Why Tuesday morning
Companies House publishes new UK Ltd incorporations continuously, but the useful window for a service provider to reach a new company is short. Roughly:
- Day 0-3 after incorporation: the founders are researching accountants, banks, insurance, business tools. They have no supplier relationships yet. This is when your outreach converts best.
- Day 4-14: half of them have already picked an accountant on price alone. Your outreach still converts, but at half the rate.
- Day 15+: unless you have a specific reason to reach them (they're growing, they're switching, they're VAT-eligible), your cold outreach hit rate collapses toward the general prospecting baseline.
The competitors who reach these founders on day 5 all read the same weekly digest from a big enterprise-priced data provider. If you can reach them on day 2, you are alone in their inbox. That is the entire game.
The 15-minute Tuesday workflow
Do this once a week, first thing after coffee, before opening email:
1. Pull last week's incorporations in your patch (2 minutes)
Use Companies House Advanced Search (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search) with these three filters:
- Company status: Active
- Incorporated from: last Tuesday. Incorporated to: yesterday.
- SIC codes: pick the ones that match your ideal client (see our separate piece on SIC codes for accountants).
Optional: filter by postal code prefix to focus on your local area.
2. Skim the list (3 minutes)
Most weeks you will get 20-200 results depending on how tight your SIC filter is. For each one, glance at:
- Company name — does it suggest a serious business or a shelf company?
- Registered office — is it a genuine address or a "1 King Street, London" service-address that flags a company formation agent doing the paperwork?
- Officer names — how many directors? What are their previous directorships (click through if useful)?
Discard the shelf companies, the obvious formation-agent bulk registrations, and anything that clearly doesn't fit your niche. You will typically keep 5-20% of what you saw.
3. Enrich the shortlist (5 minutes)
For each remaining company:
- Google the company name + registered postcode. If they have a website, note the URL and any About page.
- Note the type of business the name implies (or what the SIC code says if the name is opaque).
- Check the director's LinkedIn (if their name is unusual enough to find them) for their background — this is your personalisation hook.
4. Send (5 minutes)
Send a plain, short, personalised email OR a LinkedIn connection request. The pattern that converts best:
- Subject: Reference to the specific company or postcode ("Congrats on ACME LTD" or "New company in Wolverhampton").
- Body: Two-three sentences. Congratulate on the incorporation. Ask a question relevant to their business type. Offer one specific value ("if you want a quick review of your Xero setup" / "I can help with your first Confirmation Statement").
- Never attach a brochure, "circle back", or send follow-ups more than once.
Realistic conversion numbers
Based on data shared publicly on AccountingWEB and Indie Hackers by UK accountants who run this workflow consistently:
- 6-12% reply rate on well-personalised cold email to new-Ltd directors
- 1-2% conversion to a discovery call
- 30-50% conversion of discovery call to signed engagement
Translation: 100 personalised sends per month typically produces 1-2 new signed clients. That is 8-16 clients per year from a workflow that costs one hour per week.
What breaks the workflow
Three failure modes, in order of frequency:
- You skip a week. This is by far the most common. The compounding value comes from consistency. If you can only do it every second week, do it every second week — but on the same day.
- Your SIC filter is too broad. If you get 200+ results per week, you cannot process them thoughtfully. Tighten to 3-6 SIC codes.
- Your outreach is templated. If your first sentence could be sent to any of the 30 leads, you will be ignored.
Where Formation Alert fits
Formation Alert automates steps 1-3 above and delivers them to your inbox every Tuesday 8am. You spend 5 minutes deciding who to write to and 5 minutes writing to them. £49 per month, 7-day free trial. Try it.