Do Email Newsletters Have a Place in Freelancing?
June 8th, 2009 (7:00am) Celine Roque 18 CommentsTweet This (50)
For one of my new projects, I had to sign up for GetResponse, an email marketing service. Since I had to get a subscription anyway, I wondered if there was a way I could use the app to improve my freelance practice. Email newsletters are often used for product promotion, so why not use it to market my services?
While it might seem to be too late for me to hop on the email marketing bandwagon, I see very few options that offer the same effectiveness for reaching my customers, particularly with my client base. Many of my clients aren’t tech savvy, which means they don’t have social-networking accounts, so I can’t contact them using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Also, I doubt that many of them return to my web site after we’ve started working together.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of my email marketing campaign, I had to plan what kind of messages I would send to my customers. Here’s what I came up with:
Provide general business information to clients. Educating our clients is always a good thing. It’s not enough to just give them our work output — I have to teach them how to use it well. But this often burdens me with hours of repetitive tech support. With the use of email marketing services, I can keep clients updated with the latest industry trends, as well as what they can do to adapt.
Promote new work. An email list can also be a good venue to tell others about the current work you’re doing. Did you just publish a new book? Are you launching another web app? It’s a good way to promote your new projects and show your clients how much you’re growing professionally. After all, the more skills you learn and the more experience you gain, the better you’ll be able to help their business.
Share feedback. If a client writes to you and tells you that your work increased their sales by 150 percent, wouldn’t you be proud of it? Just make sure that you have a client’s consent before featuring their comments on your newsletter.
You don’t have to share purely positive feedback, either. You can mention client complaints, but include the steps you took to fix the problem, and what your client had to say after. This brings some honesty into your testimonials, and should make them stand out from the usual testimonials that skeptical clients tend to gloss over.
Hand out exclusive offers. You can also use your mailing list to send out exclusive offers that will alert inactive clients to any new services or products you are offering. In my experience, it’s more effective to contact people who already know you and have worked with you before. They’ll always be more comfortable about rehiring you, compared with new prospects who have never heard of you.
During my first year as a freelancer, I ran into a “dry spell” for a couple of months. I had no new leads, and my current clients didn’t seem to need any work from me. While I didn’t subscribe to an email marketing service, I used my email contact list and sent out a message offering some of my services for a small discounted fee if they sent me successful referrals. I received several new, referred clients, and, thanks to the discount, several existing clients were encouraged to rehire me for future projects.
Learn the interest level of your customers. While some of the tips above could be done just by sending emails with your regular email client, tracking your clients’ interest level is something you can only do with an email marketing service. You can check who opens your messages, clicks the links embedded in your emails (and which links they click on), or buys something through your site.
Like any other communication tool, mailing lists shouldn’t be abused or you risk losing your audience. As long as you’re providing value to your subscribers, your messages will always be welcome in their inboxes.
Do you use email newsletters or email marketing software to keep in touch with clients? If so, how has it affected your business?
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Great article; useful and timely. I had been wondering whether it was worthwhile to distribute an email newsletter when there’s already a website and your piece successfully addressed that issue.
Thanks!
I started an email newsletter two years ago with ~60 subscribers. I now have 1,700 subscribers to Heinz Marketing Insights (www.heinzmarketinginsights.com), and it’s been a fantastic tool for me to keep in touch with lots of people at once, deliver content that can help them individually and with their business, and drive referrals back into the business as well.
When you say “learn the interest level of customers”, you can also send Survey Monkey link to your auto responder then each recipient can fill out your feedback for you too.
Nice article! I use most of the techniques listed above to get info to my subscribers for http://www.binfire.com. It is really effective when a user uses the site for something new and shares his /her experience with you. Email newsletter is the best tool to distribute new info to your user base.
Great article! You’ve inspired me to create a free eBook download and get started with a mailing list. Thanks, Celine!
I’m a bit biased because I consult in the evil field of email marketing, but, yeah, people should always save their client info in some format that allows them to send targeted mail.
Make sure to create little personalized fields too – such as “conversational” a text field where you type a single sentence or two that engages the client on a level they’re familiar with, like “Hey Bob, how’s that new ERP system going? Sure was a bear to get running, but I bet it’s paying off dividends!” Save other stuff like nicknames (Ari for Ariel), casual language for locales (Oz for Australia, Hotlanta instead of Atlanta, whatever the situation dictates) and the like. Takes about a second to input, but it pays off in spades in terms of personalization. After you add all this stuff, you can send out marketing emails that look pretty much like a personal email instead of the usual “DEAR %NAME%,”
What people say they think about this kind of thing is irrelevant to the empirical data I’ve seen over about a decade, which conclusively demonstrates that you’ll get a higher interest level and click through rate when people believe that you’re talking to them – just a helpful hint (I hope).
As well, avoid stuff like “take my survey” or “check out my eBook” or other language that sounds like you want people to do something boring – try to be creative in your calls to action. People will respond to “take my survey” but they’ll respond in greater numbers to a link that’s named something more clever like, “Tell us what the Hell is wrong with us!”
One thought related to your comment about clients that aren’t tech savvy and aren’t likely to return to your website (or read your a blog which you didn’t mention.)
Feedburner has a way to add a sign-up field to your site that allow people to subscribe via e-mail. I don’t think it would be a good idea for a twitter feed but for certain blogs and podcasts it could be useful given certain content and target markets.
I agree with those who advocate the personal touch–I had to cajole a client out of the generic salutation and intro text in favor of something more engaging…sure enough, the response rates to that newsletter started going up the moment they implemented the more personal tone.
I would hate to irritate my clients with newsletters, that is why I am being extra careful with my content. Basically i am going to use a very small email to begin with to achieve this i am going to link to articles on the website.
That way people don’t waste time reading an email that is not relative to them, i would also like to teach people how easy RSS is to use. Email has been abused, that is the problem. Just need to give newsletters confidence and trust in the content & customers will be indifferent at worst, but willing at least!
I would give eSimply.com a try. They offer 1,000 completely free emails, and unlike most email companies, they are not in constant contact with your wallet each month. Most often the monthly subscription fee model does not make sense. Their website is http://www.eSimply.com