The 3 Red Flags in Your Inquiry Emails That Might Be Costing You Clients

Hello, hello and welcome back to Business First Creatives. I’ve been on an email kick and today is no exception. I wanna dig into something that might be quietly costing you clients, and that’s your inquiry response emails. Now I’ve called them fast follow up emails, automated lead responses. Regardless, I talking about the email that you send to your potential clients after they have inquired about your services.

Yes, hopefully you are sending it automatically. Now, some of you are probably jumping up and down and saying, yes, Colie, I am sending that email automatically, and if that is the case, I am so proud of you. But it is more than just sending the email immediately and making it fast. It’s about what you’re saying inside the email just as much.

Let’s be honest. When someone fills out your contact form, they are not just asking for [00:01:00] pricing, even if that’s the question that they put on the form. They’re saying, I think you might be the one for me, or, I’m really interested in hearing more about what you do. And your first email back. That’s like you waving, hello.

It either builds trust and momentum, or it slows things down and gives them time to go find someone else. So automating it is just step number one. Today I wanna walk you through three red flags that I see all the time in my clients and my students’ automated inquiry responses. And these are red flags that confuse your lead, stall the process, or send them right into someone else’s inbox.

And today we’re gonna fix that. Okay? So red flag number one is that you lead with pricing. even if someone contacts you, and the only thing that they put in that little message box is can you send pricing? I highly encourage you not to do that. And this is not really a question of should you hide your prices on your website?

Should you make them get on a sales call to hear the pricing? That’s not what I’m talking about, but if you automatically respond to that email and all you do is list all of your prices in the body of the email. Without an opportunity to build trust and value, that is when you start to lose people. You lead with the numbers without building any context or connection.

You’re asking the lead to make the decision based on cost instead of value. You’re turning your offer into a comparison point, a price tag instead of an experience. And so here’s what I want you to do. That’s better. I do absolutely want you to share pricing in your first email if that is something that you’d like to do, but always talk about it in context.

Always do it with value. Never add a price into an email and hit send. How can you communicate that value? I’ve got two options for you. The first is a client experience video. Now, I’ve talked about this in different podcast episodes and they will be linked in the show notes, but if you want to walk someone through your process and your pricing, do it on a video.

This is a great way to connect with your leads. And if you don’t feel comfortable being on video, have a proposal in front of you and just add your audio on top of it. It’s still a video, but it doesn’t have to be a camera to face video. The second that I’m gonna recommend that you do is that you send a branded pricing guide.

I don’t want it to be, here’s collection A, B, and C. Here’s what it costs and here’s what it includes. I want you to share who you are. I want you to tell them what you do and how you do it differently. I want you to tell them what it’s actually like to work with you. What is your process? None of us have the same process, and that is part of your like onlyness factor, if you will.

And I do want you to sprinkle testimonials and client transformations. The investment info should absolutely be there, and I’m not even saying to hide it on the last page, but make sure that you are not smacking someone in the face with it, without all of those other elements that I have discussed. If the first thing that they see is a price tag, they’re gonna make a decision on it with zero context.

Maybe they decide they can’t afford you because they don’t know anything about you and your services. So wrap that price tag in meaning that is what communicates your value to your lead. All right, red flag number two. That is asking them to do a bunch of work before you give them the information. I recently saw someone’s email where the response said, okay, answer these three questions, and then I’ll send over my investment guide.

Why? Why are you asking them to answer emails in an email in response to them filling out a form? If there is really information that you want to know before you send someone an investment guide, ask it on the contact form. Don’t have them fill out the form, get an email response from you that then tells them to take, oh no, just kidding.

There’s one more step before I’ll actually send you my investment information. Guys, don’t do that. This is something that I see in client audits all the time. That autoresponder jumps straight into questions before you’ve actually built a connection with someone. Now, again, I am not opposed to you asking people questions in order to qualify them for your services and your offers, but in the very first email is not the place to do it.

Ask it on the form. Ask it in a consultation call. Can you ask questions in that email? Absolutely. Like especially if you’re like a wedding photographer, if you wanna know something about like their first date or how they met or how one person proposed to the other. I mean, these are all like connection building questions.

