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Content Marketing for Photographers

Lesson 32 of 51

How to Launch an Email Campaign


Content Marketing for Photographers

Lesson 32 of 51

How to Launch an Email Campaign


Lesson Info

How to Launch an Email Campaign

and so let's not talk about the different things you khun dio when you're launching email camera and some ideas we have inside of those email campaigns two number one know what your audience is interested in at this point you know them very very well you have been with him through the entire process you know everything about them you heard jason just going to all these details about the things he knows his clients love they love fly fishing they love local colorado beer they love being the outdoors they love mountain biking he could go on and on and on he knows his client very well and I'm sure that you guys at this point is you're starting to get a picture for your authentic unique audience that small segment not the big broad scope but the small segment of the things that make your audience unique the things that make your voice stand out as you focus on those things you know what they want we also know what they want just from the lifecycle stage there in milestones that they have c...

oming up these are great easy things to start chipping away at if you're having a hard time still with kind of learning the nuances of your target market start with the milestones that come right after the lifecycle event that left them as a customer you know let's look at the wedding photography is an example but we could apply this all across the board in the landscape photography has been a big theme we could talk about that too but I'll use the wedding photography example because that's what I know best after you're done getting married what's next purchasing a home starting a family pain taxes together finances how to balance a budget one checking account or to checking accounts cooking it just goes on and on or not now we gotta cook together now we have to I mean they're just it goes on and on and on traveling romantic travel spots instead of fun exhilarating travel spots maybe fun exhilarating travel spots all the things that you do once you get married visiting family whose family to go to at the holidays do you split time do you set up often on schedule I mean there are so many things that milestones meaning things that you know are going to come up no matter how segmented no matter how specific target audiences things you know that are going to come up so know what your audience is interested in that's to part you can know what your audience is interested in and what in the audience that is in that position of life is interested in so you can get started by taking the easy ones and then as you learn more about your target market as you learn to speak to them authentically then you can get more focused and it's about making sure you deliver the right content to them you know way published that block post earlier on the facebook page we built the top five posing tips and that was based off of roberto valenzuela's opposing webinar it she got it so if I were gonna email everybody that signed up and came and watched roberta's weapon art she got at it what I wouldn't do is start saying them tips on theo because even though I know that wedding photographers are interested in seo and I know that wedding photographers are also interested in posing I want to send them things that naturally come with posing I might send them more tips on posey more additional tips like that block post we did I might send them things like lighting because lighting imposing are very similar but I wouldn't go from posing which is a camera oriented photography oriented photography expertise into seo which is a really nitty gritty business expertise and so know your audience learn what you can about them at this point for you guys you know a lot about them but if you're still working on to find your target audience like we talked about yesterday you can even take the easy milestones that are more lifecycle event number two always represent you and your authentic brand so we've already talked a little bit about this but take every opportunity use your voice don't type it like some corporation type but I love it when at this point in the game they know that it's you and your wife they know that it's you and your husband you know it's just you and yet your emails come out them as we hear it's such and such studios like come on like talk to them they're real people you don't have to keep up any appearances now you're what I want with them use your personality find ways to infuse your personality were talking about how you can really infuse your personalities think that these are just opportunities to continue to share the things that make you unique and attractive don't make that email short sweet to the point so much so that you don't get the opportunity to share your personality make that email something that showcases your personality I think he has a sense of this we will flush out we will flesh out the details tomorrow about how to come with an email strategy for you but I think it's important to note that you want to sit down and come up with these topics in advance you don't just want to try to say I'm going to send an email every month and then every month have to sit down and go what am I going to talk about this month it's gotta be part of a bigger strategy you can't just kind of go into this you know halfway not when he's wrong we're here in the year you can't have way into this because it's going to fall apart for you the email is kind of just like the social media is to your block post your email is a way to keep in contact with all of your past customers and continue to re engage them but if you don't have something behind the email on event you're sharing about ah block post designed for them that you're sharing with them if you don't have something behind the email then it's gonna fall flat and so just like you can't just go on facebook without having