Why My Firm Newsletter Didn't Work
Part two of why I’m pulling back on my firm’s newsletter (not this newsletter). Catch up from last week here.
Background
I started my firm’s newsletter in 2021. It was the year our youngest went to full day 1st grade and I finally had newfound capacity to take on more clients. It was also the year I started posting on social (mainly IG at the time). I was marketing for the first time.
My newsletter reader audience grew to 750 at its peak, though I culled it back to 500 after removing a bunch of accountants that really wanted this newsletter ;o)
While 500 active readers seems like something valuable, when I really looked at the original source of clients that were actually buying from me, no paying client was originating from the newsletter.
Almost every single paying client I had in my firm’s 7 year history was from…drum roll…referral.
Why didn’t the newsletter work?
I think my reader audience tended to be DIYers or very price-sensitive buyers—at least when it came to CAS and bookkeeping.
At one point in Q4 2025, I had a long-time reader reply to a newsletter needing help with 2025 tax estimates. I knew the reader from prior conversations and knew her annual revenue to be <$200k. She was also a, dare-I-say, friend of a friend. I offered her the lowest price I’ve ever offered anyone to help with their tax estimates. It was a no-brainer price from her perspective…or so I thought. She hemmed, she hawed, she said she’d think about it. She did not buy.
At that point, and after a year of thinking about the value of my mailing list, I threw my hands up and determined I’d reach the wrong audience.
Maybe those attracted to accounting newsletters (and podcasts, for that matter) are the price-conscious, DIYer types. Or maybe, through my own positioning, that’s just who I was attracting.
Either way, it was time to pullback and spend my time better elsewhere.
The Caveat
A few of you responded to last week’s email saying that your newsletter works great. Yay! Truly!
When I dug into what specific services you were selling and what types of emails you were sending, here’s what you told me:
You’re seeing success when selling tax prep services
Monthly or quarterly “nurture” emails worked for you
The occasional, very direct sales email for a specific offer and price is where you saw pull-thru success
I’ll reiterate again from last week. I’m not anti-email marketing. But if something’s not working for you, stop doing that thing.
Side note: As a culture, we are very bad at quitting things. If you want a book that encourages quitting things, check out Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke. I particularly like the audiobook version.
Was your newsletter a waste? All that time you spent?
Absolutely not.
In entrepreneurship, and life, everything is an experiment. And there are no failures in experiments. There are only results and the next experiment.
For me, writing my firm newsletter helped me solidify my client framework and better explain accounting topics outside of the newsletter. It was time well spent helping me get better at what I did.
How will you market now?
I’m going to test and experiment with a bunch of different ideas. I don’t know what will work and what won’t, but I’m not afraid of failing anything. Experiments only have results, not successes or failures.
Hope this helps,
Erica
PS - If you prefer YouTube Shorts over email, I posted “How To Start An Accounting Firm in 2026” in video format there. If YouTube is a format you like, feel free to smash that like button (as the kids would say) or subscribe.
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