I don’t know about you, but I’m absolutely DROWNING in emails.
And as someone who runs two businesses, I’m constantly answering the same questions.
And a few years ago, I discovered canned responses and I’ve never looked back. My library of pre-written responses that can be populated in emails or on social with one quick shortcut has been a game-changer for my business.
Which was why I joined forces with Typedesk (the app I use) when we relaunched – you may have seen them on the perks page along with a fab pdf with scripts you can modify for canned responses.
But given we’re all time-poor as freelancers, I wanted to go a bit deeper into how you can use canned responses in your business. So I put some questions to Diana Hlinska from Typedesk, who outlines exactly how you can use it, why you’d want to and what kind of time savings you could claw back to use on other more important things!
RL: What are canned responses or text expanders, for people who aren’t familiar with them?
Diana: A canned response is simply a message you wrote once and saved, so you can drop it in instead of typing it again. Typedesk is the tool that does it for you: you type a short shortcut, like /ref, and it instantly becomes the full refund message. So the canned response is the words, and the text expander is the delivery. Type /rates and your pricing reply instantly appears in any tool you use. And there’s no need to worry that this makes you sound impersonal. A good saved reply has variables that you can adjust. It’s small details, like the name, invoice number, or date, but the core message remains unchanged.
RL: How much time do we typically spend rewriting the same emails, pitches, and responses?
Diana: There isn’t a specific number for how much time we waste retyping, as the data usually tracks total email hours. But we know knowledge workers spend about a quarter of their week, roughly 11 hours, just on emails. From what I see with freelancers, a huge chunk of that is just cycles of the same five or six messages: inquiries, pricing, and follow-ups. That repeated cycle of your day is exactly the part you can actually win back.
RL: What messages do freelancers tend to send repeatedly without realising it?
Diana: The most popular is “Here’s how I work and what I charge” reply. Also, “I’m booked until (month)” note, proposal follow-ups, pitch messages, onboarding details for a new client, and payment reminders. The list can go on and on. Most of these messages can look different, but they’re really slight variations of the same five or six messages every week.
RL: What happens when someone relies on memory or old inbox searches instead of a system?
Diana: You spend time looking for a reply you know you wrote somewhere, then rebuild it from scratch, so its quality changes, and as a result, you sound a little different every time. There are two problems with that. Because you start from zero each time, you never keep and refine one good version, so your replies do not improve. And reusing an old email is exactly how a past client’s name ends up in this client’s message, the kind of small mistake that ruins our reputation. A text expansion tool turns that ten-minute cycle of searching, copy-pasting, and adjusting into a five-second drop-in. Since you’re refining one saved reply rather than rebuilding from memory, it gets better each time you use it.
RL: How can canned responses help freelancers spend less time on admin and more on billable work?
Diana: For a freelancer, admin time is unpaid time, so every repetitive reply comes out of your earning hours or your time. Templates help you to stay consistent and save time. By using templates 10 times a week, you can win back close to an hour, roughly forty hours a year.
RL: What workflow should freelancers use to build a library from scratch?
Diana: Don’t try to create thirty templates at once. It’s not working, and you will just stall, overwhelmed and lost. Here’s how to get started:
- Start by saving your next repeated reply. Anytime you catch yourself writing a message similar to one you’ve sent before, copy and save it in a separate document or your text expander.
- After a few days, review the messages you’ve saved and pick out your top three to five most frequently used replies.
- Give each reply a clear, memorable shortcut, so you can easily find and use them again. For example, use /inq for inquiry, or /prc for pricing.
Once you’ve done these first steps, expand your library by organizing your replies by stage, like inquiry, proposal, follow-up, or wrap-up. Over time, your collection will grow naturally and become a full library you build as you go.
RL: How can you use canned responses for job ads, with niche snippets?
Diana: Keep one core block with your experience and links to your work, then build four or five niche-flavored intros you swap in, and assign a shortcut. The one rule: always rewrite the first line by hand for that specific ad. The body of the message can be saved, but the opening is better to write yourself, or it reads as copy-paste.
RL: Does having pre-written responses help you get the jump on a job, and how much does speed matter?
Diana: It does. A quick, thoughtful reply often gets the conversation started before a client has moved on to someone else. Templates help you respond within minutes without feeling rushed, so you can appear professional and ready to work right from the start.
