help plan future newsletter topics.
You can also buy relevant tax, accounting, and business articles from the likes of PTP, which enable you to copy and paste the wording into your emails or website. Bought-in newsletters also allow you to add branding and personal/firm news as you see fit.
Who should you send your accountancy newsletter to?
Your circulation list will depend on the content you aim to include in your newsletters. For example, a mix of personal and business tax articles, with news from the practice’s team members, would be suitable to send to all clients. However, you could also send specific newsletters to the following clients/target audience where the content was relevant to them. For example:
- Business clients – where the newsletter focuses on business tax, strategic planning, routine compliance aspects such as payroll, VAT or CIS, etc.
- Tax return clients – where the contents refer to income tax, CGT, IHT, etc.
- Service-specific clients – your newsletter may focus on one sector, such as farming, charities, fintech, etc. In this scenario, you would only send it to the relevant clients and third parties, and you may only want to send it once or twice a year, depending on the sector and what news you have to share with them.
Regardless of who you intend to send your newsletter to, the communication aims to disseminate ‘news’, so don’t make every article a sales pitch. That said, it is reasonable to include an article on IHT planning matters but to say at the end, “If you have any questions relating to the points raised in this article, please get in touch with ………”.
Need help creating your accountancy newsletter?
I work with various accountancy firms to help them agree on what topics to include in their newsletters and, where possible, to personalise the content to their clients. Whether using bought-in tax and accountancy copy, writing articles on your behalf, or using content you have written yourself. I work closely with you to agree on your objectives, who you want to communicate with, and how often we need to send the newsletters. If this service is of interest, call me at 01822 833300 or email me at vicki@momentumforprofessionals.co.uk.
