Video Transcript

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Welcome to the GetNetSet website building video series for tax and accounting professionals, where we cover all the essentials of creating a site that helps you grow your business. As part of our series on adding self-help resources to your site, we’re going to look today at developing a tax advice newsletter and a subscriber list. Distributing a newsletter can help you attract new clients in several different ways.

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First, educating site visitors is one of the most effective ways to build a bond with them. In addition, a newsletter shows that you stay on top of the latest IRS rules and other tax issues, and that you really know your stuff as more and more people come to see you as their go-to source for reliable tax information,

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and also as someone who provides that information willingly and in ways they can understand, you will naturally become their first call for tax help. It’s really a classic case of giving away just enough insight to persuade someone to reach out to you for more. So you can see that we have a generic demo homepage here, and we’ll imagine that a visitor goes over to the newsletter option and clicks on the latest edition, bringing them to a page like this one.

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Here we have a monthly newsletter, which is the schedule we typically implement at GetNetSet and the one we recommend for tax and accounting websites generally. We consider monthly to be an ideal publication schedule because it keeps you in ongoing contact with past, current and potential future clients without ever feeling like you’re creating a barrage in anyone’s inbox.

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So this latest edition page has a couple of headlines and quick previews of articles on current tax matters, along with the posting date of each article. We love clear posting dates because they enable you to give site visitors an easy to search archive of past newsletter issues. There is also a headline for IRS deadline reminders, again with a snippet from that calendar.

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And this is great because visitors to a tax service website always appreciate having a simple way to look up impending due dates. Now, a page like this one should also include an option to subscribe to your newsletter, which we’ll talk about a little more in a moment. First, though, let’s take a look at a sample newsletter article. We’ll imagine that a reader clicks on this headline about reporting cryptocurrency transactions, which takes them over to the full article found here.

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So what should a tax newsletter article accomplish? First off, the article should include enough specific information to show both your expertise and your genuine desire to be helpful. In this article that was written by the GetNetSet team, you can see that we’ve listed a number of types of crypto transactions that have reporting requirements and potential tax impacts.

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Notice also that the article directly quotes a federal tax return question about virtual currencies, and it briefly discusses the different ways someone might need to report a crypto transaction. Again, all of these details help to establish your expertise and your helpfulness. The next thing to keep in mind is that although you want your newsletter to draw in new clients, you don’t want the content to blatantly promote your services. That kind of approach can feel like a bait and switch to the reader where they thought they were going to get information, and instead they’re just getting a sales pitch. Above all, your tax newsletter is about maintaining an ongoing connection with visitors to your site,

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building up their trust in you as their guide through the complex world of tax rules. As part of building that bond, you will again want an article page like this one to include an option to subscribe. There could be a subscription form right on the page, or simply a link over to a separate subscription page, which might look like this.

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No matter what, you want your subscription form to be as simple as possible so that nothing gets in the way of the readers momentum to connect with you. Here we have just a very basic three line form where the user enters their first and last name and email address, and then just clicks “submit.” After doing that, the potential client will get an email message asking them to confirm their email address and their subscription choice.

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They will only actually be added to your subscriber list once they complete the confirmation process. A couple of other things to keep in mind here. First, if someone is subscribing to your newsletter, you should assume that is the only commitment that they are making. Do not use your newsletter sign up page as a way to harvest email addresses to send out other promotional materials.

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Keep it to just the newsletter unless and until a subscriber reaches out to you more directly. In the same vein in the course of working with clients and potential clients, you will generally get their email addresses. However, to avoid running afoul of anti-spam laws, make sure you never add anyone to your subscriber list without their explicit permission. Once someone does complete the subscription process, they will receive an email announcement each month when a new edition of your newsletter posts to your site.

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Now, in that email announcement, some tax pros just send a simple link to their newsletter page on their site. However, we find it much more effective to provide a little more content right in the recipient’s email window. One great approach is to make the email announcement mirror the latest edition page on your site. And remember that page looks like this.

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So just like with your latest edition page, if a recipient clicks on any headline in their email window, the link will bring them right to that article on your site. So that’s just a quick overview of how you can implement a tax newsletter on your site and use it to grow your client base. We hope you have found it helpful.

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Thank you for watching and we’ll see you in the next video.