Set Up Marketing Automation for Accountants Once, Then Go Back to Work
Follow-up is the highest-return thing a small firm does badly, because it depends on somebody remembering during the eight weeks nobody remembers anything. We build the sequences, wire them to what the firm already uses, and then they just run.
What Runs Without Anyone Touching It
Follow-Up That Isn't Somebody's Memory
The inquiry from Friday gets its second touch on Monday whether or not anyone remembers it existed. That's the entire pitch, and it's worth more than it sounds.
Reactivation for the Ones Who Drifted
Every firm has last year's clients who quietly went somewhere else. A short, honest sequence in December costs nothing and reaches people who never meant to leave.
Sequences Built Around Your Calendar
Organizer reminders in January, missing-document nudges in March, extension check-ins in August. The tax year is the only schedule that matters here.
Nine Subscriptions, Four People, Six Dead Logins
We ask a version of the same question on every first call: what are you paying for right now? Then someone goes and pulls the card statement, and the answer is usually worse than anybody guessed.
The pattern runs about like this. A four-person firm ends up with nine marketing subscriptions. An email platform bought in 2019 for a newsletter that stopped after three issues. A scheduling tool. A second scheduling tool, because the first one wouldn't sync with the calendar the new hire uses. A social scheduler. A form builder whose only job is feeding the email platform. A review widget. A landing page builder somebody signed up for during a webinar. A CRM trial that never got canceled. And the phone system, which quietly does a third of what four of the others do, though nobody ever mentioned that.
Six of them haven't been opened since the onboarding call. All nine still charge. None of them is individually big enough to escalate to a partner, so the stack grows for years without a single decision being made about it. (Nobody budgets for this, by the way. It just accumulates.) The money is annoying. The real cost is that client information sits in nine places, so no sequence can use what another tool already knows, and every automation anyone builds is a bridge that breaks the week a vendor changes an API. Consolidating is dull work and it's one of the few projects a small firm can actually finish in a quarter. We wrote the whole approach out in our piece on small firm marketing automation.
Email platform, 2019
Last login: 14 months ago
Second scheduling tool
Duplicate of the first
Form builder
Feeds the email platform only
Landing page builder
Webinar signup, never used
Phone system
Already does texts and voicemail
Who It's For
Firms where the follow-up currently depends on one busy person remembering
CPAs & Tax Preparers
Between January and April nobody has the bandwidth to chase a lukewarm prospect. This chases them for you, politely.
Bookkeepers & Advisors
Monthly clients need a longer runway before they commit. Automation covers the eight weeks of that runway you'd otherwise drop.
Firms With a Neglected Client List
The list is usually the most valuable asset in the building and the least used one. It's also already paid for.
Firms Drowning in Subscriptions
If your marketing lives in six tools that don't talk, consolidation buys back more time than any single new feature will.
New inquiry, day 0 text and email
Live
Consult booked, prep checklist
Live
Missing documents, March nudges
Seasonal
Extension filed, August check-in
Scheduled
Last year's clients, December return
Live
The Sequences Worth Building First
Firms tend to want the clever campaign and skip the boring one, and the boring one is where the money is. Intake follow-up, document chasing, and a December note to the clients who didn't come back last year will outperform anything creative you could build in the same week. Everything writes back to one record, which is why this works best sitting on the CRM for accounting firms rather than bolted onto four tools that don't share a contact list.
- Intake follow-up by text and email, minutes after the form
- Document chasing that stops the moment the file arrives
- Deadline reminders keyed to the actual tax calendar
- Reactivation for clients who quietly stopped coming back
Frequently Asked Questions
Automation is chapter four of the marketing guide for accounting firms. It also has nothing to work with until inquiries exist, which is lead generation for accountants.