Freelance Design Cold Emails: How to Pitch Your Services More Effectively

 • 7 min read

Do you struggle with creating impactful cold emails? Don’t worry; after reading this post, you can start tailoring cold emails that will capture your dream clients.

You can use copy-&-paste email templates for writing cold emails. It’s a less time-consuming way to grow freelance businesses. But it is not as simple as you think.

What makes a successful cold email?

It should be brief, intriguing, and convincing. Although there is no universal, always-working recipe, we will tell you how to improve freelance pitches and graphic cold emails.

What is a Freelance Design Cold Email?

As a freelancer, your success massively depends upon how hard you actually work. Your career involves a huge amount of self-motivation and an inherent drive to become top of your field.

Together with meeting the needs of your existing clients, you need to be continuously on the lookout for more prospects that might provide you with business. Remember that becoming a freelancer means you must sell yourself and your services. That is where freelance design cold email comes into play.

A freelance design cold email is an email sent to someone who does not know you and has not engaged with your website or business before. The concept sounds simple, but it can drive amazing results for your venture.

The Advantages of Sending Cold Emails

You can use cold emails to:

  • Set up partnerships – Cold emails are incredible for networking and setting partnerships with businesses and like-minded people who are open to collaborating with you.
  • Build links – Cold email outreach is a scalable way to create links for your website by reaching out to provide guest posts and organize other SEO collaborations.
  • Generate leads – Reaching out to your prospects that fit your audience and providing them with your offer could be a remarkable way to produce leads for your freelancing business.

5 Steps to Write Cold Emails that Convert

Besides lead generation or sales, cold emails are also intended to reach out to other graphic designers, find strategic partnerships, or collaborate with other creative souls.

Don’t worry if it’s your first time writing freelance design cold emails, let’s go through this process step-by-step:

1. Identify the Right Clients

Only connect to the people you want to work with. Also, target those who could benefit from what you are selling.

Are you not resonating with their tone, style, and brand? Then, let it be. If you are more experienced in writing about real estate or finance, pitching healthcare companies on your freelance writing services makes no sense.

The same thing applies to designs. If you prefer retro color schemes and flat designs, you will not enjoy working with brands that are opposite to your style.

Ensuring you are right for the clients is as critical as ensuring they are right for you.

2. Find Your Ideal Point of Contact

When landing new clients, do not waste your time convincing the gatekeepers of the company’s recruiting or HR team. Instead, go straight to the people who control the hiring decisions.

Although HR gatekeepers can give the criteria the companies are looking for, there is still a small chance. Be sure to cold-email pitch the people who speak your language.

If you are a freelance writer or a content marketer, your ideal point of contact can be:

  • VP of Content Marketing
  • Blog Editor/Manager
  • Director of Marketing
  • Senior Content Marketing Manager
  • Content Marketing Lead
  • Director of Content Marketing

Meanwhile, if you are a freelance developer, you will more likely be looking to connect with the director of engineering. If you are a freelance designer, your ideal point of contact will likely be a creative director.

You can also refer to LinkedIn when knowing your ideal point of contact. This will help you determine the number of employees in an organization and get a bigger picture of employees at the senior level.

3. Get Their Email Address

Nowadays, getting the email addresses of your potential clients is easier than ever.

For example, you can use free email-sourcing tools like snov.io to find email addresses in a few seconds.

Using these tools is straightforward. In most cases, you must input their names and add relevant websites where their email addresses must be located. Then, you will get their email addresses instantly.

What if the email sourcing tools do not have your potential clients’ addresses verified? Don’t worry; they will still give you a recommendation for what your prospects’ email addresses likely are.

4. Choose Your Template & Outreach Approach

Freelancers are recommended to use the tools they have. They must also stop making excuses that they cannot land particular clients.

Everything is in your power. If you know how to wow your prospects, you can do it.

Some contributors on websites like Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Forbes use their blogs to leverage their freelance gigs. It helped them boost their visibility.

You can choose from different cold email templates which you believe can help your strategy. These templates include:

Your Feature on My Blog

This cold email template is specifically designed for founders and influencers. It uses blogs to provide value before you can ask for anything in return.

Here’s how it works:

  • Ask for quotes to include in upcoming articles the clients want to weigh in.
  • Publish your blog posts with their quotes, promote them heavily, and drive traffic.
  • Update and thank the clients for contributing to the posts.
  • Highlight features on publications, traffic, social share, and other early success in the email.

The Referral Warm Up

A warm-up email template converts more quickly. It involves a straight-to-the-point approach. It also does not rely on publishing a blog post, a quote, etc.

