What Is a “CRM For Creatives”?
If you run a business that flexes your creative muscles, it can be tough to balance the creative, client-facing side of things with the day-to-day operations. You built your business to follow your passion, not follow-up on missed emails.
But, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be your secret weapon for tackling these tasks. Dubsado CRM for creatives is like your own automated virtual assistant. It allows you to streamline your business processes and stay on top of the little things, so you can focus on your projects.
Why Dubsado Is My Favourite CRM For Web Designers, Copywriters & More
When it comes to organizing and streamlining your business, Dubsado CRM for creatives is your one-stop shop. It has every feature you could need to track client projects, gather leads, automate follow-ups, create invoices, and so much more. Plus, Dubsado gives you the ability to add your own brand and style to all your forms so no one will know you didn’t create them from scratch.
You built your business around your passion (have more time for it)
Being a creative entrepreneur, you want to use your flow hours for what you do best, creating for your clients. There’s a lot of groundwork and back and forth with clients that need to be completed before you can get down to the business of creating. Without a strong, streamlined process, it can be easy to spend all your time on organizing and not on your passion.
Imagine how amazing it would be to have extra hours in the day. With Dubsado managing all the admin tasks, you’ll have more time to focus on what you love and less spent on the boring stuff.
Projects can be tough to keep on track (don’t hire, automate)
As your business grows, and you start working with more clients at the same time, it can become a challenge to know where each one is at and keep them on task. With Dubsado, you can automate your entire client experience, from their initial inquiry to testimonial requests.
Never wonder if you sent that form or follow-up again. With Dubsado workflows you can trigger these events to happen without any input from you. You can also create individual client portals to house all the forms and contracts connected to that client. Both you and they will always know exactly where to find everything and what comes next.
Admin can pile up (don’t hire, automate)
How many times have you told yourself you’ll just take care of these three little tasks before you get down to client work and find yourself four hours later wondering what on earth happened to your day? Making invoices from scratch for every client and going back and forth through DMs to schedule a call can quickly eat away your day and make it impossible to do any actual work.
Dubsado CRM for creatives allows you to automate these pesky time-eaters so you can simply pour your coffee and start creating. No more forgotten follow-ups, no more double-booked schedules, and no more apology emails. Just beautifully branded and perfectly timed communications.
Whitelabel options to keep everything on brand
You’ve worked hard (and potentially invested some hard-earned cash) to build a welcoming brand that connects with your target audience and showcases who you are and what you do. So don’t shatter that image with a Google form.
You want your clients to have the full experience of working with you, your business, and your brand throughout their entire client journey. With Dubsado you can personalize and brand every form, contract, and email to match your business and your customer experience. You can match your colours, fonts, images, and logo to create a seamless transition from your Dubsado to your other marketing platforms.
Design flexibility to make proposals/forms/etc. work for you
If you’ve been doing this for a while, you already have some forms, questionnaires, and contracts that are a tried and true part of your business process. You know what information you need, what questions to ask, and what items need to be covered.
Dubsado gives you full flexibility to make sure all your documents have every important detail that you know works for you. There are no cookie-cutter templates you’re stuck working with. You have full freedom to customize your content as needed, whether on a form or proposal, to make sure you get all the information you require.
Free trial for up to 3 clients
If you think Dubsado might be a good choice for you but want to make sure it meets your needs, they have a great free trial option. Unlike some other CRM programs that give you a certain amount of time free and then charge, Dubsado gives you full access to the platform for up to 3 clients. This way you can take the time you need to fully integrate your process and branding into the system without running out of time on your trial.
You can see every feature in action and build out your processes while working with real clients. Once you have a need for more than 3 clients, you can upgrade to a paid version and keep all the set-up you’ve already done!
Flexible pricing (starter vs. premier)
Once you’re ready to upgrade, there are two levels of paid membership. I have a whole blog post about choosing the best Dubsado pricing tier, but let’s do a quick overview.
