For seasonal businesses, being able to re-engage past customers and clients is especially key. When clients only need your business’s services once a year, they often require at least a reminder that the business exists before they’re likely to work with you again.
Such is the case for CPAs and accounting firms who do a large majority of their business during tax season. If you would like to re-engage clients who have done their taxes with your firm in the past to encourage their repeat business, leveraging the right customer re-engagement strategy is key. To help you get started, let’s take a deep dive into what customer re-engagement is, why it’s important, and proven tactics that accounting firms can use to re-engage clients for the tax season.
What is Client Re-Engagement and Why is it Important?
Client re-engagement can entail a lot of different marketing tactics, but the core purpose is to reach clients who’ve interacted with your brand in the past to re-engage them. This typically means reaching out to clients who have done business with you in the past, but it can also mean re-engaging people who have interacted in other ways, such as drumming up engagement among your social media followers.
The reason why client re-engagement is so important is the fact that people who are already familiar with your company are a lot more likely to convert than those who are hearing about you for the first time. In almost every industry, it’s much easier to encourage repeat business from past clients than it is to convince a new client to do business with you for the first time—and in industries like financial services where trust is key, this is even more true.
Like we mentioned earlier, client re-engagement is also especially important for any business with seasonal spikes in demand. A subscription service that customers buy products from every month, for example, may not have to worry as much about customer re-engagement strategy, but for businesses like accounting firms who have clients they haven’t interacted with since last tax season, re-engagement is key.
The good news is that there are plenty of ways for accountants to go about re-engaging their clients during tax season, which we’ll go over in the next section. If you’d like to convince all your past clients to do their taxes with your firm again and again, building a comprehensive client re-engagement strategy that leverages several of these tactics is the way to go.
7 Effective Client Re-Engagement Tactics for Accounting Firms
Re-engaging clients is all about getting your company’s messages in front of them again in a way that makes them stop and take notice. With that in mind, here are seven effective strategies you can use to re-engage your clients as the tax season approaches:
1. Send Personalized Email Reminders
Email is the go-to tool for customer re-engagement, and there are plenty of good reasons why. The highest one is that emails have a high open rate, and clients are a lot more likely to see your messages when you send them in an email versus posting them on your blog or social media. The second key reason why email marketing is great for client re-engagement is the potential for personalization that it offers.
With the right email marketing platform, you can segment your subscriber list into a limitless range of groups based on criteria such as the client’s location, the type of businesses they own, and the services they have purchased from your firm in the past. Segmenting your list in this way allows you to create personalized re-engagement campaigns when tax season rolls around. Sending personalized email reminders that directly address each client’s needs and what they should do to prepare for tax season will be a lot more effective than sending the same general reminder to your entire list.
2. Utilize SMS Marketing
Everything that applies to email marketing as a client re-engagement strategy applies to SMS marketing as well. In fact, text messages tend to have an even higher open rate than emails. You can even segment your SMS lists to use the same personalization strategies.
However, text messages need to be kept brief and to the point to avoid annoying your clients and ensure compliance with SMS marketing regulations. Things like brief reminders that tax season is approaching, links to schedule a tax appointment, and limited-time discounts for early filers are a few examples of good client re-engagement messages to send via SMS.
3. Generate Social Media Engagement
Social media can be a valuable tool for reminding clients about your services. To generate engagement on social media, you’ll need to consistently publish content that is interesting and valuable to your audience. It’s something that takes a lot of effort, but a strong social media presence is a great way to keep your firm top of mind.
While you may want to ramp up your social media efforts leading up to tax season, generating social engagement needs to be a year-round pursuit. By regularly publishing posts that highlight things like tax season tips, your firm’s services, and industry news, you can help ensure that your firm is the first one that comes to mind when your social media followers need tax services.
4. Use Retargeting Ads
PPC platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads allow you to create specialized ad campaigns called retargeting campaigns. These campaigns are designed to display ads to people who have already interacted with your brand online (for example, people who have visited your website without booking an appointment or people who have engaged with your social posts).
By showing ads to people who have already demonstrated interest in your firm and its services, you can create PPC ad campaigns that have a much higher conversion rate than ads sent out to an audience that’s hearing about your firm for the first time.
5. Create Exclusive Offers for Returning Clients
Sometimes, to re-engage clients and convince them to come back to your firm, you need to offer them some kind of incentive. Things like discounts for returning clients, bonuses for referring a friend, or free services to go along with their tax preparation are a few examples of incentives that can go a long way toward convincing clients to re-engage with your firm.
Of course, you’ll also need to make your clients aware that these incentives exist by promoting them via email, SMS, social media, and whatever other marketing channels you use.
6. Use Direct Mail Campaigns
With digital marketing dominating, it can be easy to forget about more traditional marketing methods like direct mail campaigns. However, sending letters to your clients can be an effective way to bypass all the online noise and competition. Direct mail is more effective for some industries than others, and the financial services industry is one where it tends to still work well. After all, most people might not pay that much attention to a flyer from a local store before it goes in the bin, but a letter from their accountant tends to be treated much more seriously.
The one big downside to direct mail campaigns is the cost. Many companies have a hard time justifying mail that costs a dollar or more per piece when emails are free to send. However, if you want to reach out to your clients in a way that’s professional and attention-grabbing, it could be an investment worth considering.
7. Follow Up With Personalized Calls
For high-value clients or those who haven’t responded to emails and texts, a personalized phone call can often make all the difference. By calling your clients, you demonstrate that you value their business and are there to help them with any questions they might have. Phone calls also give clients an easy way to schedule an appointment while they are on the phone with you.
Contacting each client individually by phone is obviously a lot more time-consuming than the other re-engagement tactics we’ve covered so far. However, if you really want to win a particular client’s repeat business, few things are going to be more effective than a friendly, personalized phone call.
Re-Engage Your Accounting Firm’s Clients With Help From Surefire Local
As accounting firms prepare for their busiest time of year, working to re-engage clients and secure their repeat business is a vital part of the process. By leveraging a combination of the tactics covered in this article to create a comprehensive client re-engagement strategy, you can keep your clients coming back year after year.
If you want to make your re-engagement efforts even more effective, Surefire Local can help! We offer an all-in-one marketing platform that is specifically designed for businesses that rely on local customers, allowing you to leverage a suite of tailored marketing tools all from one platform.To learn more about how Surefire Local can help you re-engage clients, join a demo today.