Written for Squarespace Circle — Squarespace's professional community for web designers and freelancers. Audience: established freelancers with an existing client roster looking to grow revenue without increasing lead acquisition costs. Goal: drive organic traffic for retention-focused queries while showcasing Squarespace's product suite as re-engagement tools.
New clients aren't the only audience that drive revenue for your web design business. By re-engaging past clients, you can create multiple revenue streams while dedicating less time and resources to sourcing new leads.
Winning new clients is fun and rewarding; however, it can also be a challenging, time-consuming, and unpredictable process. Fortunately, new clients aren't the only audience that drive revenue for your web design business. By re-engaging past clients, you can create multiple revenue streams while dedicating less time and resources to sourcing new leads. In this article, we'll offer tips on how to communicate with past clients and best practices for working with this important client base.
Being proactive about client re-engagement is a great way to build on the momentum you've created by fostering an ongoing relationship. You put a lot of effort into building strong rapport and trust with your clients, so leverage your relationship with a client and continue building their business while generating more revenue for yours (a win-win).
Clients remember when you do a good job. If they had a pleasant experience, then you've already started building foundational trust, which will make reconnection attempts more welcome.
Re-engaging with clients benefits your business as much as it does theirs. From a dollars and cents perspective, research shows that:
By building a re-engagement strategy into your client journey, you'll create a reliable workflow to continue producing revenue well after your initial project has ended.
While finding new clients is vital to growing your business, it certainly isn't the only revenue stream you can rely on. Clients that have gone silent or inactive make up an often overlooked audience segment with revenue-producing potential. Refining your business strategy to re-engage past clients provides more value from your marketing budget. It also saves you from continuously pursuing new leads that may not be a good fit for your business.
"A good re-engagement email shows you put time and effort into the reconnection attempt and aren't blasting out generic communication."
Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one.
Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by 25 to 95%.
The likelihood of selling to an existing customer, versus 5–20% for a new prospect.
Past clients are a high-value, underutilised segment that costs far less to re-activate than cold outreach.
When you gain new clients, create a plan to periodically connect with them down the line. Keep detailed notes on your clients and identify future opportunities to contact them based on their individual business goals and challenges.
To make your re-engagement efforts more successful and time-saving, maintain a clean, up-to-date client database. Once you've mined your (organized!) client database and identified opportunities to reconnect with past clients, the art is in the approach.
A good re-engagement email shows you put time and effort into the reconnection attempt and aren't blasting out generic communication. The time spent here will yield greater response rates and return of investment for you.
Hi Leo,
It's been a while since we spoke, and I wanted to check on you and your business! The last time we met, you were gearing up to launch your new fall collection. I took a peek at it, and the line is gorgeous.
To help you manage your growing customer base, I wanted to share some exciting new tools that incorporate seamlessly into your Squarespace site. Let's book a call and touch base on your business goals and how we can get you there.
Looking forward to reconnecting!
Hi there, Elisa!
We haven't seen you in a while and wanted to check in on you and Company X.
I have some new services that can help you save time while growing your business.
Feel free to book a time on my calendar to chat.
Happy to reconnect!
Launching new products and services is a great way to reconnect with old clients by sharing how your new offerings benefit their business. If your original project was successful, there's a good chance that they'll repeat business with you.
Squarespace offers a diverse range of products you can sell to clients, ensuring there is a product for nearly every facet of running a business. Before deciding which product to promote among your past clients, take the time to review each client's file and assess which product(s) best fits their goals. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you can detail why the product you're selling can help achieve their specific goals. Identify any gaps in their business plan and recommend the product solution.
Acuity Scheduling is an online booking tool that syncs with your client's calendar. Your clients will benefit from automated appointment management and reminders, giving them the opportunity to efficiently sell and regulate their time.
Automated booking provides a better experience for your clients and their customers by reducing the time it takes to manually book and reschedule meetings. This reduced back and forth ensures a shorter sales cycle for your client, which frees them up to gain more revenue with new customers.
Acuity also removes human error and calendar mix-ups, creating a reliable system that allows your clients to focus on their business and not administrative tasks. Ask how your client is currently handling scheduling. If they're using a traditional method, guide them to transition to an automated system.
Member Sites within your client's Squarespace site make it easy to share premium gated content and manage memberships. This can be used in a wide variety of ways depending on your client's business. For example, a fitness studio may offer exclusive videos for an extra fee, or a cooking school may offer workshops to select members.
To identify which of your past clients are a good fit for Member Sites, look for clients that have grown a sizable following of engaged customers with free content that's already attracting and providing value.
Squarespace Email Campaigns offers a streamlined and straightforward way for your clients to grow and connect with their customers, all in their unique brand voice and design. Choosing Squarespace Campaigns for brand communications means that you can help clients hit the ground running to deliver on-brand, engaging emails quickly through a single platform. This practical integration saves time and makes sharing content and updates simple and frictionless.
If you're unsure what product to use to re-engage with past clients, Email Campaigns is a great choice that benefits businesses of any size in any industry. Automating your client's email communication does more than save time and money. Here are some benefits you can share when discussing Email Campaigns:
Squarespace Circle partners and their clients receive a percentage off new annual product subscriptions — a great way to kickstart your re-engagement strategy. Learn more about Circle membership benefits.
Maintaining communication with past clients is a vital retention tactic, and promoting add-ons is a great way to start the conversation.
When you build a proactive re-engagement plan for clients, you'll gain loyal collaborators who are more likely to use your services in the future. Reconnecting with past clients is a great way to provide lasting value for your business and gives them all the more reason to work with you again or even refer your business.