Does booking clients feel slow for you right now? Are you getting ghosted by potential clients? Maybe you have even thought to yourself, “Man, they seemed so interested, but I never heard back from them.” If you’re nodding your head right now, that this episode is for you. I'm teaching you a simple but powerful way to stay top of mind with a fast follow-up email so you can book more clients that most business owners just completely skip over.
This booking strategy is simple but strategic and honestly? Pretty easy to set up too. Plus, I'm going to give you an exact template to use in all the things (grab it here!). So if you're a service business provider and you feel like the ball is getting dropped between the inquiry and someone booking, this is for you. Let’s get into it!
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I still remember that a few summers ago (before we had kids), I was looking to book a branding photographer while my husband and I were at the beach with friends. I was super unfamiliar with the area, so I was hunting for the right person using a mix of Instagram hashtags, Pinterest, and Google to find someone with a style I liked. Ultimately, I emailed or filled out the contact form of around 5 different photographers. If I’m being honest though, they all really started to blend together after a while.
So when I was done, I was just hoping that someone was going to be available for my dates at the right price point. Before I signed off my computer though, I checked my inbox, and one of the photographers had already emailed me! It was an automated email confirming that she got my message with some more info (that we’ll get to later in this episode).
Each of the other photographers replied at various times over the next few days, but you know who I got to know in the meantime? The gal who had the automated email. And that’s who I ended up booking.
Your Potential Customers Are Likely Reaching Out To Your Competitors
We’ve all been there when booking something, right? Whether we’re looking for birth doulas, bookkeepers, videographers, graphic designers, hair stylists, nannies, event planners, etc — you often contact a lot of people at once when you’re in research mode.
Regardless of what it is that you're searching for, you're reaching out to all these people often at the same time and they can quickly start blending together. That's not a problem with anyone's business, it's just that they are all doing similar services (the services that you are looking for), and it can be hard to distinguish and remember who you prefer. It’s easy to even start forgetting who you actually contacted when you are filling out a contact form if you don't hear anything from them again until they email you directly.
So how can you stay top of mind and be remembered?
You need to reply first, even if yes, we know it’s automated. You’ll still have a leg up on everyone else. So, in this episode, I’m going to briefly tell you WHY you need this automated touchpoint after the initial inquiry and then give you some ideas for exactly what to include in this email that comes after your contact form.
Want help putting this episode into use? I’ve got a completely FREE guide for you with canned responses and templates that you can put right into Dubsado and use today! This 17-page guide is full of strategies to help you smooth out your inquiry process and book more clients. Grab your copy here!
Read more: How I booked a $10,000 Client on Autopilot
Why You Need a Fast Follow-Up Email
We’ve already touched on this a little, but in case you need more convincing to add this to your to-do list, here are three reasons you NEED an automated reply to your contact form:
- It keeps you top of mind and sets you apart from the 5-10 other people that they may have also just contacted. It’s every business owner’s dream for customers to make the buying decision quicker, right? So, why not start that process immediately? And by immediately, I mean as soon as they’ve opened up the conversation about working with you.
- It helps them start to fall in love with you NOW before you get to your computer to reply.
- It helps set expectations and professionalism around your brand. This one is huge. You can have a leg up on others as the more professional one, the more memorable one, and so many other things. People want a good client experience, and a fast response is a part of that.
I have done this automated email thing practically the whole time I’ve had my business. I had this email in place when I was only offering branding and website design, and I still have it today. It really does increase bookings and move the buying process along.
I’ve seen this not only in my own business but it’s something I teach inside Booked Out Designer as well. When people tell me they constantly get ghosted by potential clients, one of the first things I ask is always, “Did you have a post-contact form email?”. And typically the answer is no. It makes a huge difference.
Now let’s get into what to include and how to do this…
How to Set-up Your Fast Follow-Up Email
You’ll need to use a tool like Dubsado (a CRM) to do this. At least right now, you can’t do this sort of thing easily with a standard form in Showit, Squarespace, or wherever your website is. But if you don’t use Dubsado yet, trust me — you can do so much with it, it’s worth the investment.
In Dubsado, you’re going to want to set up your contact form (and I actually cover what to put on your contact form in this guide, so I won’t rehash that here). Make sure to tune into episode 48 where I share more about contact pages too!
Basically, in your contact form, you’ll create a drop-down with options for why they are reaching out. I also always recommend having a “generalized option” in addition to your services or products that could be used if someone wanted to interview you on a podcast, invite you to an event, or anything random like that.
For example, for a course creator you might have:
I’m reaching out about:
- Course name #1
- Course name #2
- Media Inquiry
- A general question
Or, if you are a fellow designer, they might select: :
What service are you inquiring about:
- Brand Design
- Website Design
- Branding + Website Design
- Something else!
The reason we do this is that by getting specific on what they want, you can tailor the follow-up email to that. Then, you can set up a trigger in Dubsado for what email is sent will be based on this response. Then, you’ll apply a workflow to each of those dropdown options. I recommend naming the workflow to match what the option is so you can keep it all straight!
Finally, you’ll set the workflow to send an email to the person after they submit the form with that answer.
Read more: 5 Secrets for Using Dubsado to Attract and Book More Ideal Design Clients
What to Include in Your Fast Follow-Up Email
First, as I said above, you want to make it specific to the service they reached out about - not generic to all things. If you have multiple ways to work with you, this becomes even more important.
Here are some must-have elements for this email.
1. Show your personality a little.
Be friendly. Thank them for reaching out to you. Every potential customer is a gift and something to be grateful for so say that you’re excited that they want to work with you. Personally, I am someone with an enthusiastic brand, and I know many of you are the same. Show that here!
2. Set expectations about when you’ll reply.
This doesn’t need to be fancy, you can say something like, “You can expect a personalized reply from me within …. Timing”. This can be “within 48 hours” or during my business hours of “Monday-Thursday from 9 am-4 pm” or whatever it is for you.
3. Point them to resources to interact with in the meantime.
This is where the “falling in love with you” and staying top of mind happens! It’s one of the most important things to include. Do you have a resource related to the offer they reached out about? Link to it and tell them why they should click. Give them a reason to hang out on your website longer. If you don’t have anything like this, create it.
For example, if someone reaches out about templates, the automated email will mention my “all things Showit” website page (which plays a similar role to a Frequently Asked Questions page). I encourage people to look there. I also link AGAIN to the shop page (which is probably where they came from before contacting me). My goal here is to encourage them to go back to my website and keep exploring the template more!
4. Get them to follow you on social (or somewhere else)
Lastly, when someone has just decided to interact with you via submitting your contact form, they are at their prime for wanting to get to know you! So, this is an excellent time to get them to interact with you on social media.
I call this “audience distribution and disbursement”, which I talk about in Podcast Success Blueprint. You want to get people who are interested in you to follow you on other platforms. I’d recommend picking 1-2 platforms for this email. Tell them to go interact with you there and link to it!
For example, if you’re a podcaster, send them a link to listen or highlight a few of your favorite episodes. If you post often on Instagram, that is great, encourage them to follow. Maybe it’s TikTok for you or even Threads, it doesn’t matter. Just give them up to two different places to go that aren’t your website.
That’s All You Need For Your Fast Follow-Up Email
Make sure you grab this free guide because there’s so much more detail as you start to implement this. Plus, if you don’t have Dubsado yet, start your free trial here and use code ELIZABETH30 for 30% off.
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