something to share a photo to share a story to share a blockbuster share you have to use facebook to share the stuff you've already created you can't really have email unless you have content to share with them in that email so that's why it's important that just like we did when we talked about social media you had to use content you've already created to share on facebook instagram pinterest you have tohave content developed in email now prior to getting the email ready to go to share with them that really is a hole in their segment of content that you should create I would argue that if anything though that this is the most valuable phase to be interacting with people these people are already in love with you they are your true believers there the people that have given the wings will go out and fly and sore and spread your message to everybody so I would argue that we spend all this time talking about hey get that bog puts the hotel del coronado in front of forty four hundred engaged people hey continue to find ways to re engage these people that you've already worked with and already are in love with you and probably know people just like just like them okay so going back to using and representing your authentic brand you know we could go back to bed again if your photography shoots brides tattooed brides on the beach you know find opportunities to talk in terms of that language find opportunities to talk in terms of beach things you know you can talk about how you went to the beach over the weekend you can't talk about the eggs you had that morning for breakfast it doesn't relate to them um you know I think that's important also to look at just making sure that your personality is infusing every thing that you do you want to see that personality fleshed out emails a great place to do it caitlin our marketing corny and she got it she sent an email out last fall we were in boston at a conference and she had never had a peppermint now what is it yeah no no the pumpkin spice latte and so she got a pumpkin spice latte take his boston it was the fall and so she got when she loved or whatever but she mentioned it in her next email that went out you know ah lot of people she does email list and she mentioned in the first paragraph I mean here we are some big you know kind of company but yet katlin the very first email said hey guys how are you doing you know I want to produce I think she's announcing our next set of webinars for for for all of our all of our photographers and she was like hey you know how you're doing it's fall it's that time of year the chilis in there I was just in boston and I had my first ever pumpkin spice lattes a I can't believe I'm this age and this is the first time I've ever had one of these it was really good it got me in the fall spirit she got so many comments from people about how oh my gosh that was your first pumpkin spice lattes a I love them all this stuff how silly but something as small as a pumpkin spice latte reference can create all this engagement and all this interaction infusing your personality engages people and engages your customers they want that personality they get e mails from corporations all day save that for the big corporate dogs like sales force and hub spotting all those people you want to make sure that you engage people with your personality uh it's just so important so valuable number three continuously nurture to the next phase so what what's that next phase if you're using email at the other phases you're going to want to continuously nurture people in the phase that they're in always be thinking about what that next phases and making sure that you understand that in your e mails so the next phase and the reason that you're keeping in touch with them is that you really want to empower them to share your message with all of their friends and their family and remember you are allowed to remind them about that once in a while authentically and genuinely now don't get me wrong we've all we've all I love it it's like the insurance example where you meet with an insurance agent then he slides you piece paper he's like now if you have found my sources valuable I would really appreciate if you could write down ten of your friends and their e mail addresses so that I can provide the same valuable services to them and I'm like I want a crumpled piece paper just throw it right at them and say have you ever heard of content marketing that is not what we were trying to do when I am going to do though is you want to stay engaged and continuously remind people about what you're currently also doing for active current brides and grooms or whatever segment you fulfilled you want to continue remind them that man we're going to fall and we're porter for dollars this is the time that we're shooting a lot boy oh boy we're getting really excited to shoot a lot this has fallen a cz you remember because that was when you got your portrait session again a good segment they're people that book portrait sessions in the fall people that book portrait sessions in the spring talking them differently but you could send out an email that people in the fall that talks about you know this is a busy time on dh you know maybe sharing content about how tio what to do now that you have your family portrait sessions taking care of what a great ways to share them this year with your family after you've already shared them last year additional ideas to share reese to share the family portrait images after they've already gone through the phase but you're also reminding them in that email that this is an active time this is when you're shooting a lot and you're reinforcing what it is that you really want them to do you would like them to tell their friends about who you are and what you do remember what a true believer does a true believer is I know this amazing person his name is rust andy's and oh by the way happens to be a creative live host you know it's amazing that you but you know that's the best kind of referral is when they can say I know byron wrote he's an amazing person man