The starter plan is the basic option after the free trial. It has a lot of features and is great for new businesses just getting started. It allows for a TON of automation and will save you so much time on the admin side of things.
The premium plan is twice the price of the starter plan but is still quite affordable at $40 per month. Especially when you look at how powerful the premium features are. The biggest difference is that premium includes the scheduler and workflows. These features make it a great choice for more established businesses looking to fully automate their day-to-day.
Whatever level of automation and support you’re looking for, Dubsado has a plan to fit your needs and let you move your focus from admin to creating.
Automation In All The Right Places To Support Your Creative Business
Now you know what Dubsado can do for you as a creative business owner to free up time and let you focus on your passion. But you may still be wondering how exactly it accomplishes these things. If you’re looking for the nitty-gritty of Dubsado’s automation features, let’s have a look at them in detail and see how they can support you and your business.
Lead Capture
When it comes to gathering leads you likely already have a contact or inquiry form on your website that sends you an email when people fill it out. It’s a fairly standard setup and likely works pretty well.
Dubsado CRM for creatives doesn’t like “pretty well” though. They provide you with the ability to make a customized, branded lead capture form and embed that form on your website. This allows for much more flexibility in terms of look and content than many website platforms offer unless you want to custom-code something.
When a client fills out your form, their answers go directly into your Dubsado dashboard and it creates a client profile for them based on the contact information they provided. No more copying information from your email to a spreadsheet to manage clients. This is one and done.
Templates
There are a lot of forms that go out in the course of working with a client. Proposals, onboarding forms, contracts, invoices, all of these need to go out to clients. With Dubsado, you can save each of these forms as a template to use again and again. Each template can be customized with your branding and information and are ready to go whenever you need them.
While these templates are made once and ready to send anytime, you still have the option to personalize individual forms if you need different information for a specific project. Don’t waste your time manually re-creating the same forms. With Dubsado you make them once and they’re ready when you are.
Workflows
Workflows are the next step in automation. When you set up a workflow, you tell Dubsado to perform a certain action after a different event triggers it. For example, once a client signs your Dubsado contract, you can have the system automatically send out an invoice for that contract. You can then have it automatically send out a “thank you, I can’t wait to get started on your project” email once the invoice has been paid.
Workflows are an extremely powerful tool that basically take the place of a VA for $40 a month. The ability to have actions automatically triggered means nothing will ever be forgotten ever again. How beautiful!
Canned Emails
How often do you copy and paste the same email from your sent folder to a different client and then go in and change the personal information? Every time you send an email with a contract or invoice attached, you write the same information in the body of that email. Dubsado can automate that for you.
You can write emails that accompany different actions, like sending an invoice, and have the client’s personal information automatically filled out by the platform. No having your contact list open in one window while you copy their details over to your email on the other. Just smooth, time-saving automated emails.
client portals
Having access to client portals elevates your client’s experience of working with you. Each client gets their own Dubsado dashboard that can be password protected. Inside, they have access to all the correspondence the two of you have had, including their proposal, contract, invoices, onboarding forms, everything.
The client portals keep both you and your clients organized by having everything in one easy, accessible place.
scheduling
When it comes to booking calls or video chats with clients, Dubsado takes out all the back and forth by giving clients access to your calendar and having them book directly.
There are lots of great features included with the scheduler such as syncing your personal calendar to your Dubsado one so you don’t get booked for work during times you’re unavailable. Or the ability to add a form to an appointment request so you have all the information you need for your call.
Ready to dive in?
Are you ready to give Dubsado a try and take back your administration hours? Amazing! Dubsado has so many great features to start saving you time and streamlining your processes.
If you’re looking for some support in getting your Dubsado set up, I’m here to help! I offer a VIP Day for smaller projects and a VIP week for full Dubsado setups.
Learn more about my VIP Dubsado’s services and how I can streamline your processes and get admin off your plate!
If you’re ready to explore what Dubsado has to offer, use my affiliate code ‘martine30’ for 30% now!
