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While marketing is essential to grow your firm, many accounting professionals simply don’t have the time or expertise to develop emails that convert. This document, complete with email marketing tips and sample templates, was developed to help you up your marketing game.
Getting started
Follow these tried and true marketing tips to help craft communications that get opened and read. Write emails that:
- Can be easily read, no matter the platform, email service, or device.
- Get straight to the point. Don’t bury the lede.
- Avoid recipients’ SPAM folders.
- Write like you’re having a one-to-one conversation with your client/prospect—and avoid the salesy speak. Trust that your open rates will improve.
- Are easy to preview from the inbox.
Questions to ask before you start writing
There are a few key things you need to know before you start writing, so be sure to ask:
- What unique pain point do we need to address? This shows you deeply understand your audience.
- How can we concisely articulate the value of our service/solution? (Hint: How it solves that pain point.)
- What do we want the reader to do? Make sure emails have a compelling and clear call to action (CTA). If you don’t tell the reader what to do next, they likely won’t do anything.
Writing tips
- Grab your reader’s attention by calling out a compelling fact or statistic. (e.g., “Small businesses that outsourced bill pay, on average, experience a 39% increase in time savings”.)
- Avoid big blocks of copy. Use bullet points where you can.
- Write in a conversational tone or include a personal story.
- Avoid marketing or industry buzzwords.
- Provide links to additional helpful information (preferably on your website).
- Write a unique, concise email subject line.
- Include a unique value proposition in your subject line (e.g., “We’ve learned from these mistakes so you don’t have to”).
How to write a good subject line
- Follow the formula: Include a number, adjective, keyword, rationale, and promise
(e.g., “7 stats that’ll make you an outsourced-AP believer”). - Keep subject lines to 55 characters or less (including spaces).
- Place the most important words at the beginning to make them visible to the reader.
- Write 25 subject lines and test them using a tool like CoSchedule Email Subject Line Tester.
- Create how-to's, questions, and lists—and you fill in the blanks.
Here are some more helpful tips for writing subject lines, plus some examples:
Use your headlines for inspiration.
- How to make ___ that will ___
- 21+ ways to grow your ___
- Do you think you can ___?
Show them who they could be after they open your email.
- How ___ does ___
- ___ can afford any ____, he uses ___
Tell them what’s in it for them.
- 5 reasons you should ___
- ___ while you sleep
- 10 best ___
Make it stand out in a cluttered inbox.
- Real ___ use ___
- Discover the ___
Never stop A/B testing
- Try different subject lines with 50% of your audience and use the subject line with the highest open rate for your remaining audience.
- Use your first and last name vs. your company name in your email signature.
- Test how you hyperlink your CTA. Try linking a whole sentence versus the title of your resource or article.
Review the results
- Track which emails lead someone to convert and become a user, buyer, downloader, or subscriber.
- Understand your open rates (how many recipients open the email) and click-through rates (how many times a link is clicked) and what’s working or not working after you set up A/B tests.
Email template library
Jumpstart your email creation by using a few (or all) of our email templates—complete with subject line options. We’ve included templates for marketing bill pay and spend and expense management.
Email template 1: Bill pay
Subject line 1: Isn’t it time you gained control over your bill pay processes?
Subject line 2: Get growing…without hiring more staff
Hi [Client Name],
Have you considered how much time you spend on bill pay processes? Whether it’s chasing down paperwork, reconciling accounts, or stressing about cash flow, manual accounting processes could be taking up more time than you think and hindering business growth.
Our accounts payable services using BILL will help you:
- Simplify back-office tasks with an intelligent and paperless payments platform that saves you time and money.
- Offer greater flexibility in the bill management process with multiple payment options—so you can securely pay domestic and international vendors how they want to be paid.
- Enjoy a streamlined, secure bill pay experience. Clients consistently rate the experience highest for ease of use.
- Grow without hiring by automating manual AP tasks so you can scale with ease.
If you feel like you’re stuck in outmoded, manual processes, talk to us about our accounting services with BILL.
[If sending from a firm member, encourage the reader to reply directly to the email.]
I’d love to connect and answer any questions you might have, or to give you a demo of BILL. Just let me know when works for you.
[If using an email send service, include an email address where the reader can reach them.]
I’d love to connect and answer any questions you might have, or to give you a demo of BILL. Just let me know what works for you by sending me an email at [email address].
