Are you an editor with a few clients under their belt but need a way to bring on more? Email can be a great way to not only keep the ones you have happy but encourage them to refer you to others. Here’s how you can use email as an established editor.
Follow up with clients
Email can be very useful for following up with clients, keeping past clients engaged, and on board for the next time they’ll need an editor for their book. When you’re performing a service, especially when the service is done, you want to stay on top of mind. They might not use your service again when they’re in a, you know, reader group and somebody asks does anybody have an editor? You want to be that person they mention.
You can set up an email automation that starts a certain number of days after a client has worked with you. Write something quick and personal to let them know that you know you’re thinking about them, enjoyed working with them and you’re just trying to catch up and see if there’s anything they needed help with.
Offer Customized Resources
Email is also a great way to give that very customized resources. Let’s say you’ve found with a lot of your clients, there is a particular writing mistake you see a lot of them make. Create a short email course that helps them out so they don’t make the same mistake again. Take a look at your specialty. If you specialize in developmental editing, you can use email to talk about story structure. Plotting, strong characterization.
Again, really draw on the common mistakes that you see your clients making in that can make some really good content that you can serve to them after they’ve worked with you. You can also ask your subscribers if there are any topics you will love them to cover. Drawing on that client relationship to help you provide better content for them is also a great way to use email.
Upsell Your Other Services
If if you’re not sure what an upsell is, here’s an example. Let’s say a client booked you for proofreading services, but you also do developmental editing. You can email that client after they’ve worked with you to let them know about that service. But the trick with that is not just to flat out, blast them with that service.
What you want to do is give them some free content on developmental editing. So if you already have an email series mapped out that you are doing to get new people on board, customize it a little bit and then send it to this segment of clients. You can even throw in an incentive like maybe 10% off or 20% off of the new service because they worked with you before.
When you’re deciding on what to share with your clients, the biggest thing to remember is what turned them into your clients in the first place. You can’t forget about that content marketing magic you had in the beginning when you were first drawing them in. By this time they’re expecting it because that’s what they loved about you.
Are you an editor? How do you use email in your writing business?