5 Tips on Email Marketing for Tax Professionals and Accountants

In this blog post, we’ll tell you exactly why email marketing for tax professionals and accountants is worth it along with some helpful tips you can implement to make it even easier on you. After all, you’re busy doing taxes and managing finances, not learning marketing!

[Related: Top 5 Ways Your Small Business Should be Using Email Marketing]

Benefits of email marketing for tax professionals

What’s so great about email marketing and why does a tax pro or accountant like yourself need it? Well, a staggering number of people use it, first of all. The number of e-mail users globally in 2024 topped 4.48 billion, and experts expect an additional half-billion more email users will sign up by 2027. A key rule of digital marketing is to be where your customers are, and they’re in their email accounts. Not only do they use their email, 60% of consumers state it’s their preferred method of being contacted by brands.

It's also excellent for your ROI. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is $36. That’s a 3600% return. Besides those heavy hitters, there are a few other ways email marketing can benefit your tax or accounting business as well:

• Builds trust with clients: When you keep in contact with your customers year-round instead of just bombarding them at the beginning of tax season, it strengthens your relationship with them. By sharing tips or deadline reminders, you’re letting them know you appreciate them as a customer.
• Helps you share updates: Things change. Both in your business and in your industry. A solid email marketing strategy helps you communicate those changes to your customers effectively.
• Aids in client retention: Emails allow you to engage with customers year-round. This keeps you top of mind and ensures your clients keep coming back each tax season or with every financial milestone.
• Allows you to communicate special offers: Running promotions or discounts to drum up business or show customers some appreciation? Email helps you communicate that.
• Gathering reviews: Reviews and referrals from happy customers is how you gain more customers. Reach out to satisfied patrons via email and encourage them to leave feedback.
   

[Related: 5 Things to Look For in Digital Marketing Companies for Accountants]

Five tips on email marketing for tax professionals and accountants

Now that you know the benefits of email marketing for your tax or accounting business, you might be ready to dive right in. But before you do, let us outline a few tips that will be useful for you once you start (or adjust!) your email marketing strategy.

1. Create a template

Creating a template to use for your email marketing does a few things. It saves you time when crafting emails, it keeps your emails in a consistent format, and it establishes a level of professionalism with your customers.

What should you template look like? Well, a good rule of thumb is to have a header and footer. You can change the text on your header to introduce the topic of the email and use the footer for things like your business logo, contact information, and even IRS-compliant disclaimers when needed. Also, make sure to leave space to add images. Not only will images help your emails stand out within someone’s inbox, but they’ll also help fully illustrate any points and break up text into more legible, understandable sections.

Ultimately your template can be as simple or involved as you think is necessary for your business. Canva is a great tool for creating your own free versions. 

2. Lean into personalization

Your customers are getting hundreds of emails every day, so if yours aren’t personalized to their specific needs, you’re not going to stand out. In fact, 80% of consumers say they’re more likely to do business with a company that uses personalization. When your emails offer timely and relevant advice, you build trust with both current and potential customers. To add a personalized touch to emails, utilize these strategies:

• Financial milestones: Has your customer just bought a new home or started a business? Use these milestones to tailor your advice to the specific tax needs or financial advice that come with these ventures.
• Past filings: Pull data from previous tax years to personalize your emails with advice on deductions and savings the customer may find helpful.
• Customer-specific reminders: All your existing customers are different and require different communication. If someone hasn’t submitted their documents yet for example, remind them via a personalized email.
   

Tap into the resources you have at hand like customer websites and LinkedIn profiles to extract the information you need to be able to relate to them on a personal level.

3. Segment your customer lists

Talking about personalization is a good way to introduce our next email marketing tip for tax professionals and accounts—audience segmentation. Segmentation and personalization go hand-in-hand because segmentation is how you can deliver personalized and relevant content that meets the needs of your customer effectively. As we mentioned, each of your clients is unique, whether they’re small business owners, contracted employees, etc., and they each have specific tax and financial needs.

Segmenting allows you to implement personalization at a slightly larger scale, while still providing targeted advice to the appropriate audience. How you segment is up to you based on your specific customer list, but here are a few ideas:

• Filing status: Are they an individual, a business owner or a corporation? These groups each have different filing needs.
• Tax deadlines: Specific forms and payments have different deadlines and require timely reminders.
• Client engagement: Some of your clients may be really engaged with your emails and others may need more of a nudge. Engaged customers will benefit from more personalized emails while less active ones might need to be placed into re-engagement campaigns.
• Client history: Do you have customers who consistently file early or some that always ask for extensions? Separate them out to make sure you’re tailoring their reminders accordingly.
• Employment type: Small business owners, independent contractors, and W-2 workers all have different tax filing needs and financial goals. 

4. Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly

Remember when you used to sit down at your desk once a day and check all your emails at once? Yeah, that’s not a thing anymore. Now where do you check it? First thing when you wake up, waiting for your coffee at the café, in line at the grocery… the possibilities are endless because mobile devices now account for over half of all web traffic. So, you need to ensure any email communication you’re sending out to current or potential customers is mobile-friendly.

50% of people stated they will delete an email if it’s not optimized for mobile, so keep this in mind when designing templates, creating graphics, and writing your email content.

5. Automate your email campaigns for the most efficiency

Personalizing and segmenting all those emails for different clients and their needs sound time consuming, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be. Automating your email marketing efforts helps you save time and money while still meeting the needs of your customers and delivering timely communication.

Create automations similarly to how we already talked about breaking out your segments. Here are a few examples:

• Document submission: Set up automated reminders for any customers who are missing W-2s, 1099s, or other important documents. Both existing and new customers will be grateful for the reminder, and it’ll save you some time if you don’t have to track the docs down later. 
• Deadline reminders: As we mentioned, your customer list may have different needs when it comes to dates, so segment and automate these reminders to keep everyone on track.
• Re-engagement: You probably have a separate list of prospects who have reached out for info but haven’t set up appointments yet. Automate re-engagement emails to maintain contact with those individuals in the hopes of generating more business.
• Follow-ups post tax season: Once tax season is over you don’t even want to think about sitting down to send emails. Instead, automate emails thanking your customers, send out tips for next year’s tax prep, and more to keep your customers engaged.

You can schedule these automated campaigns months in advance when you have the time so that your communication stays consistent and relevant. It’ll be one less thing you have to worry about once the busy season comes.

[Related: How Marketing Automation Can Save Time (and Make Money!) For Your Small Business]

How can Hibu help with your email marketing efforts?

We know that one of the biggest challenges tax pros and accountants face is engaging and retaining clients. Hibu Assistant helps you out by automatically sending emails to the right customers at exactly the right times. We’ll help you build loyalty, turn prospects into customers, and keep customers coming back all while you focus on the other parts of your tax or accounting business.

Not only can we help you stay in touch with customers through email marketing efforts, but we can also help you manage your reputation, dominate the search results in your local area, and so much more! To find out more about our digital marketing services for tax and accounting businesses, complete our short Get Started form or call 877-237-6120 for a free consultation.