Email marketing for photographers is an additional business marketing tool that, if you know how to use, can help increase revenue in any campaign you organize.
If you use it correctly, an email marketing plan can definitely boost your audience even better than Social Media such as Instagram, Facebook etc.
Whether you work in your photography studio on several assignments or have a single specialty, this marketing method will help you keep your subscribers informed of all the news and offers you can bring to the market.
This strategy is in fact widely used in blogs and e-commerce platforms, precisely because of the extraordinary results it can generate.
In this article, we’ll explore 5 steps to follow to create a strong photography email marketing strategy.
1. Plan your email marketing strategy
One of the first things to do in your email marketing campaigns, in order for your newsletter to do its job (build the trust of your readers and gradually get more photo shoots), is to draw up a planning calendar with the topic and date of your most important emails.
The first thing to do is to plan out most of your emails. This way, each month you will have a clear idea of the emails your subscribers will receive. To this end, the ideal is to spend some time planning:
- Email Frequency: The first thing to decide is how often you want to send an email to your subscribers. The ideal is to get to that intermediate point where readers don’t feel that you are invading their inbox and do not forget that they subscribed to your list.
- Topics: once you have decided on the frequency of mailings, you can divide them into themes and decide which topics will be covered in each of them.
- Scheduling: As part of this planning, it is also important to organize the time you spend writing and sending these emails to your subscribers. This way, you will ensure that when the time comes, you will have free time to do these tasks.
- Different subscriber lists: as we said at the beginning, if you offer different photo shoots with different ideal client profiles, would be ideal to create several subscriber lists. This way, you will ensure that the emails you send are more targeted and that the open rate is higher.
2. Offer your subscribers something useful
Another marketing technique closely related to sending emails is to offer a good gift for visitors to decide to leave their contact details (name and email) and subscribe to your newsletter.
This information, which may seem unimportant at first glance, is a basic information in order to create a relationship with your reader. With these two simple pieces of information (e-mail and name) you can reach hundreds of people at the same time with the same e-mail.
So, in order for your subscriber list to grow a little more every day, it is important to spend some time deciding what gift to offer them in return.
Here are some ideas:
- A 10% discount voucher for your next photo shoot.
- A printed photo.
At this point, it is interesting to explain to your subscribers that, from time to time, you can launch some kind of exclusive discount, just for them, and that you will send it to them through this channel. This is a good mailing strategy for photographers so they don’t unsubscribe as soon as they receive the gift.
3. Avoid the Spam Folder
When you start writing an email to your subscriber list, keep in mind a number of preliminary considerations to avoid big email platforms like Hotmail or Gmail sending your email directly to the spam folder.
Studies show that the more photos and links in an email, the more likely it is to end up in the dreaded spam folder.
But it is also true that a text-only email can be much less appealing to readers. It is therefore important to find a good combination of text, photos and external links. The idea is that, on one hand, it doesn’t end up in an advertising mailbox and, on the other hand, it is interesting for your subscribers to read.
4. Pay attention to the object of the email
Another element that you will need to take care of in your email marketing campaigns for photographers is the subject of your emails. Here are some recommendations you can follow:
Specific: The subject line should clearly state the subject of the email.
Concise: try not to be too long, between 20 and 30 characters is best.
Emoticons: without abusing them, they will be a good element to attract attention.
Questions and numbers: these elements will make the subject of your headline much more captivating.
5. Use email segmentation
Especially if you offer different types of photography services, learning how to segment is essential to skyrocketing your email open rate (the percentage of emails that are opened by your subscribers).
“Divide and conquer”, so the more specific you are when you send your emails, the more likely your subscribers are to open them. But above all, they will read them, which is our main goal.
For this reason it is important to create as many subscriber lists as your ideal customers. This way, you will be able to decide, for each email sent, whether it is interesting to send it to your entire list or to a small part of your followers.
Conclusion
Email marketing is therefore a very powerful and interesting strategy, which will allow you to increase your customers and build trust in your brand.
In 2024, there’s no more excuse not to use this tool, especially if you’re into photography!
Most of the tools on the market have also a free program that you can use to start from scratch or a free trial to test its features.
