The Power of Newsletters for Accounting Firms and Small Busineseses

Whether in a profitable or a strained economy, it’s essential to develop and maintain relationships with your clients and prospects. A client newsletter delivered with consistency is a communication tool that often sparks a client call and generates pass-along readership from your client to their friend. Ultimately, a timely and well-composed newsletter can enhance relationships for the purpose of achieving continued client-base stability and business growth through referrals.

Newsletters have repeatedly proven to be effective tools to market your firm and communicate with clients and prospects. Simply put, they work. One of the highest impact marketing newsletters you can send focuses on the one topic individuals and businesses respond to more than any other – taxes and ways to lower them.

When your newsletter is not covering ways to lower clients’ taxes you might feature articles about new tax laws and their impact on families and small businesses or tax tips concerning retirement accounts, college savings plans or other topics concerning everyday personal financial matters.

Writing your own newsletter content is not required

There are newsletter service providers who offer firms both digital and paper newsletters for your clients. The newsletter layout and pre-written article content is not something you would be required to craft from scratch but often you can customize an introduction, add a specific article and write a closing summary if you choose. These service providers can take care of all of that for you plus handling the distribution to your clients. 

What you can expect from a newsletter service is a completely pre-written and designed newsletter branded with your logo that contains timely articles for your clients. It is also possible to swap out an article in a newsletter and replace it with another article from a collection of articles accessible in a digital library or omit an article entirely if it doesn’t fit your client base.  Another nice feature available from select newsletter service providers is access to a digital library of articles where you are allowed to search by topic such as ‘college savings plans’ and then send only that article to a specific client when appropriate.

The best of both worlds – digital and print newsletters

Whether digital or print, a well-designed, informative newsletter is perceived to be of value and gets read by most recipients. It positions you as an authority on the subject matter. When client newsletters are branded with your logo, recipients connect your practice with trusted quality information.

Combining the use of digital/online and print newsletters allows you to cover all customer preferences in your marketing strategy. While a digital newsletter requires little to no effort to distribute using email or by posting it on your website, some customers still like the feel of paper in their hands.  Each format has its own unique advantages.

Advantages of a printed newsletter

• —  Powerful image-builder with a high response rate. Printed newsletters make the greatest impression on the reader and generate comparatively higher response rates than digital or online versions.
• —  Higher retention rate. Printed newsletters are more likely to be kept around and visible for longer periods of time in comparison to the digital version that is opened, read and closed. 
• —  Multiple ways to distribute. There is flexibility in how printed newsletters get distributed. Some firms choose the U.S. mail, while others display client newsletters in their offices or at the reception desk. Additionally, some choose to hand out the letters at meetings and conventions, or include them with the client tax organizers or copies of tax returns.

Digital or online newsletter

• —  Greater accessibility. Your digital newsletter is more easily accessible from any location at any time.
• —  Easier pass-along readership. When a document is digital or online, clients can easily share it electronically.
• —  Linking to social media accounts. Feeding this content to your social media accounts is easy to do and requires very little time.
• —  Drive traffic to your website. Emails sent to clients can prompt them to visit your website to read the latest edition of your newsletter. Social media can be used to announce each newsletter issue (e.g. craft a “teaser text” in your Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook posts that will entice those who read social media posts to seek out and read the articles in the newsletter on your site).


Shore up your reputation as your clients’ trusted advisor

Newsletters enable you to create and nurture successful client relationships by providing timely valuable information and assistance for your clients. Regularly scheduled newsletters provide an easy, consistent outlet where you can share your expertise for the benefit of your clients; which ultimately increases their level of trust in you as their advisor.

Think for a moment whose business you would recommend today. Chances are the business is one you know and trust, one that has provided you with a great experience, expert service or good products. Newsletters are powerful marketing tools used by professionals to keep the lines of communication open with clients year-round to share the knowledge that builds greater trust in their relationships.

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Arvid Mostad, co-founder of Mostad & Christensen, Inc, has over 35 years experience helping accounting firms market their services, build client loyalty, generate referrals, and be more visible in their communities. Mostad & Christensen provides marketing products and services for accounting firms.