Guest Author Series
This is our first guest blog post from the skilled specialist freelancers in the Gigway community. Oskar is an Innovation Designer with extensive experience based in Stockholm, Sweden.
When I started freelancing a long time ago I first didn’t sell or market myself. Things just worked out. But after a while I figured I should be more proactive and use my extended network from when I worked as an Art director at an agency. I had a lot of contacts but no quick and easy way of reaching out to all of them and give them an update. I could off course call them, or email them separately but that would take a lot of time. Or I could do some posts on social media, but if they didn’t follow me they wouldn’t see it unless I spent a lot of money on ads.
My conclusion was that the best way to reach out in an efficient way was through mass emails. But as I tested a lot of solutions that were available, I couldn’t find anything that was simple, quick and gave a good result without lots of work. What I really needed was just something that worked like an email program but with some design and a way to send emails to a lot of people. How hard could that be. As I’m working with digital design and product development myself, I set out to create the tool that I needed. Maybe a bit naive, but that’s the way Minutemailer was born.
Minutemailer.com is a simple tool to activate your contacts using newsletters and plain emails and I use it myself for my freelance business. 2-3 times a year I email my contacts about recent work and updates about my company. I think the emails are very appreciated and I usually get a lot of replies and people feel I’m still around even if we haven’t worked together for ages. The emails put my name on the map and next time someone needs services I can provide they might reach out and ask me about it.
After a lot of experimenting and learnings these are my top do’s and don’ts about email marketing for freelancers:
Do
Keep it simple and to the point. Be clear about the purpose of the email.
Make your emails personal. Even if you are using design you can make it more like a personal email.
Use beautiful images and design. If you don’t have time choosing one great image instead of 3 bland images is better.
Measure your result and see what emails gave good effect and learn from that. Experiment with changing your format and tonality.
Have a super clear CTA (Call to action). Decide on what you want your readers to do after reading your email and help them do it. Maybe a big contact button at the bottom of the email for example.
Don’t
Send too many emails, just send when you really have something interesting to say or think your contacts are open to getting your message
Cram too much in every email. Unless it’s really interesting people don’t read long emails. Use nice images and if you have a lot to say create multiple emails instead of a very long one.
Use overcomplicated design. Keep the design simple and clear for the best result.
Forget to send emails. Even if you do other activities you should keep sending emails to your contacts. The result will not be from one email but over a longer stretch of time. Keep on sending, it will work.
If you want to start sending emails to your contacts Minutemailer.com is the perfect place to start as it’s simple to use, has a free account and is very affordable if you need to send more than the free account includes.
Good luck with your contacts!
Oskar Glauser
Gigger - Innovation Designer
Oskar Glauser work as an innovation designer and is also the founder of Minutemailer. Having worked at both agencies and founded startups he now mainly freelances as designer working with innovative companies of all sizes.