Why I utilize email for my surface design business
When I first started freelancing I had no clue what I was doing when it came to finding clients. I had no idea how to gain new clients or how to promote myself other than Instagram which felt like a shot in the dark. Whenever I reached out to other artists who were freelancing to see how they found clients, they would tell me “oh I just posted my art on Instagram and people came to me”. This response didn’t resonate with me. I’m such a goal getter that I need to know what specific steps I need to take to go after my goals. I’m definitely not one to wait around to hit the lottery so to speak.
So I started going on Facebook groups like Create & Cultivate and Freelancing Females asking around best forms of marketing to gain clients and an editorial illustrator reached out to me saying she used Mailchimp to send out emails to potential clients. I thought to myself, DUH! What a smart form of marketing. As a former graphic designer who worked on 360 degree campaigns for fortune 500 companies who designed emails DAILY, I thought of course I should venture out into email to try and pitch myself to potential clients. I quickly worked on getting together email lists, an email template and sent out my first outreach email. From this method alone I gained 50% of my current clients (for reference the other 50% is word of mouth).
Now as I continue on my freelance journey I’m finding that I’m gravitating towards email more and more as another form of connecting with my audience, clients and potential clients.
1. Client Outreach
As I’ve mentioned above, using emails for client outreach has completely changed the game for me. When I first did client outreach I did use a plain email via gmail with attachments of my work. But as a designer who has worked on beautiful email design layouts, I wanted to do the same for my own business. That’s when I learned about Mailchimp. It was easy to make a template layout that I could customize and send to different segments. For example, I reached out to a kids focused group including work I’ve done for kids brands and then a more adult focused group with more adult work I’ve done. I felt more confident sending a professional email template. Using email to reach out to art directors and creative directors has been the most direct way to get my work out there and to say “hey I’d love to work with you!”. It allows me to skip the guess work of clients coming to me.
2. Long Form Content
As I grow my business and share more and more behind the scenes of projects I’ve worked on via social media, I’m finding that I need a platform that I can share more longer form content. Newsletter emails have been the perfect avenue for me to share what I’ve been working on, what’s been inspiring me and just allows me to share more compared to social media which has a text and time limit. I love having an outlet to write and share links of articles or products that I use.
3. Staying Relevant & Top Of Mind
Now that I have a newsletter along with potential client and current client email lists, I love being able to send them emails monthly to keep my work relevant and top of mind. This is especially important for my existing clients. It positions me as an authority in my expertise, allows them to see what I’ve been working on for other clients and also keeps me in their inbox if we don’t have a current project together. I love the banter my clients and I have back and forth on the freebies I provide or a favorite podcast I’ve shared in my newsletters. At the end of the day I just want to maintain the relationships I have because they’re so important to me. Email allows me to do that more directly, rather than depending on social media where it all depends on the algorithm.
4. Marketing Resource for Promoting a Product or Service
I love being able to share my art available for licensing in my emails. I do share my art on my website & via social media but in email I’m able to be more direct in saying “this art is available for licensing”. I do have future goals for creating classes via Skillshare, so I’m happy I have an existing list who might be interested in classes that I can tap into to promote that. It’s so much easier to add all your promotions in one place with links.
All in all I love using email for my business. It’s something that I really just started to dive into last year. So I’m excited to keep the journey going!
