I am seeing more and more accountancy firms sending newsletters to their clients, which from a marketing and client communications perspective, is a good thing. This article sets out why client newsletters are important and what to consider when sending them.
Why send a client newsletter?
Client care
It’s a great way to keep in touch with your clients (and prospective clients). The pandemic meant that a lot of face-to-face client time was lost and so sending out a relevant and timely newsletter to clients was a great way to bring them up to speed with the latest covid business information, tax and accounting news and also updates about your firm. For other ideas on how to improve 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. Sending them newsletters throughout the year reminds them of who you are and why they should continue to use you. Don’t ignore them or your competitors may entice them away with their own newsletters and communications!
Demonstrate your expertise
If you plan to write your own content for the 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. In many cases, this can be approached by keeping clients up to date, but in many cases, it can generate opportunities to provide additional services such as tax planning, or helping them to access funding, etc.
How often should you send a client newsletter?
This largely comes down to how much time you have to dedicate to putting together a newsletter and whether you are writing it yourself or are buying in the content.
If your aim is to provide a short and sweet update of relevant news and tips, you may want to consider a monthly newsletter. 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, an annual newsletter would be sufficient to remind them of what you do and to make them aware of topical issues across these areas.
What format should be adopted for the newsletter?
Due to increased postage costs and an environmental drive to reduce the amount of paper we use, these days many firms prefer to send out email newsletters. 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 topic links people click on, you can also get a feel for what your audience prefers to read about which can help with the planning of 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 may also enable you to add branding and let you add personal/firm news as you see fit.
Who should you send the newsletter to?
Your circulation list will depend on what type of content you aim to include in your newsletters. For example, a mix of personal and business tax articles, with news from the team members of the practice 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 and so on.
- Service-specific clients – your newsletter may focus on one particular sector such as farming, charities, academies, 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 aim of the communication is to disseminate ‘news’, so don’t make every article a sales pitch. That said, it is reasonable to include an article, say on IHT planning matters, but to say at the end, “if you have any questions relating to the points raised in this article, please do get in touch with ………”.
Need help to kick start your 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 that’s using bought-in tax and accountancy copy, writing articles on your behalf, or using content that you have written yourself. I work closely with you to agree on what your objectives are, who you want to communicate with and how often we need to send the newsletters out. If this service is of interest, do give me a call on 01822 833300 or email me at vicki@momentumforprofessionals.co.uk.