Here’s how it works:

  • Determine the current contractors or freelancers for companies and share the recent pieces of their work.
  • Email commending their work and letting them be aware of the social shares.
  • Ask for the right person to reach out to regarding doing work there yourself.
  • Cold, warm email the person responsible for decision-making, referencing your referrals from the current freelancers.

The Direct Approach

As the name suggests, this cold email web design template is more direct than the first two templates. Although many freelancers do not succeed in getting answers or they are likely to get turned down due to their directness, this template still offers real upfront value.

Here’s how it works:

  • Determine your target contact and get their email addresses.
  • Look for relevant things about them to share on social media.
  • Cold email referencing your shares and mentions.
  • Soft-pitch your services and ask them if they are up for chatting more.

5. Follow Up (Intelligently) on Your Cold Email

Do you want to succeed as a freelancer? Then, fight to get noticed. Not everyone you are pitching has time to read your message and know who you are.

When making follow-ups, you have to provide value and strike a balance. Do not just ping your potential clients with similar questions whenever you follow up. They may get annoyed.

Ideally, you can follow up in 3 to 4 business days. If your email is 100% cold without connection to prospects, limit the follow-ups to 4 to 5 outreach attempts. Meanwhile, if you make contact over email at varying times of the day and on various days of the week for several weeks, give it one shot through a phone call to know if there is a chance to save the conversation.

Freelance Design Cold Email Templates

You may send thousands of cold emails, but do not expect to receive the same number of responses. It is slightly disheartening, but that’s the hard truth.

But do not get frustrated; we have prepared some cold email templates that freelance graphic designers can use. Please note that these samples are crafted to match different kinds of prospects. Feel free to personalize what’s inside the bracket.

Template 1


Hey [Name],

Have you ever visited a home for sale and were surprised to see how poorly designed or decorated it was? Most realtors do not realize that potential customers react similarly when they visit a poorly designed website.

I have been working with realtors from different parts of the country to design and create beautiful websites. Here are some examples of website redesign I did [LINK, LINK, …] and helped them see increased traffic in a few months.

I help many realtors build user-focused, flexible, and SEO-optimized websites they can manage without me. So, do you want to be one of them?

Feel free to chat to see how I can help.

[Your Name]

Template 2


Hi [Name],

Most small businesses struggle with customizing their web designs with the limited tools that templates have to offer.

I create customizable web designs dedicated to [Website Platform]. I will help you attract more customers and boost sales. Since almost every business is part of the online world, web design optimization is more critical than ever.

Do you have any interest in optimizing web design for more sales conversions? Feel free to set a time that is convenient for you.

I will be happy to hear from you. Thank you for your attention.

[Your Name]

Template 3


Hi, [Client’s Name],

I recently saw your job opening at [Website’s Name]. Are you still searching for a graphic designer to make your business logo?

I have been doing graphic design for XX years now and have experience collaborating with an advertising firm as a lead designer. Recently, I designed a new logo for [Business Name]. You can see it at [Website Link].

Take a look at some of the designs on my portfolio at [Portfolio Link].

I also read through the job description and business website, and I have some great ideas for your logo design. If you could send in more details and the requirements, I would be glad to send over some of my design sketches.

Kind regards,

[Your Email Signature]

Template 4


Hi, [Client Name],

My name is [Your Name], and I run a graphic design business.

[Add social proof] I’ve been working with companies like [Business Name] and [Business Name] and a number of other companies (optional).

Because I am only starting out, I like to do some free graphic design logos to build up my experience. Would you be interested?

Here’s what I’d do:

  • Job 1
  • Job 2
  • Job 3

Again, this would be totally free for you. I’d simply need a bit of your time to get you set up and see how it is going. [Reiterate the key benefits].

I am only doing [Number] of these. So let me know if you are interested when you get a chance.

[Your Email Signature]

Template 5


Hi [Client Name],

I haven’t heard back from you, so I thought I’d check back in.

[Remind them of who you are, the value you offer, and the companies that are already benefiting from the services you offer]. With billions of websites online today, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. You can see from my portfolio [Link Here] that I have an eye for design.

My designs evoke emotion, be it comfort or excitement; whatever the needs of your project are, I design to hit your target.

Do you have time Friday afternoon for a quick call? I can tell you about my findings on how logo design brings efficiency to your company.

[Your Email Signature]

Conclusion

Freelance graphic design emails that are 100% cold help get new contacts and find collaborations, mentorships, partnerships, and friendships.

You have the freedom to craft the cold email templates above. You can keep it simple and provide a clear CTA. It is recommended to offer two variants of time to make a call. This is especially true if the prospects have to look through their calendars for free time.

Keep in mind that the best cold email templates are personalized with the recipients in mind. Once you master writing highly customized cold emails dedicated to particular clients or companies, there is no way for you not to initiate new, solid business relationships. While creating your portfolio, you will begin getting more referrals.

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