Your testimonials are already in your inbox

We needed testimonials for this site. The instinct was to email old clients and ask. That works, but it's slow, and it puts a chore on someone else's plate.

Here's what worked faster: searching what we already had.

The inbox dig

A client wrote us a thank-you email in 2021. Specific, warm, in his own words: better than anything a testimonial request produces, because nobody was performing. Search your email for phrases like "thank you," "love it," and "exactly what." Every genuine compliment a client ever sent you is a testimonial you already own. Just ask their permission to publish it.

The git dig

The second surprise: an old version of our own website had a testimonials section we'd deleted in a redesign years ago. The quotes were still sitting in git history, four real clients deep. If you've ever had praise on a site, a deck, or a proposal, it still exists somewhere. Old repos, old backups, old PDFs.

Why recovered beats requested

A quote someone volunteered years ago carries a different weight than one you asked for last Tuesday. It was spontaneous. It names specifics. And it survived, which says something by itself.

Ask for new testimonials too. But dig first. An hour of archaeology in your own email usually beats a week of waiting for replies.