Why Should You Publish a Regular Email Newsletter?

Why bother with a regular newsletter? Because it’s a fabulous way to build relationships with the people who are – or could become – your clients.

Now, you’re probably thinking that, in these days of text messaging and connecting via social networking sites, email has become stodgy and boring. And that no one uses it anymore. Well, it turns out that there’s quite a bit of life left in the old email dog. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 89% of American users send or read email. That’s the highest percentage reported in this study.

While there are still some text-only email newsletters floating around out there, most are now in the HTML format. And, if you’re not into creating your own HTML email templates from scratch, try the free set at CampaignMonitor. Disclaimer: I use CampaignMonitor to send my monthly newsletter, I recommend them, and they don’t pay me to say nice things about their service. I’ve also heard good things about Constant Contact and Mailchimp.

Now, what should go in your newsletter? Since it’s a business-oriented publication, I suggest sticking to business. Tell people what you’re working on! And save the treatises on what you had for breakfast for chats with your friends and family.

My monthly newsletter’s purpose is to keep recipients up to date on my projects. Hence its name: Project Update.

Like a magazine, my newsletter has departments. The most frequently appearing are:

1. New Sites to See: This is where I announce the launch of websites that I’ve created for clients. I always start this department with a sentence summarizing my Ideal Client Profile (ICP): “My primary focus is on creating websites and printed materials for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs.” I do this in order to keep the ICP top-of-mind with my readers. Then I segue into a brief description of the site.
2. Works in Progress: This where I talk about design projects that are underway.
3. Best o’ the Blog: Here’s where I don my photographer’s hat and talk about what’s been happening on my photoblog since the previous issue.

Now, if you go to my website or photoblog, you’ll notice the lack of a Project Update signup form. And you may be wondering why. The reason is simple: I want a qualified list.

From past experience with publishing email newsletters, I’ve found that website signups don’t produce highly qualified leads. So, if you’re getting Project Update, it’s because we’ve had a little back-and-forth that’s resulted in my deciding to add you to the list.

Control-R-Money and You

One of the joys of publishing a newsletter is that people will occasionally hit Control-R (or their device’s equivalent) to respond, and they’ll want to discuss a paid project with you. Call it the “Control-R-Money” sequence if you’d like.

It sure is a nice sequence, but don’t count on it happening more than once or twice a year. Instead of waiting for your subscribers to respond to your brilliant missives, reach out to them. Here’s how:

Remember that “Lead – Keep in Touch” category in your contact manager for prospective clients? (You did create such a category, didn’t you?)

Well, now it’s time to put it to work. Here’s a process that I use for my quarterly Keep In Touch (KIT) effort:

1. I generate a KIT list – first name, last name, company, business or office phone, e-mail, and date they were added to my contact manager.
2. My contact manager creates a CSV file, which I can open in a program like Excel or OpenOffice CALC, and save as a spreadsheet.
3. I start making the calls. If the person is a university faculty member and she answers the phone, I’ll say, something like this: “Dr. So-and So? [ Pause for a response. ] This is Martha Retallick, and I’m a freelance graphic designer. We’d spoken earlier about the possibility of my doing work for you.” [ Pause for a response. ]
4. If I have to leave a phone message, I’ll say, “This is Martha Retallick, and I’m a freelance graphic designer. We’d spoken earlier about the possibility of my doing work for you. My number is [ phone number here ] and I will also send an email.”

Now, here’s the email:

Subject: Following up on our previous conversation

We spoke earlier about the possibility of my doing Web or graphic design work for you. Was checking in to see if you had any projects that I could assist with.

I’ve just finished a [ type of project and brief description project go here ].

Currently in the works:

1. [ type of project and brief description ]
2. [ type of project and brief description ]

Tip: If you’d like help with planning your website projects, I’d be happy to send you my Web Design Client Workbook at no charge. To get your copy, simply reply to this message.

Timely Follow Up Matters

I like to make my KIT calls within a week of sending Project Update. I don’t tell people that my statistics show that they opened the latest issue 10 times. That smacks of stalking.

But I have found that, without any prompting from me, a lot of  the KIT people will say that they’ve been getting my emails. Only a few will want to discuss specific articles, and I’m okay with that. After all, I’m not calling them to quiz them on Project Update content, I’m calling to move a sale forward.

While I’m making KIT calls, I’m also tracking results on my spreadsheet. Here’s the color code:

Yellow: Left message
Orange: No project yet
Red: No
Gray: Left organization
Green: Possibility

I’ve found that most of my KIT calls land in the yellow category – meaning that I left a message via telephone voice mail, email, or both. In second place are the orange “not yet” people. They don’t have work yet, so I’ll contact them again in three months.

The “no” and “left organization” people get removed from my contact manager, as they have no need for further contact. I also make it a rule to remove people who don’t seem to be moving into the client category after 18 months to two years of KIT calling.

Tip: The sales cycle in your business may be longer. So, don’t take my 18-24 month cutoff as a hard-and-fast rule.

And now we arrive at the final category, and it’s green with possibility. These are the people with projects for you to work on today, next week, or next month.

So, hooray for you! Why? Because you didn’t do the initial outreach and sit back, waiting for them to contact you. Instead, you stayed in touch. That sets you apart from a lot of other creative freelancers. Now, get busy with that paying work.