Email marketing is a popular form of digital marketing that involves sending promotional email communications to people on your mailing list. These could be existing clients, or connections who aren’t customers yet but have subscribed to your email comms via your website or some other means of data capture.

Email marketing is a heavyweight when it comes to marketing, with its revenue expected to grow by 287% between 2024 and 2032, according to a study by popular email marketing platform, Mailchimp.

Sent straight to the reader’s inbox, it’s a direct way to engage with them – as long as they open the email in the first place!

What are the benefits of email marketing for freelancers?

You might be thinking that it sounds like something more suited to big businesses with thousands of customers and long mailing lists, but email marketing is an invaluable tool freelancers can use for all sorts of reasons:

• Helping you find the right clients and build real connections with people who are genuinely interested in what you have to say and offer
• Working at all stages of the marketing funnel, from brand awareness to lead conversion, email marketing is a versatile and effective way to reach out to people wherever they are on their journey with you
• Automating tasks like client onboarding, follow-ups with leads, project progress updates, milestone reminders, post-project feedback gathering and testimonial requests
• It’s a relatively inexpensive form of digital marketing, and the ROI for email marketing has the potential to be as high as 4400%, which means the money, time and energy you spend on it could be seriously well-invested
• Boosts customer retention by keeping you on their radar

How do I build and grow an email list?

Building and growing an email list requires strategy and patience. Sending inconsistent communications or too many blanket messages won’t nurture an engaged group of subscribers!

So, whether you’re starting from scratch or building on what you’ve already got, here are key steps to help you set your email marketing efforts up for success.

Set clear goals

The first thing you need to do is consider your goals and set yourself some clear objectives. What is it you want to get out of your email marketing? More clients? Better client retention? More brand awareness?

A clear understanding of your goals will lead the way and help you come up with a strategy that will support the growth of your business.

Define and segment your target audience

Different people on your mailing list will require different kinds of communication. An existing customer will receive different emails from non-customers you’re trying to convert.

Segment your audience as specifically as you like and plan your email marketing content plan around those target groups.

Find the right email service provider for you

An email service provider will allow you to upload all your contacts and do everything in one place, from segmenting recipients and designing emails to monitoring the success of your campaigns and everything in between.

Mailchimp, HubSpot and Omnisend are popular email platforms, so do your own research to make sure you’re choosing a provider that has all the features you need within your particular budget.

Entice people to join your email list

In order for email marketing to deliver, you need people on your mailing list to actually get eyes on your emails.

Some effective ways to incentivise people to sign up for email communications from you include:

• A gated lead magnet, such as a guide, report or eBook, that people have to share their email address with you to receive
• Offering a discount if somebody signs up for your mailing list

Create email flows

Instead of just sending one solitary email, set up email flows (AKA email sequences or drip campaigns) with multiple emails in. This way, the recipient is fed a number of emails over a set period of time to keep them engaged.

Just be sure not to send too many emails too often or this could be considered spamming (and pretty annoying) and lead people to unsubscribe from your communications.

Keep it as personal as possible

The more personal a piece of communication feels, the more likely somebody is to engage with and remember it.

• Use the recipient’s first name or business name. This is usually super simple to do if you choose an email service provider that has dynamic text options
• Send automated emails on client’s birthdays or other special occasions
• Segment your recipients and share content and information with them that is directly relevant to their specific niche or industry

Start a newsletter

A newsletter is an effective way to send the same email to your whole mailing list, without needing to segment audiences or create multiple versions of targeted content. Plus, it helps people get to know you and your business better to build trust and awareness.

The great thing about being a freelancer is that you don’t need to worry about racking up hundreds or thousands of email recipients in the same way a big ecommerce business would, for example.

As long as you have a decent number of engaged recipients, you should start to see some positive results.

How often should I send emails and when?

There really is no definitive answer to the question of how many times you should email your customers. Too often and too little both risk negative effects, so it’s a tricky one. The marketing world changes all the time and patterns in how customers consume content shift constantly.

According to research by Mailerlite, Thursdays and Mondays yield the best open rates, while 11am – 12pm, 6 – 7pm, and 2am are the most promising times for email engagement.

The most important thing to do is analyse how your readers are responding to your email communications and adapt according to that. If you don’t see any positive engagement, it might be time to reduce the frequency of your contact or reconsider your sending times.

Measuring the success of email campaigns

Getting to grips with when and how often to send emails isn’t the only reason you should be measuring the success of your email comms. It will also help you figure out if you’re sending the right kinds of content to the right audiences and give you a steer on the kind of length, tone and format your recipients like most.

For example, if your open rates aren’t great, you could try testing a few different types of email subject lines. Or, if your click rates are poor, you might need to rethink how engaging your call-to-actions are.

It’s all about trial and error and finding out what works for your target audience.

 
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