I again, would argue that you can put it on the contact form or ask it on the consultation call, but that’s a question. That is building a human connection. It is not asking them to give you all of this information before you’re even willing to share pricing that doesn’t feel confident. It feels cold. It feels like you are gatekeeping the very information that they contacted you to receive.

So here’s what I want you to do instead, I want you to use that inquiry response to guide them and not to gate keep. Let them know what happens next. Tell them when they’re gonna hear from you. Offer a behind the scenes look at your process, but don’t ask them for anything else until you’ve personally reviewed the inquiry and figure it out if it was a good fit.

That’s when a questionnaire makes sense. That’s when follow-up details Make sense? Not before. ’cause this isn’t about filtering people out. If you wanna do that, do it on the contact form. It’s about building momentum so that you can show up live in their inbox or on a call.

Okay, and now red flag number three.

You ask them if they want the next step instead of giving it to them. I have seen so many inquiry response emails that end with, let me know if you’d like to book a call. In general, there’s nothing wrong with asking someone if they wanna call, but you are creating a pause in the process by being polite.

This is not the place to do that. They’ve already inquired about your services, so if you feel like a call would be a good fit, if that’s how you communicate your value, if that’s how you build a connection as a human, automatically include a scheduler so that they can take the next step of booking that call without waiting for your response, because in that pause.

No matter how small it is, you lose control of the conversation and the momentum that you were trying to build. So even if you’re not ready to send them your booking link, you can still lead them with giving them an opportunity to book a consultation call or an opportunity to explore more about you and your services.

This can be done with like a really good blog post about working with you, or you could even send them sample galleries or examples of your work. If you are like a website designer. This is how you build trust and keep the momentum going. And most importantly, this is how you make them feel like they made a great decision to reach out to you in the first place.

So, what should you include in your inquiry email? ’cause I do feel like I’m telling you, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. You automated response isn’t about qualifying the lead. You should have already done that on your contact form. And it’s not about getting them to book immediately.

Unless that’s your process, it’s about bridging the gap and holding their attention until you are ready to respond personally. So here’s what you should include. You should include a warm intro that doesn’t pretend like you’ve already read their inquiry. Guys, if this is an automated email, they got it. Like 10 seconds after they hit send, they know that you haven’t looked at it. If you need an opportunity to review the questions that they asked, look at their actual wedding date, figure out if what they need is something that you offer.

Be honest and admit that. Give them a clear timeline of when they expect to hear from you and what to expect in that next step. I really want you to think about including a video or a guide of some sort that lets them know what it’s like to work with you. Yes, you may have these things on your website, but they may have missed it.

By putting it inside of this automated lead response. You are pretty much guaranteeing that they are going to take a look at. Okay, and optional. You can include that pricing information, but only if it’s wrapped in value and social proof. And honestly, I would personally never include it in the email. I want to make sure that they have to click to get it, to make sure that they’re reading your whole email and that they’re not zeroing in on that price and focusing on it.

I already mentioned this, but I really want you to give them something that they can watch or read while they wait. This helps you build trust. It also keeps their attention so that they don’t go out and inquire with five more professionals while they wait for your response.

And I do want you to give them the reassurance that you are gonna follow up personally, even if you’re already booked, even if you’re not a good fit, that you are gonna personally send them a response. This first email should feel like leadership and not an automated response. It should build connection and not confusion.

So let me ask you, when someone inquires with you today, be honest, what happens next? If your first email is dropping prices without context, if it’s assigning homework before building trust, or if it’s asking if they want to move forward, instead of showing them how this is your indication that it might be time for an email makeover.

Inside my course email, like you mean it. We fix all of these red flags and more, we build an entire client communication system that guides your clients from inquiry all the way to delivery, building trust at every step along the way. Because your emails don’t need to be cute. They need to do their job.

So if you are feeling like this is something that you wanna tackle sooner than later. Please go to coliejames.com/email to check out more about the course. Okay. I really hope that this podcast episode has given you the motivation to give your automated lead response a glow up. Whether you join me in email like you mean it or not.

But that’s it for this episode. See you next time.