Does email marketing work for accountants? What to send, and who you can email

The short answer

Yes, email marketing works for accountants, and it works best on people who already know the firm. A short, useful email once a month keeps you in front of clients, past enquirers and referrers, so that you are the firm they think of when they need more help or when a friend asks them to recommend someone. It is a poor way to reach strangers, and the law limits it sharply for that use.

The method is simple. Build a list from your own clients and enquiries, check who the rules let you email, send one plain email a month about a date or a change that affects the reader, and count the replies. The sections below take each part in turn, with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance linked where a rule is stated.

Email is one channel among several. For the others, start with our guide to how accountants get clients.

What email does for a firm

Email does three jobs for an accountancy firm, and winning strangers is not one of them. Knowing which job an email is doing tells you what to put in it.

• It sells more to the clients you have. Most clients do not know everything the firm does. A client who uses you for year-end accounts may be paying someone else for payroll, or doing their own VAT returns badly. An email that explains one service a month is the easiest way to tell them.
• It brings back enquiries that went quiet. Someone who asked for a quote in March and chose nobody is still a prospect in September. A monthly email keeps the firm in view until they are ready.
• It prompts referrals. Clients, solicitors, bookkeepers and financial advisers recommend the firm they heard from most recently. A useful email is also easy to forward to a friend with a tax question.

Email also has one advantage over every other channel: the list is yours. A search ranking or a social media following can change without warning. A list of people who asked to hear from you stays with the firm.

Who you can email: the ICO rules

Who you can email depends on whether the recipient is an individual or a corporate subscriber. The rules come from the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), and the ICO's guidance on how to comply with the electronic mail marketing rulessets them out. An accountant's client list usually contains both kinds, so the difference matters.

• Individuals, sole traders and ordinary partnerships. The ICO's key concepts page lists people, sole traders and ordinary partnerships as individual subscribers. To send them unsolicited marketing emails you must have their consent, or meet all the requirements of the soft opt-in. Consent means a positive action by the person. The ICO says you must not use pre-ticked boxes.
• Limited companies and LLPs. The same page describes corporate subscribers as organisations with their own legal personality, such as limited companies, LLPs and Scottish partnerships. The ICO says you can send them unsolicited marketing emails without consent or a soft opt-in.
• The soft opt-in.This is how most firms may lawfully email clients and enquirers who are individuals. The ICO lists five requirements, and you need all of them. You obtained the person's details yourself. You did so while selling or negotiating to sell a service. You are marketing only your own similar services. You gave them a chance to opt out when you collected the details. You give them a chance to opt out in every message afterwards.
• Every email, to anyone. The ICO says you must not disguise or hide your identity, and you must provide a valid contact address for people to opt out or unsubscribe. This applies to individual and corporate subscribers alike.

Two details of the soft opt-in catch firms out. First, the ICO says a general query is not enough: the person must have actively expressed an interest in buying your services. Someone who asked for a quote qualifies. Someone who emailed to ask your opening hours does not. Second, the opt-out has to have been offered at the start. If your enquiry form and engagement paperwork never gave people a way to refuse marketing, the soft opt-in does not cover them, and you need to ask for consent instead.

Bought lists are the other trap. The ICO says the people on a bought-in list must have given valid consent to receive marketing from you, and that consent which does not name you is not valid. It also says there is no such thing as a third-party marketing list that is compliant with the soft opt-in.

Your professional body expects the same care. ICAEW's marketing helpsheet recommends that all marketing emails, which it says includes firm newsletters, carry a clear opt-out. It also says services must not be promoted in such a way, or to such an extent, as to amount to harassment of a potential client. If you belong to ACCA, AAT or another body, check its code as well.

This is a summary of published guidance, not legal advice on your own list. If a case is unclear, the ICO's pages linked above are the place to check.

Client reminders are not always marketing

A message that only gives a client information they need is not direct marketing, so the consent rules above do not apply to it. The ICO says direct marketing does not cover messages sent purely for administrative or customer service purposes, as long as they only provide administrative information and do not promote anything.

For an accountant that covers a lot of everyday email: a reminder that records are due, a note that a return has been filed, a change to your office hours. You can send those to every client they concern.

The line is crossed when you add a promotion. The ICO says that if you add advertising or marketing material, the message becomes direct marketing. "Your records are due by 30 November" is a service message. The same email with "and ask us about our new payroll service" at the bottom is marketing. Keep the two kinds of email separate and you will always know which rules apply.

Build the list properly

Build the list from people who have dealt with the firm, and record how each one joined. A small list of people who expect your email is worth more than a large one that does not, and it is the only kind the rules support.

