How a firm stays in touch with past clients without becoming a newsletter

A firm keeps in touch with past clients by sending a short note only when something changes for them. It also holds one review call a year with each client worth keeping, and records everything on a plain contact register. It takes less time than a newsletter, and each message carries a reason the client can see.

Why does the newsletter usually fail?

Because it runs on the firm's calendar, not the client's. A monthly mailer has to go out whether or not anything happened. So it carries a generic article, a festival greeting and your logo, and the client files it under things to delete.

There is also the matter of who it is written for. A newsletter to two hundred people speaks to none of them in particular. A past client who engaged you to set up a company three years ago needs to hear something quite different from a client you audit every year.

The better habit is the reverse: have a reason first, then send. For an accountant, the reasons are real and they repeat. A due date moves. A threshold changes. A form is replaced. Each is a note to the clients it touches, and only to them.

What counts as a real reason?

Write down the triggers once, so that nobody has to invent a message on a slow Friday. Here is a starting list for a small firm; remove what does not fit your work.

• A change in a rule, form or deadline that affects a named group of your clients.
• The anniversary of the engagement.
• A change at the client's end that you spotted: a new branch, a new director, a new product.
• Something you finished for them that has a next step, such as a registration that now needs renewal.
• Work you could not do then and can now.

Rules and thresholds differ by body and change, so check the facts with the source before writing to anyone. A wrong note sent in good faith does more damage than silence.

What goes into the short note?

Keep it to what a person can read on a phone between two meetings. Four lines:

1. What changed, in one sentence, in plain words.
2. What it means for this client in particular.
3. What, if anything, they need to do and by when.
4. Who to call, with a number.

Do not attach a long circular. Do not close with a request for a testimonial. A useful note may lead to a referral on its own; when you do want to ask, our post on asking for referrals without discomfort covers the occasions.

How does the yearly review call work?

Pick the clients you would like more of. For each, fix a call of about twenty minutes around the anniversary of the engagement. Do not sell on it. Ask four things. What has changed in the business? What is bothering them that you are not yet helping with? How was the last year with you? Who else do they know with the same problem?

Write the answers on the register the same day. Repeat work often begins as a sentence on one of these calls, such as "we are opening a second unit next year". Without the call, you may hear about it only after another firm has done the registration.

For example: an accounting firm in Ludhiana

This is an invented case. Take a five-person accounting firm in Ludhiana whose clients are mostly hosiery and knitwear makers. It has about ninety past and present clients and no list of who is who. One partner spends an afternoon building a register with five columns: name, what we did, last real conversation, next reason to call, and one line about the business. It takes the whole afternoon, and eleven clients turn out to have no mobile number on file.

The first send is a blunt one. A rule change prompts the partner to message all ninety with the same text. About half are unaffected. Three reply asking whether they have a problem, and one reads it as a hint that his filings were wrong. The partner rings those three to say they were never at risk, and that costs an hour. After that, a rule change goes only to the clients it touches, with a line on what it means for each, and the rest hear nothing.

Here is a note of that kind, also invented, for a knitwear maker whose turnover has grown:

Hello, a short heads-up. One of the forms we file for you has changed, and because you now run two units, the second unit needs its own entry. Nothing to do today. Please send the second unit's purchase file by the 10th, and we will fill the rest. Call me on 98xxx if anything is unclear.

It names his two units and asks for one thing with a date. He can read it in the time it takes the lift to arrive.

Where should the register live, and who looks after it?

A spreadsheet is enough. A shared sheet with one owner is better than any tool nobody opens. Keep these columns: client, contact person and mobile, work done, date of last real conversation, and next reason to contact. Add one for consent to message on WhatsApp or email, and a note if they asked to stop.

Give one person the job of checking the register on a fixed day each quarter. That person's task is small: who has gone quiet, who is due a review call, who has asked to stop. Without a named owner, nobody updates it.

When should you not do this?

Skip contact with a client who left on bad terms until you have first looked into why. A friendly note will not repair a billing dispute. And skip it for any client who asked you to stop. Contact that clients did not agree to has consequences beyond annoyance, so keep your consent column honest and check the rules that apply to you with your own adviser.

The wider basics of keeping customers are in how to improve customer retention in a small business, and the professional services hub collects our other posts for firms.

Build the register this week

Open your billing records and list every client from the last three years on the five-column register. Mark the twenty you want to hear from again, and book their review calls before anything else. If you later want it to run as email as well, email marketing is the service, and tell us what you need is where we start.