we we went on this twenty mile hike together that kid just never stops he just never stops going he is an adventure oh he's like a great photographer though if you think that's what he does for a living if you need a photographer he's fantastic at it and you want to find ways to infuse what it is you do which is photography so they have that message to go run up because what they're going to run with they're going to talk about is all that actually all that activity all that adventure but if you have to also remind them that you're a photographer and you work with other people who are adventurous just like they were with you and so you want your email to come packed with those kinds of tips number four let's talk about monitor results and adjust accordingly so email is one of the places one of few places where we can actually monitor all this stuff we can actually get numbers again way share something on facebook and you know we're going to go through tomorrow a little bit how to see the insights but it's a little bit harder to monitor it on facebook we certainly are bloggers harder we have to understand google analytics I love when you know something we'll get shared what we'll do a vlog sorry facebook post on shoot dot ed it and it'll be like you know you look at the metrics on facebook couple days later and say this facebook post is shared seventeen times and I'm like oh that's great click on it to see who shared it shows me three people it says the rest have been filtered due to privacy settings and I'm like well that's great three of the seventeen people that share that with email you get tau understand everything about it all pretty much all e mails software like a mad mimi or whatever it is you want to use it will share all these things like your open rate you'll share your click rate I'll tell you what links there clicking on it will tell you what they're interacting with it I'll tell you if they share that email on facebook it's kind of provider is valuable infancy wanna lean in spend time understanding the numbers if you send out an email and only five percent of people open it that's not a good sign you don't want to send out that type of an email anymore you want your open rates to be anywhere from industry standard across a target market that that that expects emails from you and that has kind of opted in is between twenty and thirty percent generally speaking your should be a lot higher you're still a higher because they know you they understand you want to see open rates over fifty percent you're getting open rates under fifty percent with such a segmented target market like you have then you want to change out what you're doing you want to make updates click through rate should also be pretty high it should probably be anywhere from thirty to forty percent that's just industry standard for click through races about between ten and twenty percent on a new opt in targeted list if you talk to like email that say like state of brothers would send out I mean they're open rates going be like six percent there click through rate will be like point three percent we're not talking about those big kind of brands we're talking about more of a smaller brand like ours and so you want to know that if your click through rate is pretty low then you're not provided invaluable content what a great I mean I wish I could post a block post and just find out quickly it mattered anybody but with an email you could send often email and learn from it and that you have to have the mindset of always learning never think that you've arrived and figured it out you've never really arrived on it what are things you can do to continually learn and continually grow and what you're really doing is it's not about getting that email get clicked ten percent more I mean yeah that's nice what you're really doing is learning about what matters to these people you know maybe you thought that maybe jarod's just maybe I'm an idiot I don't know maybe people could care less about having a night focused on a real estate agent maybe only three of one hundred fifty billion female will click on it that's valuable information but you will also learn is what kind of content people lean into and get excited about there's a whole host of ideas for how to create content and then use email to share that content especially at that post customer phase and I want him just make sure encourage even though we've been using those examples from the wedding photography space there's really every personal service business has this opportunity teo use email to continually interact and engage people even after they've purchased your product even after they've left you and the reason why is because that is your target market that's already in love with you and you want to continue to give them the reasons they they need to continually share and continually talk and continually promote you and you also want to give you the reasons to continually see that you are a believer in the love your customer mentality in the idea that give give give and then eventually that giving will create reciprocity and when it comes it's not really up to you that's not the model the model is about producing things that add value producing things itself problems and you know that if you can solve people's problems if you can add value their lives it's going to come back and pay you off tenfold that's the whole idea behind do what you love and you'll never work a day of your life if you really are focusing on giving and that's why I talked about the beginning member I talked about in marking this new style of marketing you've got to be a giver if you're not a giver this isn't gonna work all of this falls apart if you're just a taker in life the takers have been have been I have been doing very well over the last couple of decades but the tide has turned to where givers marketing nowadays is about giving and it's about being a giver and really is I want to encourage you to think in terms of being a giver on dh really it's hard to do this marketing is hard I'm kind of kind of