One of my biggest concerns as a freelance is finding new clients.

I am a solo entrepreneur. If I am not looking for new job opportunities every week, I am in a risky position. 
One day —for a random reason— I can quickly lose all my clients.

Literally that's what happened 2 weeks ago, with something that no one could have predicted: a global world pandemic.

To anticipate this problem, I have a mindmap to remember my sales routine:

Never stop selling (almost half of my time)

These pieces of advice are nice but how can I work on my client's projects and sell my services in the meantime?

Let me introduce you to all my automation protips.

But first, you need to create some accounts on several services.

Let's start with a landing page as an entry point to generate new leads.

We need to create a relevant and impactful speech:

Why? 
Why did you create this service to help customers in their life?

What? 
The product/service you are selling

Call to action 
with something valuable like a free consultation, a pdf with an infographic poster...

On my case, https://davidl.fr have a call to action to https://davidl.fr/onboarding

If someone sends me an email or a request on LinkedIn, I use this template:

Thank you for contacting me. I am working remotely as a freelance developer.

In terms of timeline, I am currently accepting new projects for {current_date + 3 month}.

If you want to keep in contact, I created a small website for our next collaboration.
https://davidl.fr/onboarding

You will be the first informed when I’m available again.

We have a landing page. It's great as a first step.
But we want to collect some data from our leads.

We can use a simple email, but it's not really efficient and scalable if we want to collect our leads information.

They are plenty of solutions available like Typeform, or Google form.

I am using Airtable because I built my custom CRM for all the things related to my freelance.

If you don't know the product, think of Airtable as a spreadsheet on steroïd.

Why did I choose this solution?
Because you can connect a bunch of different API's on it. 

And API means automation, with another tool called Zapier.

But let's focus on building our sales workflow.

After creating a new account, Add a new base and select Start from scratch

Add your first field, you can start by the Budget of your lead.

Protip: Take some time to dig on the existing field's type. 

Here is an example of the schema of my leads database.

We created the database structure in the Step2.

💥 You have instantly a form to collect some data, accessible to an url https://airtable.com/<FORM_ID> 

On my case, I added a good old iframe on my landing page https://davidl.fr/onboarding

All the information about our cold leads are stored in Airtable.

During the week, I am working on my client's projects.
I don't have time to follow if leads have completed the forms.
I need to send them some follow-up emails.
We can do this with Mailchimp.

Protip: If you don't have time to create a Mailchimp account, Zapier has a solution to send outbound emails. The logic remains the same. 

We need a way to connect Airtable and Mailchimp together. 
To achieve this goal, we can use Zapier.

This tool allows us to connect our new leads —coming from Airtable— and sending them emails thought Mailchimp.

Connect your differents account and create a new Zap like this:

Protip: Double Opt-in value should be false (otherwise you can't send them direct email) and you need to add a tag (for multiple newsletters on the same account)

You can copy my zap workflow: Freelancing Sales Funnel with this link.

If everything is correctly setup, the 2 platforms are connected.

When a new lead completes the Airtable form…

You can check the data on Mailchimp > Audience

A landing page with some questions to filter your leads

A platform for sending emails to your audience (identified with the tag lead).

Le'ts do some marketing automation with email nurturing.

I designed this simple automated sales funnel:

Email 1: Introduction with a call to action to a video

Email 2: Follow-up with a link to my calendar

Email 3 (optional if no click on the email 2): Reminder to my calendar.

Open Mailchimp > Brands > Templates and create a new email without any design.

Over the years, I learned that plain emails not only save time but work better.

Just write plain email with simple text. The typography-design-tools allowed are italic or bold.

Protip: Don't forget, 1 email equals 1 call to action.

Once all your templates are ready, you can create you automated sequence of emails.

All my tips for creating your own CRM and scale your activity. Use Airtable as a database, send automated emails with Mailchimp and organise your meetings with Calendly.

Build an automated funnel of new clients with Airtable, Zapier and Mailchimp

⚠️ Projects with Native Code Only: The following section only applies to projects with native code exposed. If you are using the managed expo-cli workflow, see the issue for expo support.


It's Monday and as a developer, you have a new card on your backlog.

Scenario:

As a User,
I can open the mail app,
So that I can continue the password-less onboarding

If you check the documentation you need to use Linking:

The problem with Linking is you need to call a mailto:

I don't want to compose an email. I just want to be able to launch the main email app. If you are familiar with Slack here is a screenshot of their onboarding.

