By Barry R. Schimel, CPA, and Barry J. Friedman, CPA

Almost every CPA firm has a Web site. Too often, however, a Web site is little more than an electronic brochure, lying there, waiting for someone to come along and read it. A Web site is only part of an effective strategy for using Internet technology to market your firm's services to current and prospective clients.

Push technology over the Internet offers CPA firms a unique opportunity to increase their effectiveness in marketing and selling services, and communicate with clients and prospects while nurturing business relationships. Using knowledge-based emails, your firm can offer business opportunities and firm announcements, branding the message with the firm's logo colors, and providing hyperlinks to your Web site.

Email marketing with electronic newsletters and other documents should be incorporated into and aligned with your firm's marketing plan. This economical use of technology is effective because it allows for more frequent—and more personalized—contact than print bulk mailings. Furthermore, it can provide market intelligence as a result of click-through data.

A simple solution with complex issues

Make no mistake: The issues associated with electronic marketing are complex. Although it's possible to undertake this approach yourself, you will probably avoid many pitfalls if you use an outside service provider. Consider some of the issues involved in pursuing an email marketing strategy. They include management of the following:

• User privacy
• Bounced emails
• Your database
• Virus protection
• Unsubscribing users
• Client support and complaints

Many services provide an easy solution to sending emails. All are Application Service Providers (ASPs) that provide the hardware, software, maintenance, and other tools necessary to send emails in bulk. Some providers you may wish to explore include:

• www.mailermailer.com
• www.constantcontact.com
• www.bizactions.com

We founded BizActions LLC in Rockville Maryland, after having been managing partners of competing CPA firms in the Washington, D.C., suburban area. The inspiration for this project was our realization that the Internet can be a marketing medium for CPAs and provide client education. Clients' appreciation of this added service enhances their relationship with the CPA firm. We believe that the result uniquely assists CPAs in growing and maintaining successful practices.

The mechanics of setting up to send email newsletters and other documents through any ASP are generally as follows:

1. Start up the service.
2. Manage the set-up process. It's important to check whether the ASP has customer support and training manuals. This covers support associated with design templates, welcome letters, colors, frequency, and links to your Web site.
3. Upload your email database.
4. Create content, if not supplied.
5. Manage banners and personalized announcements, if available.
6. Review the email before sending it out.
7. Schedule delivery times.

Content and customization

In selecting an email provider appropriate for your firm's needs, you need to consider many factors. Content, of course, is one of the most important factors. It must include timely as well as timeless practical and informative business and tax opportunities written by professionals who convey complex ideas in a way that is interesting and understandable. Readers should have the opportunity to select or deselect the business categories they wish to receive. This feature is like having a personal editor assigned to customize the content for each reader, based on their preferences. Although it is unusual to find this kind of service, BizActions provides it.

The emails should educate readers about a variety of services offered by your firm, so be sure the provider can offer you content specific to the expertise of your firm as well as your client's industries. Most ASPs supplying email services provide robust tools for customers to design emails by selecting from a series of templates. Few offer any content, other than the news feeds harvested from other sites. Among the few that provide content, the range of topics is often very broad. BizActions focuses on business and tax topics, including specialized niche topics.

Select a provider that allows you to insert messages and announcements into the email. The email can then become your primary means of client communication and a personalized service. Look for a provider that gives you the option of including banner ads and announcements that showcase the firm's services. Look also for the flexibility to inject your CPA firm's personality by using tools for customization, color, templates, and the like, as well as including banners and landing pages for banners. Editors should not require HTML knowledge.

In addition to flexibility and ease of use, look for a system that does not require sponsors to invest in hardware or software. BizActions, for example, is an ASP that manages the entire process.

Staying connected

Be sure, also, that the provider links readers directly to the sponsoring CPA firm's Web site as an integral part of the system. The service should be interactive so readers can efficiently communicate over the Internet with CPA firm partners or designated points of contact. CPA firms are the most logical resources to help clients turn business and tax ideas into bottom line results. Fees are generated because readers request additional services as they become better informed through your emails about viable business ideas.

An effective email service is permission-based, meaning that only those who want it receive it. Readers should be able to opt out. Our experience is that more than 95% of the readers—clients, referral sources, prospects, and former clients—elect to continue receiving communications from their sponsoring CPA firms every week all year long. Nevertheless, look for a provider that gives you a choice of sending emails every other week or monthly. The point is to stay in touch with clients regularly. They appreciate knowing you truly care enough about your clients to stay in touch with them regularly.

Measuring marketing

You can learn the results of your marketing efforts through email if your provider offers reporting tools that allow you to assess the effect of your bulk emails. Select a provider with an intelligence system—an audit trail—that measures the results of your marketing and communications efforts. Sponsor's reports should be available 24 hours a day and should identify which readers are using the service, their relationship to your firm (clients, prospects, referral sources, or former clients), who is reading which article, and counts of each article read. When you discover your clients' and prospects' reading patterns, you can better understand how to serve them.

Look for a tool with viral marketing capabilities that allows readers to forward the emails to coworkers and other business colleagues. BizActions not only offers this feature, but also captures the forwarded email address and adds it to the CPA firm's marketing list.

Exclusivity

When you're selecting a provider, be sure to address the issue of exclusivity. You do not want clients and prospects to receive essentially the same email from a competitor. Here's what we do to minimize that possibility: To prevent readers from getting more than one email and a CPA firm's clients from being marketed to by other firms, the BizActions system provides exclusivity to each sponsor protecting their recurring client's email address. When a new reader is added to the system by any BizActions sponsor, the system does a search to see whether that reader is a client of another CPA firm using BizActions. If it is, the system will not allow the reader to be added to the database.

In summary, there is a twenty-first century solution to an age-old problem of how to add value to the CPA firm-client relationship. It's done with frequent personalized communications with clients and prospects that contribute to their financial success. The communications should incorporate exceptional content selected by a CPA firm and the reader. This marketing technique can help you to better understand and service the needs of clients because a technology-driven audit trail generates readership reports that reflect the wants and needs of each reader.

Barry R. Schimel, CPA, and Barry J. Friedman, CPA, are founders of BizActions, Rockville, Maryland. They can be emailed at BSchimel@BizActions.com. and BFriedman@BizActions.com.