Marketing is very important for businesses of all sizes. Being a freelancer is like having your own business, except in your company, you are often the only employee.
The thing about marketing your freelance business is that it’s not as complicated as it might seem.
Freelancers need to build relations with their current and potential customers online. And email is an important and efficient tool that they can employ. It’s free and easy to use.
In this article, you will see how you can promote your business and strengthen relationships with customers through email as a freelancer.
Increase your personal brand awareness and business’s visibility through emails
For freelancers, a good email newsletter can be an excellent reputation builder. By sending high-quality content on a regular basis, you are helping people solve their problems, and they trust you even more.
You might have finished the project and haven’t heard from a client for some time. Perhaps, the client simply forgot about you or wasn’t sure that they needed to start a new project. But when you demonstrate your authority and expertise in your regular newsletters, the client might realize that they need your services. Or you can start a blog. And every time you publish a new piece of content, you can notify your email subscribers. This will hopefully help you increase repeat traffic.
Build your email marketing professionally
Email marketing grants your freelance business a certain level of professionalism in business communication. To make it all top-level, you need to take it seriously. Here are a few essential steps:
Step #1: Create an email signature
A well-designed email footer is often an overlooked priority for lots of freelancers. However, this is an excellent opportunity to provide current and potential clients with more information about you and your services. How do you make a professional freelance email footer?
Ideally, you should start from scratch designing your signature or use one of the many free tools like this email signature software.
Step #2: Choose the right email marketing tool
An email marketing software is needed to allow you to collect customer information through inline forms and website pop-ups. Also, with its help, you can schedule emails for your customers through email sequences. Finally, you can measure your email campaigns for constant improvement. Look for all these features when choosing the right tool for you. Luckily, a lot of email service providers can offer you some cheap (or even free) plans for less than 1K subscribers. You can benefit from these plans while you are still growing.
Step #3: Send emails with your domain
Although not obligatory, it’s recommended to send all professional emails from a domain you own (e.g., @yourbrand.com), not from a personal account at a provider domain (e.g., @hotmail, @gmail, @yahoo, etc.) Why is this important?
When you send your email from a Yahoo account, you are actually using Yahoo’s reputation, not your own. This factor impacts email deliverability.
Step #4: Always personalize your emails
Personalizing your letters is essential for connecting with an individual. Do your best to find at least the first name of your recipient. Spell it correctly when writing.
At the bottom of your letter, you can add your email signature with contact information and links to your professional website and social media profiles.
On top of that, you can draw signature to make your email look even more human. This type of signature gives the impression that you are personally addressing the recipient. Who doesn’t like that?
Image source: https://mysignature.io/draw-signature-online
Step #5: Build personal and permanent relationships with clients
It’s common for freelancers to focus their resources on gaining new clients. However, building and maintaining strong relationships with both existing and new clients can set you up for repeat business.
To build and maintain lasting relations with your clients, follow the steps below.
- Learn more about your current and potential clients
Google your current and potential clients who you will target in your marketing strategies. This will give you an idea about their preferred communication styles. You will understand how to structure your emails to get closer to them.
Ideally, you should go beyond basic demographics like gender, age, and location.
The more you know your clients, the more relatable your marketing emails will be. And a higher level of relatability, in its turn, translates into better business prospects.
- Keep in touch with previous clients
Many people don’t follow up. Freelancers are not an exception here. And this is a huge mistake. By not following up, you leave your money on the table. Should you?
However, be sure not to send too many follow-up messages. It can make you seem too desperate. Wait at least one or two weeks before sending a follow-up. If landing a particular client is really important for you, then you can send one more extra follow-up email after a while. If they don’t respond after that, it’s time to move on.
- Gather feedback
Emails are an excellent way to gather open and structured feedback. By asking for an evaluation of your services from your current clients, you can prove to new clients how valuable your services are. On top of that, thanks to feedback, you will also be able to deliver a superior end product that is more closely aligned with your current customer’s initial vision.
Send a direct message that poses the key questions to help your client do everything quickly. You can always end it with an email signature with a call-to-action.
Image source: https://mysignature.io/editor
Conclusion
We won’t be surprised to hear that you can’t use email marketing as a freelancer. You are busy building your business and catching with deadlines.
However, the truth is, if you want to grow your client base and increase your income, you will eventually need to practice email marketing.
Through email, you can improve your personal brand awareness, increase your business’s visibility, build and maintain strong relationships with clients.
So you realized how email marketing is crucial for freelancers. Maybe, it’s a good time to start right now?
