The title “best practices” typically means long standing rules and methods, and processes to avoid. For the most part these rules are erstwhile and correctly considered. I’m not suggesting that best practices be unheeded, just that they can be reexamined now and then or they might obstruct innovation.

I think it was marketing Guru Mark Brownlow who first suggested that it would be better to change the term to “profit practices”. He’s trying to change the way we think about these practices. Rather than simply following the status quo this new term leads us, hopefully, to making sure our efforts are actually generating revenue.

So what can you do to ensure your e-mail marketing campaign is ahering to profit practice? Well the changes are subtle from the old “best practices” model, but the impact on your efforts will likely be considerable. Here are some practical suggestions…

An easy way to meet your customers where they are is to use transactional e-mails. A transactional e-mail is an e-mail sent in response to an action that a visitor has on your site. One place where transactional e-mails can benefit a CPA is on your website’s service pages. A simple e-mail form on each service page can bring in those precious prospects that are warm, but not quite ready to commit to a full contact. Better yet, make a special offer. For example you could offer a short report with more information on the subject. Prospects that read that far and respond on that form are very hot leads. Follow up on these inquiries immediately with a transactional e-mail.

Transactional e-mails bring in revenues between three and six times higher than bulk mailings from the same clients, states a report from Experian. Transactional e-mails are a key profit opportunity.

Respect the permission of e-mail subscribers by not bombarding them with e-mail or sending irrelevant messages. Spamming your subscribers is not only disrespectful, it’s also unprofitable. You will lose subscribers and by extention the revenue they would have brought into your company.

A recent study from Epsilon put the value of an e-mail address at $23. Treat your e-mail addresses with the respect due to assets of that value.

Fans of your Facebook page may not feel they have given you permission to market to them through Facebook - so use Facebook and other social media platforms to gain e-mail subscribers.

Don’t waste time sending e-mails to people who don’t know your company. Confine your marketing efforts to prospects who choose to hear from you and are interested in your services. Buying lists of strangers is a waste of time and money.

Exercise restraint. If you send too many e-mails people will start to ignore them. Eventually they will unsubscribe. Bombarding your subscribers with e-mail just won’t work. People aren’t going to want to use a CPA that’s constantly annoying them with pointless e-mails.

Occasional e-mails about a product or a special promotion is okay; force-feeding offers to your customers, though, will turn them off quickly.

Treat e-mail marketing like the revenue stream that it is instead of just another number in the marketing budget. This means you should:

• Hire the right team
• Invest in the right partner and technology
• Apply metrics to your efforts to get a clear sense of the benefits

The biggest challenge of e-mail marketing is to meet marketing objectives while offering compelling and relevant content in your e-mails. To do this, pay attention to what content customers click on within the e-mails. What prompts them to take action?

Use these “profit practices” to increase the revenue from your e-mail campaign instead of using aged “best practices.”

About the Author

Jim Tourville is the Director of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country’s most successful web design businesses oriented exclusively to CPA sites. His firm currently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA and accounting firms.

Tags: Accounting, CPA, CPA Sites, e-mail, Marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 11:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.