RL: Can you use them for clients who aren’t a good fit, or to say you’re booked up?
Diana: Definitely, and these are the ones people dread writing, which is exactly why having them ready helps. A warm, clear “This isn’t quite the right fit, but here’s who might be” and a “I’m booked until (month), happy to hold a spot for (date)” save you the drafting and keep the relationship warm for later. The best replies are usually the ones you thought through once, calmly, in advance, instead of writing on the spot when you’re flustered.
RL: What canned responses would you recommend every freelance writer have ready?
Diana: The easiest way to figure out which ones you need is to stop thinking about templates and start thinking about the journey a client takes with you. Build one saved response for each step of that path, and you’ve covered almost everything you type all week.
- The first message, when you get an inquiry: your initial inquiry reply.
- Checking it’s a fit: scope-clarifying questions.
- Booking a call: a discovery call invitation with your booking link.
- Pricing: your pricing or rates reply.
- After the proposal: a proposal follow-up.
- Once you have agreed on terms: a welcome and onboarding message.
- Payment part: an invoice and a payment notice.
- And last but not least: a testimonial request and a referral reply.
RL: For someone getting dozens of inquiries a week, what impact can response templates have?
Diana: Imagine your process. An inquiry comes in, you read it, look through wherever you keep your saved answers, copy the right one, paste it into your reply, and update the details by hand. Fine for one email, but you’re doing dozens a week. It doesn’t feel like much in the moment, but it adds up. A template turns that process into a few seconds. You type a shortcut, the message appears, you update the details that matter, and send. It’s faster and more consistent. And with a text expander like Typedesk, variables can be built in, so you’re much less likely to send an email with a missing name or placeholder.
RL: How can templates help people follow up on leads more consistently without feeling pushy?
Diana: The reason a follow-up feels pushy is almost always the wording, not the act of following up. Write it the way you’d actually speak; be friendly; adjust the tone if you feel something is off; and save your template. The real reason most people skip follow-ups is that writing the nudge feels uncomfortable. So a saved version removes that friction, lets you spend less time overthinking, and actually helps you send it.
RL: If a new freelancer could create just five canned responses today, which five give the biggest return?
Diana: The first inquiry reply, the rates and pricing reply, the proposal follow-up, the discovery call invitation with your booking link, and the “warm” decline. That covers the start, the price, the follow-up, and the “no,” which is most of what freelancers type all week.
RL: What’s the most underrated benefit of having a library of ready-to-use responses?
Diana: Most people think the big win is time saved, but what matters more is consistency. With a library, your reply is always the same, whether you’re full of energy or exhausted, calm or stressed, or just don’t have the inspiration for creating a message that sounds just right. The client never sees any of that behind-the-scenes chaos. They see someone who is quick to reply, reliable, and consistent in how they sound, and reliability is what makes people come back and refer you later on. A library takes all that mental load out of your head, so you can spend your energy on the things that really matter.
RL: How do you keep canned responses feeling personal and not robotic, especially for repeat clients?
Diana: For a brand-new client, it’s simple: add variables to fill in, phrases you use in regular life, and sound like yourself. Repeat clients are a different risk. With someone you’ve worked with before, the main risk is sounding as if you forgot who they are. So for repeat clients, I recommend keeping a lighter version of each template that drops the formal introduction and opens with one real, specific line, something about the last project or how it went, before the saved part kicks in. The body can be templated, but that first line should always be about them. You can also reference recent feedback they’ve given you, mention a goal you’ve discussed together, or follow up on the results of a past project to show you remember their priorities. Even a quick mention of something they shared recently, like a company update or an article they published, goes a long way to making the message feel tailored.
RL: How do you organise and access your canned responses efficiently across different platforms and devices?
Diana: I would split it into two parts: organizing them and firing them. For organizing, name your shortcuts by the moment they belong to, something like /inq for the inquiry reply, /rate for pricing, /fu for the follow-up. For firing them, the nice thing about a tool like Typedesk is that it works natively across the tools you already use, Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, Slack, your CRM, pretty much anywhere you type in your browser. You don’t have to set it up tool by tool. You add the Typedesk browser extension once, and the same shortcuts work everywhere. That’s the difference between a folder of templates you have to find and a library that follows you where you go.
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