Staying in touch with clients is a pain in the ass.
It has to be done, though. Like most of you, I try to come up with ways that are clever, easy, and inexpensive. If you have more than a few clients it’s easier said than done. Over the years I have crafted postcard mailings, schwag mailings, newsletters, emails, and phone calls. Lately I’ve been experimenting with Twitter Direct Messages and Facebook Messaging. Most of the time they just don’t work and the success rate has gone down noticeably in the past five years or so.
Why? Because we’re all doing the same damn thing; bombarding our current and potential clients with tidal waves of correspondences that if they actually read they would have no time to do their job. Can you imagine how much snail mail and email your average client gets from us? What percentage of it is utter crap from aspiring voice talents who will never be hired? 80%? 90%?
They know what we want: work. We know what they want: good talent that is fast & easy to work with. With all that in mind, how do you effectively stay in touch with clients?
TIP OF THE WEEK
There’s no way around it: one client at a time.
To that end, last week I emailed some clients whom I haven’t worked with in over six months. I didn’t use a service like MailChimp or Vertical Response, just a simple hello asking how they’re doing. Here’s the breakdown as of Monday afternoon:
76 emails sent out on a Friday morning
9 bounced because the contact doesn’t work there anymore (12%)
1 went out of business (1.3%)
19 replied the same day, over the weekend, or the following Monday (25%)
A 25% response rate is really good so I’m thrilled with that. The 12% bounce rate means I should reach out more often but I’m taking it as a great opportunity to warm-call to the company and find out who replaced them.
Would I have gotten more replies if I sent it out a different time of day or different day of the week? Possibly. It was St. Patrick’s Day and some clients may have taken the day off or started celebrating early.
Will doing this guarantee more work from these clients? Nope, but it’s better than doing nothing. I will say that some of the responders said I am still top-of-mind when new projects come up and a few submitted me for projects as recently as the past few weeks. That is all you can hope for and time will tell if it worked…
NEWS AND NOTES
Announcement! This is a great video of my character Jax in the Lightseekers game at the New York Toy Fair:
If you listen closely you can hear me!
Another Announcement! Time is running out for March Money Madness! All “Tax Time” sessions in March are 50% off!!! I’ll share with you some tricks and tips I’ve learned over the years to help get you get as much back as possible. Just email me to get the ball rolling.
Not Another Announcement?! “Stop Guessing” is now on sale at Audible! Wanna win a free copy? Reply to this email!
Reminder! My next Edge Studio “Business And Money 201” webinar will be this Thursday, March 23 @8PM EST. The subject: Tax Time. We’re going to talk about how to make your tax filing as painless as possible. FYI with the March promotion my one-on-one session is $50 but the Edge Studio class is only $37. You can save money via edge Studio and it’s a write-off! Click here to register.
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Ravioli Day and Goof Off Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
From my village to yours; this is Tom Dheere, The H is Silent, but I’m Not.
Tom Dheere is a 20-year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a coach at Edge Studio, voiceover business consultant known as the Voice Over Strategist, and is currently producing the comic book “Agent 1.22”.