[Salutation and Signature]
Email template 2: Bill pay
Subject line 1: Find out what happens when you outsource bill pay
Subject line 2: Increase efficiency nearly 50% when you outsource bill pay
Hi [Client Name],
Our best guess is that paying bills ranks somewhere near the bottom of your priority list. It takes time and is prone to errors—especially if work is primarily manual. Fixing mistakes is a tedious and painful process, and then there’s the issue of security and fraud with mailing paper checks.
We can help you overcome these challenges with BILL. In fact, businesses that outsource bill pay enjoy a 50% efficiency boost. Partnering with our firm and BILL can get you there. Consider the major benefits:
- Time savings: Leave the bill management to us—we alert you when there’s a payment to approve.
- Control: All yours, all the time, at every step of your bill pay process.
- Flexibility: Pay international and domestic vendors how they want to be paid.
- Security: Encryption of data in motion and at rest is consistent with leading industry practices.
Are you ready to focus on your business? Then maybe it’s time to hand your bill pay over to our experts. We’ll take care of everything.
If you have any questions or would like a walk-through of the product, please let me know.
[Salutation and Signature]
Email template 3: Spend and expense management
Subject line 1: New expense management platform suggestion
Subject line 2: Let us help with spend and expense management
Hi [Client Name],
As your trusted partner, we’re always looking for ways to improve the management of your business finances. One of those ways is with BILL Spend & Expense.
BILL Spend & Expense is a spend and expense management software paired with a Visa charge card that enables you to easily manage your day-to-day and monthly expenses. Thanks to the pairing between the BILL Divvy Corporate Card and expense management software, the BILL platform allows you to see your business spend in real time, so you’re not left waiting until employee reimbursements and credit card statements come in to see how much money has been spent.
We’re a proud partner with BILL, and in our experience, BILL Spend & Expense helps clients get better control over their business finances. It’s completely free to use and provides maximum flexibility for your employees to pay for expenses and upload their receipts on the go.
Does this sound like something you would like to explore? We’d love to get you set up with a demo so you can see the platform in action. Let me know if you have any questions.
[Salutation and Signature]
Email template 4: Spend and expense management
Subject line: Latest updates in accounting opportunities for your business
Subject line 2: Let us help with spend and expense management
Hi [Client Name],
One of the things our firm prides itself on is offering premium service to our clients through partnerships with other providers. I want to introduce you to BILL Spend & Expense, our preferred expense management platform.
BILL Spend & Expense is a spend and expense management software paired with a Visa charge card. It’s the best solution we’ve found for managing recurring payments, travel expenses, employee reimbursements, and bill pay—all while offering real-time access to data and control of your company’s spend. In our experience, BILL offers our clients deeper insight into their expenses and makes it easier to do things like approve purchases and track receipts.
I would love to set up some time with you and a BILL rep to go over the platform and answer any questions you might have. When would be a good time?
[Salutation and Signature]
Email template 5: Spend and expense management
Subject line: Expense management software that’s game changing
Subject line 1: New expense management platform suggestion
Hi [Client Name],
As your trusted partner, we’re always looking for ways to improve the management of your business finances. One of those ways is with BILL Spend & Expense.
I think BILL Spend & Expense would be a great fit for your company. It’s a simple expense management solution that pairs with a Visa charge card. You can easily set up budgets that fit your business goals and, because of the pairing between the BILL Divvy Corporate Card and platform, you can view and approve spending in real time.
BILL Spend & Expense allows your employees to request funds to their BILL Divvy card for business expenses as they arise, enables the budget owner to approve those requests as they come in, and prompts the employee to upload receipts immediately after purchase. These features change the game for employee reimbursements. They also mean that you are never surprised by charges because you don’t have to wait for a credit card statement or employee reimbursements to be submitted to assess spend.
Best of all, BILL Spend & Expense is completely free to use and doesn’t require a monthly subscription price—no matter how many cards or users you have.
To help you get started, I can set up a call with a BILL rep so you can learn more about the platform and get the ball rolling. What’s a day and time that works best for you?
[Salutation and Signature]
Email template 6: Spend and expense management
Subject line: Quick chat about a new app opportunity
Subject line: We’ve got a great new platform suggestion
Hi [Client Name],
I’d like to spend 15 minutes with you to talk through BILL Spend & Expense, a new expense management platform that we’re recommending for your business. It’s a solution that offers you the ability to see spend in real-time. It also drastically reduces your software and credit card costs because it’s completely free.
In fact, 97% of businesses like yours who use spend management solutions agree that it helps them stay within budget and control spend.
When can you chat?
[Salutation and Signature]
