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Ask HN: How do you send proposals to your clients?

by OnlyMateo on 4/13/23, 1:58 PM with 6 comments

In our advertising agency we send a lot of proposals to our clients. It's well designed and personal. Usually the proposal consists of two parts: the presentation (with logic of service, about agency, cases and etc slides) and the media plan (with channels, budgets, results and etc).

We send proposals just in email and don't know about what happen with it. Did the client open and read (and which parts) it? Did the client like it? All of this are hidden.

And I don't like the way itself with sending tons of files in emails, downloading them and forwarding them further.

May be your know some the best way to send proposals and communicate with clients? Please write it :)

  • by amriksohata on 4/13/23, 4:16 PM

    Some of the best proposals are targeted, short presentations (live) that clients can ask customers. Send out a link for a zoom call using paid, targeted advertising to reach people, then get that focused number on a call. Nothing beats people investment imo.

  • by ano-ther on 4/13/23, 4:13 PM

    It sounds like a decent way of doing it.

    As a buyer of advertising services, I need your support in helping my stakeholders (approvers, internal customer, procurement, legal etc) understand why we should hire you.

    Their workflow is usually based on MS Office + PDFs. I would go nuts if every agency came with their own customer portal that I (and everyone else) needs to logon to.

    If you want to know what people value / read in your proposals, I would set up a call or better a in-person meeting with them, even if you lost.

    Creative theft is of course always a risk, but I don’t see a technological solution for that.