If you start your exciting journey of freelancing, you probably ask yourself, “How to begin?”.
You apparently have marketable skills and ready to start working with real clients, although how do you get those clients and keep them around?
One of your main goals of being a freelancer is to get your name and become your field leader. You have to build a target audience to which you could pitch your services.
Also, your audience should continuously grow without needing a lot of your time investment since you’ll have your client work. That’s why email marketing is perfect for you as a freelancer.
In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know when starting your email marketing strategy as a freelancer.
Here’s content menu:
- The 5 most important email marketing benefits for freelancer
- How to take full advantage of email marketing for freelancers?
- Analyze your audience
The 5 most important email marketing benefits for freelancer
As with any company, being first in front of a potential client is the way to show how professional you are. Although the problem most freelancers have, unlike a company, you don’t have the luxury of hiring marketing specialists to help you do this. You have to do this on your own without using too much of your time or resources.
If you are still not convinced that you need email marketing, here are the main reasons why using email marketing will help you promote your freelancing.
1. Tested strategy
Email is one of the most widely used electronic communication channels, especially in business. More importantly, email marketing creates the most conversion from the leads to paying clients than any other type of digital marketing channel.
2. Build up your list of leads
A mailing list is the core of any email marketing campaign. It’s also the most relevant asset of online freelancers. A list of leads contains the names and email addresses of users who visited your website and want to hear more news from you.
One of the most popular strategy to generate new leads is to create subscriber form and put it in your website.
Here’s short video, how you can easily create subscriber forms in Sender tool:
You can encourage people to fill out a form with:
- Discounts.
- Lastest news, blog posts.
- Coming products.
We also recommend to read: How to Build Your First Email List (8 steps for Best Start)
3. Boost brand awareness
Email is reasonably the most direct and personal way to contact your target group. When you consistently produce high-quality emails, your email subscribers are more likely to share it with other people.
When that happens, your subscribers help you spread the word about your business to a bigger audience.
Related article: Marketing to Gen Z: The Definitive Guide
4. Creates trust
Trust is not something that happens instantly. It’s something that you have to work for and build it over time. People fancy working with someone they trust because it’s more productive.
Good quality, valuable emails can be a great way to build credibility.
5. Keep in touch with clients
Email marketing helps your business to extend your relationship with your clients long after the job is finished. By reminding them about your services, you may find old clients coming back with more tasks for you.
We also recommend to read:
- 10 Ways to Write High Impact Reminder Email (with Examples)
- How to Write a Follow-Up Email after No Response?
How to take full advantage of email marketing for freelancers?
The process of email marketing can seem a little confusing at first. Understanding the basics of how email marketing works will help you to grow your freelance business.
Actually, all you need to understand is what a sales funnel is and how to use it for your business.
Imagine a sales funnel as the route your customers take from the website browser to subscribers to customers.
The top of your sales funnel is all about raising overall awareness. It normally starts when a user visits your website for the first time and subscribe to your newsletter.
Instead of pitching your services right away in these emails, it’s best to start building trust with your new future clients.
- Welcome emails
For your sales funnel you need to create automated welcome emails.
In Sender tool you need to select “Automation” and then choose “Welcome email” trigger:
After that you will get ready-to-use welcome emails workflow.
Then you need to setup your welcome emails and create welcome email design, here’s steps:
First step. Welcome email trigger setup.
Second step. Email setup and welcome email design creation.
By selecting “Create content” you will be redirected to Sender email design builder, to create your welcome email.
- Introductory emails
Introduction email have to be about you and why you started.
Here’s good example of introduction email:
- Educational emails
For example, your tips to specific topic, regular newsletters with links to your blog posts or clients cases.
Here’s good example:
- Downloadable content
For example, e-book or workseets. Here’s good example from The Futur:
Interest emails
Unavoidably you will lose some readers who aren’t entirely interested in your subject.
That’s completely normal because as you lose those subscribers, you know that those who stick around are interested in your subject and what you have to offer.
Since you know that people who left are interested in what you do, you can start educating them about your subject to help them see you as an expert.
Prepare to send regular newsletters to nurture your subscribers. Most subscribers won’t buy at first sight. You have to be patient and help them trust your business and the value you can produce.In this stage you can send these emails:
- Educational emails.
- Webinars.
Here’s good example for webinar email from Digital Marketing Institute:
- Free email courses.
- More downloadable content.
Decision emails
At the decision stage, the ones who are still around are trying to decide if you are the right answer to their problem. It is the time when you can finally pitch your services. Let them know what you can offer, how it can solve their problems, also why you’re the best person to make it happen.
Content for the decision stage:
- Pitch for your services/products.
Action emails
The subscribers who make it through to the final stage are the ones who become your clients. They’ve bought your services, and now it’s time for you to complete the sale.
Email for this stage:
- Follow up emails.
- Thank you emails.
Your audience
Don’t forget that no matter how excellent your email content or services are, if you don’t know your target audience, nothing else matters.
Knowing who your target audience is will help you genuinely understand their cases, what their intentions are, and how you can help them overcome their barriers.
Therefore before you start sending emails to their inbox with what you believe they need to know, make sure you know what they exactly want from their business.
We know that it can be tempting to overlook email marketing when you start working as a freelancer. In the beginning, you are so occupied; you’re building a business; you’ve got customer work and deadlines.
Although the truth is, if you want to grow your customer base, increase your income, and have a successful business, you will ultimately need to start with email marketing, and the best time is now.
Start building your email marketing strategy based on the sales funnel, and you’ll see how your results will improve. Pick a place where your users become a subscriber and create an engaging journey for them to follow to become your newest client.
Also, we recommend checking email marketing job offers on Jooble.
