Get Those Old Clients Back In
Posted by Justin Dupre on June 16th, 2008You’ll never know when you’ll have a great client before finishing any freelance writings projects. As a professional freelance writer for hire, I can tell you that there have been plenty of times where I thought this new client of mine would be fabulous. In the end, all this writer was left with was a major headache. That’s why I love my return clients.
Generally, if I have a sour patch with some client, I am inclined not to work with them, again. The bad ones are far and few between, but they usually get left with the idea that I didn’t agree with their fickleness on my services or on what exactly they needed completed. So when I don’t get a rush of new clients, or I turn off my bright neon ‘freelance writer for hire’ sign, I tend to push my services back on those that I loved writing with.
My main source of communication is via email. I live in Thailand, so it’s not like everyone of my clients are going to want to call me (although there are the few ‘odd ones’ that seem to live off long distance, expensive phone calls… just teasing!). When I get a client, I add their name, project name, and email to an Excel spreadsheet so I have all their contact information and data needed to contact them about their project.
This works excellent when I haven’t had an order from them for a while. I load the spread sheet up, look at the data, and start sending emails. No, I don’t bulk spam my clients. I am a professional freelance writer, and I wouldn’t be writing if I didn’t love it. Each one of my past clients gets a lovely, personally addressed email sent straight to their inbox.
Within the email I’ll greet them pretty informally, unless I remember that our contact periods were brief. I’ll send a light reminder of who I am, and what freelance writing work I did for them in the past. Then I ask, “Where the hell have you been!?” That’s a joke. I’ll just tell them that I am always here to write on this and this subject (that they might be interested in (look at the past projects and what you wrote about for the client)), put a link to the best freelance writer for hire’s website, and give my parting words. Something along the lines of, “I hope we can collaborate on a future freelance writing project soon!”
How well does this work. It takes some time to complete a few 10 or so emails personalized for your clients, but I find my clients tend to always come back for more afterwards. Even if the response isn’t immediate, some of my clients have replied with comments like, “Thanks for the update!” and “I’ll see if there are any projects I need coming up soon. Thanks for reminding me that you are around, Justin!” I’ve even gotten referrals from clients forwarding these emails to their friends and associates looking for a freelance writer available for hire.
And you get the satisfaction of pleasing an old, return client. The renewed sense of gratitude from them will always keep them coming back to you for more writing.
Tags: bright neon, excel spreadsheet, fickleness, freelance writings, headache, hell, joke, main source, odd ones, periods, professional freelance writer for hire, reminder, return clients, rush, spread sheet, Thailand
[...] filled in a ton of clients to my freelance writing client’s list. Yesterday, I told you about how I use email to get old clients to come back to me. Later today, I will use that list to write a mother lode of emails and queue them to be sent when [...]