31 Email marketing tips for freelance translators
1.Prepare a good CV. There are many sites in the net which provide guidance how to write a good CV.
2. Collect email addresses of agencies from Internet.
3.Contact agencies in batches. The amount of agencies to contact on any one day may depend on how busy you are. For example You can contact from 50 to 200 in one go. Just be consistent. DO it everyday. Yes, everyday. It is slow at first. Keep sending emails. The time you invest in that now will pay off later. Some people prefer to do most marketing when they have a quieter period.
4. When to send emails?-Some days of weeks are best for email marketing. Your emails are more likely to be read if the PM's of agencies are not too busy themselves, i.e. definitely don't send on Monday mornings/Friday afternoons. Instead send emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
5. Do not send your CV as an attachment.Do not send any attachment either.
6. send CV to an agency which explicitly work with your language pairs.
7.If you specialize in a certain field (e.g. law, engineering), you should write specifically to agencies that are specialized in the same field.
8. Do not specify rates in your emails, it’s better to discuss rates later. However you may state your rates if you do not want to be contacted by agencies who pay less.
9. Increase your response rate. If possible follow up your email with a phone call to the company concerned.
10. Always start with a brief introduction giving language pair, qualifications/years of experience, specialisations and services offered.You may state that a detailed CV is available on request.
11. DO not lose heart. It can take ages before an agency actually contacts you with a job.Your marketing will pay off eventually! 10. Focus on the countries where your foreign languages are spoken. Just keep doing it to increase the response rate. The more people you contact the more responses you have.
12. Use the most common fonts possible -Times, Arial etc. My favourite is Trebuchet.
13. Don't expect an immediate response.Sometimes it might take more than a year for a specific agency to need your specific services.
14.Put up your detailed CV in HTML format in your website or blog as well. Having your CV right there on the web makes it easier for you to fill in the online agency forms by copying/pasting and you can direct your client to that.
15. Follow up in one month and then in three months with another e-mail saying what you've done in the mean time (eg what new experience you have), any new skills you've learnt, and that you are mostly available for the following months.
16.If the agency offers a lot of languages (say, more than 30), then they might not mind adding you to their database.
17. Target agencies that offer languages similar to yours, or offer languages spoken in your region
18. Make your e-mail fit for the recipient. The more tightly targeted the e-mail, the bigger the chance that you'll get a favourable response. The more general or generic the e-mail, the bigger chance your e-mail will be a perfect fit for the round file.
19. You should write specifically to agencies that are specialized in the same field, and say so.
20. Customise the mails according to recipient category.
21. People don't read "below the fold". In other words, you must grab their attention before they scroll down, because more often than not, they won't scroll down at all, but simply close/delete and move on.
22. Make it easy to read and easy to skim-read
23. Put lots of relevant information in it
24. Don't make your paragraphs too long. You can also make use of simple bullet lists (they read easier), eg to list your language combinations, to list your fields of experience (no more than 5), or to state your usual rates.
24.When writing your web site address, do not forget to add "http://" in front of it, because some e-mail programs still don't convert web addresses to hyperlinks without it.
25. Do not overburden the reader - be very clear and exact.
25. Structure your email proposal in a very smart way to have the effect intended (as it gives "the first impression" about you too) - not only the content.
26.Buy or prepare on your own a database of email addresses of translation agencies. You can collect websites of agencies in sites like Proz, Aquarious, Traduguide or from the internet.
27. Do not be a spammer. The question often asked is can such "email marketing" be considered as spam ? While one can consider these emails are not spam and it is not a crime to write someone an email proposing services, on the other hand, spammers also do a similar thing , i.e sending unsolicited mails. SO the advice would be -do not overdo things. Always respect your recipient.
28. Try to be visible in the field. Write an article and get it published. Most translation portals like Go translators etc.,will gladly publish your article.
29.And, best of all, is to make that the clients come to you, not that you come to them. If you are the one who approaches them first,you will have to comply to their "requirements" - all those online databases, tests, etc. And all those databases take a lot of time with no result very often (lot of wasted time). And if the clients approach you (vice versa), you can already tell "Sorry, I have no time for tests", "Here is my contact info, have no time/wish to fill in all your databases"..
30. Have your own web site. Own a URL (a personal site) that is in the search engines.
Get good rankings for your site. Fill it with good, relevant content (write a blog on translation), obviously a CV-page and a page about services and how to contact you, link to good sites and link back from your profile on various sites.
31. If you have a web site, put your downloadable CV there, . The best format should be a PDF . It will be lighter, compatible with any system, and in most cases virus-free.
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