Email Marketing for Accounting/Bookkeeping: Focusing On What Works

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for accounting and bookkeeping businesses, but only if you focus on strategies that truly work. Forget the flashy, spammy tactics you might see elsewhere; the key to success lies in building trust, providing value, and maintaining a professional approach.

Get better results with email marketing by partnering with a digital marketing agency today. Schedule a Call with Speck Designs.

Craft Captivating Copy

Your emails are often the first impression a potential client has of your business. This isn't the place for aggressive sales tactics or gimmicky phrases. Instead, focus on relevance and interest.

Your subject lines should be short and descriptive, telling recipients what's inside the email rather than trying to sell them. Think "Tax Season Checklist" instead of "Limited Time Offer! Save Big!" Avoid pushy language that can annoy subscribers and, worse, land your emails in spam folders. The goal is to inform and intrigue, not to pressure.

Keep Your List Fresh

An email list is a living thing – if you neglect it, it will go stale. Even if everyone on your list opted in, they might forget they subscribed if you don't communicate regularly. This leads to high bounce rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes, hurting your reputation.

The solution is simple: create a consistent campaign schedule. This ensures your subscribers receive emails regularly, keeping your business top of mind. If you suspect some contacts have gone stale, consider sending a re-engagement campaign asking them to reconfirm their subscription.

Always Get Permission

Building a quality email list is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires patience and a verifiable signup process. Always get explicit permission from everyone you email. This not only complies with anti-spam regulations but also ensures you're building an audience genuinely interested in your services.

When asking for permission, be clear about what subscribers are signing up for and how often they'll hear from you. A clear signup form on your website or social media channels is crucial. It's also a good practice to include a short reminder in each email about why they're receiving it, such as, "You're receiving this email because you subscribed to our newsletter on our website." This transparency reduces complaints and improves deliverability.

Never Buy Email Lists

Resist the temptation to purchase email lists, no matter how "legitimate" they claim to be. While not always illegal, many email service providers strictly prohibit sending to purchased lists because they often consist of unverified contacts who never opted in. This leads to extremely low engagement, high bounce rates, and a damaged sender reputation. Building a permission-based list ensures your recipients genuinely want to hear from you, leading to better open rates, click-through rates, and a healthier email marketing program overall.

Segment Your Audience

One of the most effective ways to make your email marketing more impactful is to segment your audience. This means dividing your email list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics like demographics, specific service interests, or client history. For example, you might have a segment for new business owners looking for startup accounting advice, and another for established businesses interested in tax planning.

Once you have these segments, you can tailor your email content to their specific needs and interests. This personalized approach resonates more deeply with recipients, increasing engagement and demonstrating that you understand their unique challenges.

Understand Transactional vs. Marketing Emails

It's important to distinguish between transactional emails and marketing emails. Transactional emails are one-to-one messages related to a specific action, like a receipt for a payment or a confirmation of an appointment. These can be sent without explicit marketing opt-in as they are essential communications.

Marketing emails, on the other hand, are promotional messages sent in bulk to a group of subscribers. For these, explicit permission is absolutely necessary. While both are valuable, understanding their distinct purposes and legal requirements is crucial for effective and compliant email marketing.

Take Your Time Creating Campaigns

In the world of email marketing, quality trumps speed. Rushing through the campaign creation process can lead to mistakes in design, content, and subject lines that can severely impact your results. If your content isn't relevant or doesn't align with what your subscribers signed up for, you'll see a decline in opens and clicks, and an increase in spam complaints and unsubscribes. Slow down, proofread meticulously, and ensure your content is valuable and aligns with your brand.

Use a Secondary Domain Name for Email Marketing Emails

Using a secondary domain name for email marketing protects your main domain’s reputation. If marketing emails get marked as spam or bounce, it won’t affect your primary domain or business emails. This keeps your main domain trusted by email providers and ensures important emails reach your customers.

A secondary domain is easy to set up and helps you manage email campaigns with less risk. It also makes it simple to track marketing results without mixing them with other business communication.

• For Example: We use "email@speck-designs.com" for our email marketing and "email@speckdesigns.com" for our normal emails. At a quick glance, they are both associated with Speck Designs but our website and main domain name does not include a hyphen.



Understand Spam Filters

Spam filters are sophisticated and constantly evolving. They analyze numerous criteria to determine if your email belongs in the inbox or the spam folder. There's no magic bullet to bypass them, but understanding their common triggers can help.

Maintain a good sender reputation by consistently sending relevant, permission-based emails. Use clean, properly coded email templates; sloppy code can trigger filters. Make your intentions clear in your emails, so subscribers know why they're hearing from you. Most importantly, ensure all subscribers have opted in. Consistency in your content and design, aligning with your brand, also helps build trust with both subscribers and spam filters.

There are a few required DNS records that you will need to add to your domain name for spam prevention.

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
• DMARC (Domain-based Messaging and Reporting Compliance)

We highly recommend using Namecheap, and they have a great article about adding TXT/SPF/DKIM/DMARC records to a domain. Namecheap will automatically create a SPF and DKIM record for you, as this can get confusing.

Test Your Emails Thoroughly

Before hitting send, always test your emails. A/B testing (or split testing) allows you to send different versions of your campaign to a small segment of your audience to see which performs best. You can test subject lines, content, calls to action, and even sending times. Pay close attention to the results to understand what resonates most with your audience.

Additionally, always preview your emails across different email clients and devices. What looks good on your desktop might appear broken on a mobile phone or in a specific email provider. Many email marketing platforms offer preview tools that show you how your campaign will render in various environments.

Analyze Campaign Reports

Ignoring your email campaign reports is like flying blind. These reports provide invaluable data about your subscribers and the effectiveness of your campaigns. You can see open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribes, and even what time of day your emails get the most engagement. 

This data is crucial for understanding what content your audience likes and dislikes, helping you refine your strategy and improve future campaigns. By paying attention to these metrics, you can pinpoint the best times to send emails and tailor your content to maximize engagement.

Avoid "No-Reply" Email Addresses

Using a "no-reply" email address for your marketing campaigns is a common mistake. It creates a barrier between you and your subscribers, preventing them from easily replying with questions or feedback. This can lead to a poor customer experience and may even signal to spam filters that your email is less legitimate. Always use an email address that allows recipients to respond, fostering communication and building stronger relationships.

Optimize for Mobile

The vast majority of people check their emails on their mobile devices. Therefore, it's absolutely critical that your emails are mobile-friendly. This means ensuring your text wraps correctly, images are optimized for smaller screens, and all links and buttons are easily clickable with a thumb. A poorly designed mobile experience can lead to quick deletion and a negative impression of your brand.

Personalize Your Emails

Personalization goes beyond just using a recipient's first name. While that's a good start, true personalization involves tailoring content to individual preferences, behaviors, and history.

For an accounting or bookkeeping business, this could mean sending specific tax tips to clients based on their business type, offering relevant year-end planning guides, or sending reminders about upcoming deadlines that are specific to their situation. When recipients feel like you're speaking directly to them and understand their needs, it significantly boosts engagement and loyalty.

Email marketing for accounting and bookkeeping delivers the best results when you focus on proven strategies. By sharing valuable tips, timely reminders, and relevant updates, you build trust with current and future clients. Personalized messages and clear calls-to-action help boost engagement and encourage responses. Tracking results and adjusting your approach ensures your efforts keep improving. In a numbers-driven field, using what works makes your email marketing both efficient and effective.