When you push the button, you can select the email app of your choice. In my case, it's between Gmail and the Apple mail app.

I found a solution with the library react-native-email-link. You can open an email client from React Native (for 'magic link' type feature). 

import { openInbox } from 'react-native-email-link'

openInbox()

If you want to try on iOS you need to have a real device because there is no mail.app on iOS Simulator.

This article seams simple. We "just" want to replicate the user onboarding of Slack with a maginc link. In the real world you need to add a third part library.

How to open the email application with React Native

In his guide "how to become a hacker", Eric Steven Raymond said: “No problem should ever have to be solved twice”. 

Since I left university, I am following this advice everyday to become an efficient developer.

One of the most important things —when you are building a mobile application— is your velocity.

Building a mobile app is different than developing a website. You need to be able to test your app quickly on real devices (mainly iOS and Android).  

Today I am going to show you how to automate the deploy of your React Native application built with Expo.

If you have a look at the documentation, the workflow to deploy your code is something like this:

This simple workflow is working but we have some problems.

If you want multiple environments for you application you can use the release channels.

If you want to deploy a new version of your application. From your develop branch you can use

From master you can use a production environment

expo publish --release-channel production

✅ We have a production and a testing environment

With Github actions, you can automate all your software workflows, with world-class CI/CD.

Expo released an official CLI tool for GitHub Actions.

To make it work you need to add theses 4 variables on repository > settings > secrets 

Create 2 files staging.yml and production.yml

// .github/workflows/staging.yml

name: Expo Publish on Staging
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - develop
jobs:
  publish:
    name: Install and publish
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: 12.x
      - uses: expo/expo-github-action@v5
        with:
          expo-version: 3.x
          expo-username: ${{ secrets.EXPO_CLI_USERNAME }}
          expo-password: ${{ secrets.EXPO_CLI_PASSWORD }}
          expo-cache: true
      - run: yarn
      - run: expo publish --release-channel staging

// .github/workflows/production.yml

name: Expo Publish on Production
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
jobs:
  publish:
    name: Install and publish
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: 12.x
      - uses: expo/expo-github-action@v5
        with:
          expo-version: 3.x
          expo-username: ${{ secrets.EXPO_CLI_USERNAME }}
          expo-password: ${{ secrets.EXPO_CLI_PASSWORD }}
          expo-cache: true
      - run: yarn
      - run: expo publish --release-channel production

When you merge on develop you can quickly test your application on real devices without using the expo app.

When you merge on master you deploy your application on production.

Use GitHub actions to avoid manual deploy during the release of your React Native application.

Hi, I’m David

I’m a french freelance designer and developer.
I help companies to ship quality software for happy customers.

Transform your business

I have more than 13 years of experience in building web products. I am traveling around the world to sharpen my skills, meeting mentors in conferences, and use the same tools as theses successful companies:

Build an automated funnel of new clients with Airtable, Zapier and Mailchimp

How to open the email application with React Native

Simple automated deploy workflow for React Native with Expo

My mission

As a designer, my mission is to transform your users into ambassadors of your product. To achieve this goal, we need to deliver a memorable user experience.

I analyze a lot of mobile applications, to understand what makes a successful design in the modern world where everyone has a phone.

11 details

5 details

4 details

10 details

You only have one chance
to make a first impression

Let’s make it an amazing one.

Let’s create something together

Have an interesting web, mobile or design project?

Hi, I’m David

I’m a french freelance designer and developer. I help companies to ship quality software for happy customers.

Transform your business

I have more than 13 years of experience in building web products. I am traveling around the world to sharpen my skills, meeting mentors in conferences, and use the same tools as theses successful companies:

Build an automated funnel of new clients with Airtable, Zapier and Mailchimp

How to open the email application with React Native

Simple automated deploy workflow for React Native with Expo

My mission

As a designer, my mission is to transform your users into ambassadors of your product. To achieve this goal, we need to deliver a memorable user experience.

I analyze a lot of mobile applications, to understand what makes a successful design in the modern world where everyone has a phone.

11 details

5 details

4 details

10 details

You only have one chance to make a first impression

Let’s make it an amazing one.

Let’s create something together

Have an interesting web, mobile or design project?

I’m a french freelance designer and developer.
I help companies to ship quality software for happy customers.

You only have one chance
to make a first impression