Customer service first

The key to keeping clients is to provide top notch customer service. An unfortunate generalization about designers is that we are unreliable. The more unfortunate part is that this is true in a number of cases. Therefore, to set yourself apart, follow through on your promises and deadlines and you will become indispensable to your clients. In fact, the quality of your work is secondary to the level of service you provide. Here’s a few tips on providing excellent customer service:

• Always deliver on time.
• Don’t promise unrealistic timelines, under promise and over deliver.
• Respond to emails and phone calls in a timely manner.
• Be honest, don’t mark up services like printing without telling your client.
• If a job is outside your area of expertise, don’t take it on. Refer your client to someone who can better help them.
• Care about your client and their business, not just your pay check.

How to increase your rates

Your clients average work day doesn’t revolve around what you are working on. They are focusing on running and building their business; design is just one part of that. Therefore, the last thing they want to do is babysit a designer or chase them for work that is late. You need to be dependable, the guy or gal who always delivers on time. Believe me, it might not seem like a big thing to you, but it is one of the best services you can offer a client if you plan to keep them.

Anyhow, getting back to raising your rates, let’s create a sample scenario. Let’s say your hourly rate is $50/hr and you’d like to raise it to $75/hr. Now that is not an insignificant hike, and your clients will definitely notice a difference. Instead of being worried about how they will react on their next quote, get out in front of the problem and let them know that the price of doing business has just changed. When you email or call them, you need to hit a couple of key points:

• Thank them for being a great client.
• Let them know why you are raising your rates.
• Let them know when the new rates will go into effect.

That might not seem like much, but if you have been doing a good job of being indispensable that is all it should take. The reality of the situation is, your client has an established relationship with you. They like you (hopefully), they know what calibre of work you are capable of, and they know you give excellent customer service.

As long as you are providing good work and awesome service, the client is not going to want to go to the trouble of finding a new designer. They don’t want to jump through all the hoops of finding someone new, testing out their quality of work, etc… Bottom line, you’re not selling your work, you’re selling yourself. Therefore, if you’ve been doing a good job of meeting their needs, they will not balk at the price increase.

The exception to the rule

There will be some clients who will have a problem with the rate increase. Much of the time this might be small business clients, who don’t have a huge design budget. In these cases, if it’s a long established client, I would recommend offering them a discount. This technique is a judgement call you need to make. Some of the factors you should consider are:

• Are they a good client?
• Do they pay on time?
• Are they easy to work with?
• Do they provide you with a regular stream of business?

If you answered yes to one or more of those questions, I would recommend offering them a discount. Good clients can be as hard to find as good designers. Reward your good clients by offering them a compromise. In this case everyone wins because you still get to increase your rates and you make the client happy by showing that you care enough to be flexible so you can continue doing business. As far as how much of a discount to offer, I’d recommend 10-25% off.

Well that’s it. I hope this post has been helpful for all the freelance monkeys out there. If you have any questions, or would like to share some techniques that have worked for you in the past, please leave a comment below.

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Twitter Grader

This is my favorite one! It is brought to you by hubspot.com, the same company that offers the excellent Website Grader free service. Basically it ranks the effectiveness of your Twitter profile based on a number of variables like followers and post frequency. I’m the #2 Tweeter in North Vancouver! I need to catch up to the other dude in front of me so I can rule my hometown.
Find out your grade at twitter.grader.com

Twitter Search

This tool has been really useful lately since Twitter’s internal search has been done for what feels like forever.
search.twitter.com

TwitDir

This is a great little tool for looking up people and profiles on Twitter.
twitdir.com

Follow Cost

Follow cost is a funny little service that let’s you see the cost of following a person. For example, if you are considering following a new person, you can put in their username and it will tell you how many updates they average a day – aka – their follow cost. Not that useful but kind of entertaining.
Find out the cost of following me (@mlambert) at followcost.com

