Here's a scene that plays out in every agency, every week:
You're ready to start work on a new client project. You just need a few things from them — their logo files, brand guidelines, product photos, and login credentials for their social accounts.
So you send a nice, organized email asking for everything. You even bullet-point the list to make it easy.
Three days later: silence.
You follow up. The client replies: "So sorry, been slammed! I'll get to this today."
Two more days pass. Nothing.
You follow up again, this time with a slightly more urgent tone. The client sends you their logo as a tiny JPEG screenshot from their website and says "still working on the rest."
A week later, you have half the assets you need, in the wrong formats, scattered across four email threads and a Google Drive folder the client forgot to give you access to.
Meanwhile, the project timeline is bleeding. Your designer is sitting idle. And you're spending your time doing admin work instead of the creative work you actually get paid for.
Sound familiar? Let's fix it.
Why clients are terrible at sending you things
First, some empathy. Your clients aren't being difficult on purpose. They're bad at sending you content for the same reasons you'd be bad at sending your accountant organized financial records — it's not their job, they don't do it often, and they don't know exactly what you need or how you need it.
The problem is usually one of three things:
They don't know what you need specifically enough
"Please send brand assets" means different things to different people. To a designer, it means logos in SVG and PNG (light/dark backgrounds), brand colors with hex codes, font files, and usage guidelines. To a client, it means "that logo thing my last designer made."
Vague requests get vague responses. Every time.
They don't have a single place to put things
You asked via email. They started replying to your email, then realized the files were too big, so they uploaded some to Google Drive and texted you the link. Then they remembered you also needed their brand colors, so they sent those in a separate email. Then their business partner had the logo files and forwarded them from yet another email address.
Now the content exists across five channels and three people. Good luck assembling that.
There's no accountability or visibility
The client doesn't know which items they've sent and which are still outstanding. There's no checklist they can reference. There's no progress bar showing "you've completed 4 of 9 items." It's just a loose email thread, and without structure, things fall through the cracks.
The system that actually works
The fix isn't "send better emails" or "be more persistent." The fix is giving the client a structured, frictionless way to submit everything you need — and making it so easy that they actually do it.
Step 1: Create a specific intake questionnaire
Instead of asking for "brand assets" in an email, create a structured form or questionnaire that asks for exactly what you need, in the format you need it.
For example:
- Logo (SVG or PNG, transparent background): [upload field]
- Brand colors (hex codes): [text field]
- Font name or files: [upload or text field]
- Social media login credentials: [secure text field]
- Product photos (minimum 1200px wide): [upload field]
- Existing copy or messaging guidelines: [upload or text field]
This eliminates the "I didn't know what you needed" problem entirely.
In TryApprove, you can build these intake questionnaires directly into your client onboarding flow. The client opens their portal link, sees the questionnaire, fills it out, uploads files — all in one place. No account creation needed.
Step 2: Set a deadline and make it visible
Deadlines work. Not because people are obedient, but because deadlines create urgency and make the task feel finite rather than open-ended.
Include a clear deadline in your intake questionnaire or onboarding flow: "Please complete by [date] so we can start on schedule." Most clients will respect a deadline, especially when it's tied to the project timeline they agreed to.
Step 3: Give them a single destination
One link. One place. Everything they need to submit goes there.
The worst thing you can do is scatter the process: "email the logos, upload the photos to this Drive folder, and fill out this Google Form for the brand colors." Every additional step and tool is another point where the client drops off.
TryApprove's client portal serves as this single destination — the client opens one link and sees everything they need to do: questionnaires to fill out, contracts to sign, files to upload. Everything in one place, no switching between tools.
Step 4: Make uploads painless
Drag and drop. No file size lectures. No "please convert to PDF first."
If you ask a client to do extra work to submit their files (resize images, convert formats, compress videos), they won't. They'll either skip those items or send them in whatever format is easiest, which means you'll do the conversion yourself anyway.
Accept what they give you in the format they have it. Do the conversion on your end if needed. The goal is to get the content, not to train the client to be a production assistant.
Step 5: Send automated reminders
People forget. It's not personal. A gentle reminder 48 hours after the initial request, and another one 24 hours before the deadline, is usually enough to get most clients to complete their submissions.
If you're doing this manually, you're spending 10 minutes per client on follow-up emails. Automated reminders do the same job in zero minutes.
The impact on project timelines
Agencies that switch from email-based content collection to structured intake systems consistently see the same results:
- Content collection time drops from 2 weeks to 3–5 days — because the client knows exactly what to send and has one place to send it
- Back-and-forth emails drop by 70–80% — because the intake form is specific enough that you get the right files in the right formats the first time
- Project kickoff delays decrease dramatically — because you're not waiting around for assets that are trickling in one at a time
For an agency running 5 new projects per month, that's easily 20+ hours saved on content collection alone. Hours you can redirect to billable work, business development, or just going home at a reasonable time.
A real workflow example
Here's how this looks with TryApprove:
- Client signs the contract (through the portal — e-signature built in)
- Client sees the intake questionnaire — specific fields for every asset you need, with upload capabilities
- Client fills it out — at their pace, all in one place, dragging and dropping files
- You get notified when the questionnaire is complete
- Everything is organized in the project — no hunting through emails, no downloading from random Drive links
The client's experience is: "Open link → fill out form → done." That's it. No account creation, no app downloads, no confusion.
Stop being the admin
You didn't start an agency to spend your days chasing clients for logo files. You started it to do great creative work.
The content collection problem is solvable. It just needs structure instead of hope.
Try TryApprove free and set up your first intake questionnaire. Two projects on the free plan, with full onboarding features. Your future self — the one not writing the fourth follow-up email — will thank you.