• Add the choice to your enquiry form. Put an unticked box or a clear opt-out line on the form where people ask for a quote. That gives you either consent or the first opt-out the soft opt-in needs.
• Add it to your onboarding. When a new client signs up, tell them you send a monthly email about deadlines and tax changes, and let them say no.
• Offer a sign-up on your website.A plain line works: "One email a month on tax dates and changes for small businesses." Say what they will get and how often.
• Give people a reason. A one-page checklist, such as what to gather for a Self Assessment return, is something a prospect will give an email address for. Tell them at the same moment that they are joining your list.
• Keep a record. For each address, note whether it belongs to a company or an individual, when it was added and how. If anyone ever asks why they are on your list, you can answer.
• Keep a do-not-contact list. The ICO says that when someone opts out you should add their details to a suppression list and act promptly. Do not simply delete them, or they may be added again by mistake next year.

What to send

Send one useful thing per email, about a date or a change that affects the reader, and say what they should do about it. Clients do not want your firm's news. They want to know what is coming and whether they need to act.

• A date coming up. Self Assessment, payments on account, VAT quarters, year-end for companies with a March year end. Say what is due, when, and what you need from them.
• A change explained. When a Budget or an HMRC announcement affects your clients, explain it in plain words and say who it applies to. Link to the GOV.UK page so they can read the source.
• A question a client asked. If one client asked it this month, twenty others are wondering. Answer it in four or five sentences.
• One service, explained. Describe a service the firm offers, who it suits and what it costs or how the fee is worked out. One service per email.
• Something about the firm, rarely. A new member of staff or a change of address is worth a line. An award is worth a line at most.

Keep it short. One main item and two or three brief ones is plenty. If you are stuck for topics, the prompts in our post ideas for accountants work just as well for a newsletter.

Take the same care over claims as you would in an advert. ICAEW's helpsheet says a client's testimonial may be used only if the client has consented, because the relationship is confidential. The same goes for stories: do not describe a client's situation in a way they or anyone else could recognise.

An example email

A good email from an accountant reads like a note from a person, with a subject line that says what is inside. This one could go to sole trader and landlord clients in early December.

It names one deadline, asks for one thing, and makes replying the next step. It promotes nothing, so for existing clients it is a service message. The date for records is the firm's own, so set one your team can work to.

How often, and on what day

Once a month is the right pace for most small firms. It is often enough to be remembered and seldom enough that you will still be sending it in January. Pick a day, such as the first Tuesday, and keep to it.

• Write ahead of busy season. Draft the December, January and February emails in the autumn. They are about dates you already know.
• Send extra emails only for real news. A Budget or a changed deadline earns an extra email the same week. Nothing else does.
• Send from a person.An email from a named partner, at an address that accepts replies, gets answered. An email from "noreply" tells the reader not to bother.

Split the list into groups

Split the list by the kind of client, because a landlord and a limited company director need different emails. Three or four groups are enough for a small firm: companies, sole traders, landlords and personal tax clients, and prospects who are not yet clients.

Grouping does two things. It keeps each email relevant, which is the main reason people stay on a list. It also follows the line the rules draw, since your company contacts and your individual contacts are treated differently. A firm with a niche can go further and write for one sector at a time.

Measure replies, not opens

Judge the newsletter by what people do after reading it. Open figures are a rough guide at best, because email programs do not all report them in the same way. Count these four things instead.

• Replies. A client who answers with a question is the best result an email can have.
• Enquiries about the service you described. If you explained payroll this month, count the payroll conversations that followed.
• Records in on time. If the reminder emails work, fewer clients send their papers in the last week of January.
• Unsubscribes. A few after each email is normal. A jump after one email tells you that topic or that frequency was wrong.

Ask every new client how they heard of you and write down the answer. "A friend forwarded me your email" will never show in any report.

Five mistakes to avoid

• Sending from your own mailbox with everyone in the "To" line. This shows every client's address to every other client. Use an email service that sends to each person separately and adds the unsubscribe link for you.
• Adding everyone you have ever met. A business card from a networking event is not consent. Check each address against the rules above.
• Writing about the firm. Office news fills the space and gets the email ignored. Lead with what the reader needs to do.
• Covering six topics. A long email gets saved for later and never read. One main point, clearly made, is enough.
• Stopping after three issues. A newsletter earns its keep over a year, not a month. Plan twelve topics before you send the first.

Use the same topic for email and social posts

The topic you write about for the newsletter is also your social media content for the month. Email reaches the people already on your list. Posts on LinkedIn and Facebook reach the people who are not on it yet, and give them a reason to join. Writing one topic and using it in both places halves the work.

In practice, pick the month's main topic, write it once as a short article on your website, send a summary by email, and post about it two or three times. Our guide to what a small accountancy firm should post on LinkedIn each week gives a weekly pattern for the posts.

The posts are usually the part that slips in busy season. Pillr does that part for accountancy firms: it reads your website, drafts a month of posts in your firm's voice, and schedules them to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram once a partner has approved each one. Your newsletter topics, once they are on your site, become material for those posts.

Paste your firm's URL on the home page to see the posts Pillr drafts from your own website, or look at plans and pricing first.

Questions accountants ask