Current To Twitter

This is a handy little script that automatically tweets the songs you are playing on iTunes. I thought it was a pretty cool but some of my followers complained about too many updates. One note, I had to install it twice to get it to work.
Current To Twitter

TypeTweets

This is a beautifully layed out aggregator that shows you tweets with type keywords in them.
TypeTweets

Monitter

This is a great little tool that allows you to search for keywords in tweets.
monitter.com

TwiTip

This is an amazing blog focusing on Twitter tips and tools. Make sure you add it to your feeds.
twitip.com

Twist

Twist is a great little tool that lets you search and view stats on keywords that are being tweeted.
twist.flaptor.com

TweetStats

This is a great little tool for tracking your personal stats on Twitter. Some of the info that is returned includes: personal tweet timeline, your aggregate hourly tweets, your aggregate daily tweets, interface used for tweeting, and the top people who reply to you.
tweetstats.com

That’s it, I hope I’ve been able to show you some new tools for improving your experience on Twitter. Are there any I’ve missed? If so, please feel free to leave a link in the comments area.

01. Keep the width of your layout 560 pixels maximum

I’ve done some research and the width of 560 pixels appears to be the safest bet to ensure your email displays properly in all email clients. If you are wondering why so small for the width, keep in mind that all email clients include at least one sidebar that is usually reserved for the mail folder list.

02. Use Tables

Tables? I know, I know, I thought they were gone. Tables are the still the best way to ensure that your layout appears as it should in all email clients. Futhermore, Gmail does not support floating through CSS.

03. Use In-Line Styles

This is one of the most important things to remember when designing your HTML email. Gmail and Hotmail will strip the <style> tag out of the <head> of your document. As well, Gmail even strips out any <style> tags within the <body> of your document. The solution is to apply your styles in-line. Below is an example of in-line styles attached to a <p> tag.

<p style=”font-size:12px;color:#000;line-height:18px;”>Your text here</p>

04. Avoid using images for typography

Wherever possible, you should avoid using images to display any typography. The main reason for this is, be default Gmail will always hide the images within a HTML email. The viewer will always have to click the “display images in this email” link to view them. Therefore, if you main headline is an image, it may result in your email being deleted since the viewer doesn’t have a quick indication of the subject matter.

05. Avoid using CSS background images

Background images through CSS are also not supported by Gmail. You are still free to use them for other email clients but ensure that your design works with or without them for your Gmail readers.

06. Don’t use image maps

Image maps are also a big no-no in Gmail. I recently learned that if you use one the links will not be detected. The image will display as it should but none of your links will work.

07. Keep your code simple and straight forward

As a general rule of thumb, try to keep your code as simple as possible. Don’t overdue it on styles or nested tables as you are just opening your email up to the possibility of not displaying properly. Less is more is always a better stance to take.

08. Wrap your entire layout in a <center> tag

To ensure that your layout is centered within your viewers email client, it’s a good idea to wrap your entire layout in a <center>Your Layout Here</center> tag.

09. Use the full URL path to any images

I’ll talk a little more about why you should do this in point 10. For now, ensure that all your images are hosted on your server and the full URL path is used in the image tag. See below for an example:

<img src=”http://www.yourdomain.com/images/yourimage.jpg” width=”" height=”" alt=”" />

10. Use a HTML Email Campaign Service

This might be a no brainer to some designers but always, always use an email campaign service for the actual sending of your newsletter. The service I prefer to use is campaignmonitor.com. Simply pasting your HTML code into a blank email message and hitting send will not ensure that your viewers see the proper layout. In most cases they will receive a page of code. The solution is to host your newsletter on your own server, then provide your campagin service with a link to the page. The service will be able to pull the page into the actual email for your viewers.

Some other valuable features that you will receive by using a campaign service are: the ability to build and keep a list of subscribers, view stats on your sent emails, and the ability to automatically insert a text version of your email for viewers with HTML turned off.

That’s it, that’s all – I hope this list of pointers has been useful. Please subscribe to the feed comments if you would like to be notified on the release of the Cardeo HTML email template.