Top 5 Reasons E-mail Marketing is a Must Have for Every Successful Photography Business
In my own photography business, when I was shooting weddings, email marketing was the one thing that kept my business going, and is the one reason I believe I was able to stay in business longer than my competitors.I actually had gotten it down to a science of where I could send out an email and get a client meeting, and then I would know how to book the brides from the client meeting.
So, email marketing became very strategic in my photography business. So much so that whenever I would advertise in wedding magazines, or do any type of advertising such as bridal shows, I would find out if I would get the email list. And, if they didn't offer a list of the brides that attended, then I wouldn't buy their advertising. It also depended on how many brides they had on their list. If it was a substantial amount then I would sign up, because I knew that all I had to do is send out my emails, and I would be able to get the meetings and book the brides.
So, here are my five reasons.
1) E-mail Marketing Is Highly Targeted. With email marketing, you know exactly who you're sending the email to, and you can see exactly when they open it, who opens it, and how they respond to your message, if they unsubscribe. You can also segment your email list. For example if you're looking to shoot for many different genres of photography you can segment your e-mail list into each type of photography that you shoot. Unless of course it's your monthly newsletter, which is kind of a general what's happening in your studio during that month.
2) It's Measurable. Like I said with the different email marketing tools available to you, you can keep an eye on your campaigns. And, the reason that it's important to track your campaigns is for your ROI. Your return on your investment.
You need to be able to analyze and measure the results. This is one thing I didn't do a lot of back when I was using email marketing for my photography business. I didn't really measure the results. Basically I would know that I could send out X amount of emails, and I would get X amount of inquiries back, and then out of that X amount of meetings, X amount of bookings. It became a numbers game. The more emails I was able to get, the more bookings I could get. Sometimes if I would be kind of running low on bookings during certain seasons, I would just send out special promotions during those times to get more clients through the door.
3) It's Affordable. It's actually one of the most affordable ways to get your message in front of your clients and potential clients. And, according to a website called EmailMonks, "Email has a median return on investment of 122%, which is four times higher than other marketing formats including social media."
4) Stand Out from Your Competitors. Not a lot of photographers are using email marketing at the moment. So, you're really gonna be able to stand out from the crowd. When I first started my photography business, there weren't a lot of photographers using e-mail marketing. And, a lot of the website companies for photographers, they weren't creating website templates that worked well with email marketing. For example it was kind of difficult to find any templates that even had the email sign up available within the template. It was something that you had to have custom coded.
But, now I've noticed a trend in the photography industry, it seems like they're finally realizing that photographers need email marketing, so they're starting to make the websites more email friendly.
5) You Own It. With emails, you own all that information, and we all know like with Facebook, social media profiles, we don't really own those people who follow our social media. Facebook could take it out from under us at any moment. So, that's one reason that email marketing stands apart from the other types of marketing, it's because we own the list. And, that email list is worth a lot, because we can use that list to get more customers through the door.
