There is a marketing channel that costs almost nothing, reaches people who have already expressed interest in your services, and consistently outperforms social media in terms of driving actual business results. It has been around for decades. It is not glamorous. And most CPA firms are either ignoring it entirely or using it so poorly that it might as well not exist.
That channel is email marketing, and for accounting professionals who understand how to use it properly, it represents one of the highest-return investments of time and money available in the profession today.
What Email Marketing Actually Is
Email marketing is the practice of building a list of people who have consented to receive communications from you — current clients, former clients, prospects, referral partners, and anyone else who has raised their hand and said they want to hear from you — and then sending them regular, valuable content that keeps your firm top of mind and deepens the relationship over time.It is important to distinguish email marketing from simply emailing clients when their return is ready or when an invoice needs to be paid. Those are transactional emails, and they serve a different purpose. Email marketing is proactive and strategic. It is about staying in your audience’s inbox in a way that adds genuine value to their lives, so that when tax season arrives, when they are considering a major financial decision, or when someone asks them if they know a good CPA, your name is the first one that comes to mind.
The mechanics are straightforward. You choose an email marketing platform — Mailchimp, Constant Contact, ConvertKit, and Active
Campaign are among the most popular — build a list of subscribers, create a template that reflects your firm’s brand, and send regular emails on a consistent schedule. The platform handles the technical delivery, tracks who opened your emails and clicked your links, and manages unsubscribes automatically so you stay compliant with anti-spam regulations.
Why Email Works Exceptionally Well for CPAs
The nature of the CPA-client relationship makes email marketing unusually effective for the profession. Accounting is not a service people think about constantly — it tends to occupy their attention intensely around certain events and then fade into the background. A client who loves your firm in April may not think about you again until the following March unless something prompts them to. Email marketing is that prompt.More importantly, the people on a CPA’s email list are not strangers. They are existing clients who have already trusted you with their financial lives, former clients who left on good terms, and warm prospects who found your website or attended an event and wanted to stay in touch. These are not cold leads. They are an already-warm audience that simply needs to be reminded, regularly and consistently, that you exist and that you are good at what you do.The return on investment figures for email marketing are also genuinely striking. Industry research consistently shows that email marketing generates around $36 in revenue for every $1 spent — a ratio that no other marketing channel reliably matches. For a CPA firm that is thoughtful about its list and its content, those numbers are entirely achievable.
Building a List Worth Having
The foundation of effective email marketing is a quality list, and quality matters far more than quantity. A list of two hundred engaged clients and warm prospects will outperform a list of two thousand people who barely remember signing up and never open your emails. Chasing volume is a mistake. Building a list of people who genuinely want to hear from you is the goal.
For most CPA firms, the list-building process starts with existing clients. With their permission, adding current and former clients to a newsletter list is the single fastest way to build an audience that is already predisposed to trust you. Beyond that, a well-designed opt-in form on your website — ideally paired with a useful free resource like a tax planning checklist or a guide to common deductions for small business owners — converts website visitors into subscribers who have actively chosen to hear from you.
Referral partners are another valuable source. An attorney, financial advisor, or banker who subscribes to your newsletter stays informed about your expertise, which makes them significantly more likely to send clients your way when the opportunity arises.
What to Actually Send
This is where most CPA firms get stuck. They understand in the abstract that they should be sending emails, but they have no clear idea what those emails should contain, and so the newsletter never gets started or gets abandoned after a few inconsistent attempts.The answer is simpler than most people expect. The best email content for a CPA firm is the same thing that makes a great blog post or a useful LinkedIn article — specific, practical information that helps the reader understand something about taxes, accounting, or business finance that they did not fully understand before. Tax law changes and what they mean for small business owners. Reminders about upcoming deadlines with brief explanations of why they matter. Common mistakes that cost business owners money and how to avoid them. Questions clients frequently ask this time of year, answered clearly and directly.
None of this content needs to be long or elaborate. An email that takes three minutes to read and leaves the reader with one genuinely useful piece of information is a successful email. The goal is not to be comprehensive. The goal is to be consistently valuable in a way that reinforces the reader’s belief that your firm knows what it is doing.
Seasonal content practically writes itself for CPAs. The months leading up to tax season, the post-filing period when clients are thinking about planning for next year, the end of the calendar year when retirement contributions and tax-loss harvesting decisions need to be made — each of these moments creates a natural opening for timely, relevant content that clients will actually appreciate receiving.
Segmentation and Personalization
One of the most powerful features of modern email marketing platforms is the ability to segment your list and send different content to different groups. A CPA who serves both individual filers and small business owners does not need to send the same email to both audiences. The small business owner is interested in content about payroll taxes, entity structure, and quarterly estimates. The individual filer cares more about mortgage interest deductions, retirement contribution limits, and capital gains treatment.
Sending each group content that speaks directly to their situation makes every email more relevant and more likely to be opened. It also signals to the reader that you understand their specific circumstances, which is one of the most powerful trust-building signals a professional service firm can send.
Over time, as your list grows and your understanding of your audience deepens, segmentation can become increasingly sophisticated. Clients in certain industries, clients at certain revenue levels, or clients at particular life stages — a recent business acquisition, an upcoming retirement, a new real estate investment — can all receive content tailored to where they are and what they are likely to be thinking about.Consistency Is the Whole GameThe single most important factor in whether an email marketing program succeeds or fails is consistency. A CPA firm that sends a newsletter once a month, every month, for three years will build something genuinely valuable — a warm audience that associates the firm with expertise and reliability, and a communication channel that can be activated whenever there is something important to share.A firm that sends three emails in January, nothing for four months, two more in June, and then goes silent again builds nothing except a list of people who have forgotten they subscribed and will mark the next email as spam.The good news is that consistency is entirely within your control. Choosing a realistic cadence — once a month is plenty for most CPA firms — and committing to it regardless of how busy things get is a decision, not a talent. The firms that treat their email newsletter as a non-negotiable business development activity, like showing up to a networking event or returning a client’s call, are the ones that reap the long-term rewards.The Long GameEmail marketing, done well, is not a quick fix. It does not generate a flood of new clients in the first month. What it does is build a durable, owned communication channel that compounds in value over time. Every new subscriber who joins your list is a potential long-term client or referral source. Every email you send reinforces your expertise and keeps your firm present in the minds of people who have already demonstrated some level of interest in what you do.In a profession where trust is the ultimate currency and relationships are the foundation of every client engagement, email marketing is simply the most scalable way to build and maintain those relationships at scale. The CPA firms that understand this early tend to find themselves, a few years down the road, with a marketing asset that quietly generates new business and strengthens existing relationships with almost no ongoing cost — while their competitors are still waiting for the phone to ring.