wrapped up with this here but marketing is hard to do every day because it's it's not the thing that is not the screaming baby in the room there's so many other things that are vying for our attention that have to get done today and marketing is the easiest thing to put off now inside of marketing this phase the post customer face is the easiest phase of marketing to put off and yet like I said it's potentially the most valuable phase to invest in just the same as you are goingto slowly disappears a business if you continue to spend all your time editing and you continue to spend all your time doing your bookkeeping and you continue to spend all of your time on things that don't grow your business and don't produce profit and put off all that marketing instead of doing while you're doing all the other things just the same as you will slowly disappear if you ignore this section inside of your marketing because it's it's not the most fun it's not the one that produces the most short term results you're going to slice off a massive portion of benefit that you could add to your business reengaging with your past customers is just the easiest way to continue to create that referral chain and referrals are the lifeblood of a small business so spend the time and make sure you are keenly aware of how your re engaging continue to stay top of mind for all these different people that have been your past customers really quickly if you want to go join and see how she died that doesn't mean you're gonna welcome to you don't have to you know it's just something I know a lot of you like to follow along with yu could do that by just going to shoot down at its last stand forum that's just how to get in on our email list on dh you can see how we do it how we really try to balance not overwhelming your inbox and howto not overwhelm you and respect your inbox and whatnot aunt also we haven't talked about a while for those just joining us this is the shoot that this is a guy that she'd done it is published as a supplement to this course for you guys you could get it shoot got it dot com slash marketing we already talked a lot about that guide for those who have grabbed at this point you can kind of uses a follow along it's got a lot of additional tips and tricks from other photographers that air using this idea of content marketing before we get to wrapping up today and talking about homework in time what tomorrow looks like I do want to make sure we take some time for questions so I saw a couple hands go up here in the audience byron I saw yours yeah so obviously the best scenario would be to do this uh soon after you know you deliver their album in terms of the wedding photographer I mean you're pretty quick to keep thie dialog up right but what about for those people that haven't done that you know it's been a year or two you still really you know like these people maybe you've seen my facebook but you didn't do that would you do the same process yeah I think we just you know just the same as a ziff you know think about it in terms of a long lost friend versus a friend that you have a really good acquaintance with you just haven't seen in a while so I have some friends I've been really busy the last couple months I haven't seen them in a while but it's not like I haven't seen them in years its friends that I haven't seen in a couple of months and getting back and touches them would be a pretty would be pretty easy I just shooed him off attacks that say hey man haven't seen awhile way should get together and grab a beer at some point that would be high might go about seeing a friend I haven't seen a couple of months friend I haven't seen it maybe five to six months you know maybe I would actually try toe you know give him a phone call not just reading a text I might call them and and spend five or ten minutes catching up with them and maybe say I'm sorry man I totally lost touching that you called me a couple times I want to call you how how's life going you know with friendships that I haven't seen in years you know I think I have a friend in chicago uh I haven't seen in years and I might be in chicago in a couple of weeks and so I think I called him up it's not a simple just shooting that text haven't seen in a couple years I can't just fire for texas say hey buddy you wanna grab a drink really quick come to be in chicago I need to actually like kind of learn what's going on his life spent little time reconnecting with what's going on his life before I pick up the phone and call him I'll have to call him hopefully stop this number if I don't have to do a little homework so I'm certain I think about in terms of that you have to approach it differently if you're going to start again and re engage people re engage people from a couple of years ago a little bit differently than you would engaging people that just you know maybe a couple months ago was the last interaction you had with him yeah we have barbara we're talking about I mean for the landscape for the family photographer the wedding photographer we're talking thirty fifty customers a year you know put three years of those together are we using um constant contact or chimp monkey or I mean what are we using for that tool to distribute yeah yeah okay of those work great but when I brought up was mad when I have no affiliation with mad mimi I just I've used but I like him male chimp constant contact eye contact and the list goes on and on and I had never heard of that I mean when you referred there I was like yeah very much exactly like all the ones yeah yeah yeah and I think that that's I see a few different questions coming about specifically how to do things and we just can't go into all of them this is one segment of our course so if you're looking for more information you can go to creative life dot com such suggest and let us know that that's something that you want to learn is very very specifically how to use those so this software there's a couple things I will say quickly I will recommend that maybe because their customer service is fantastic they have a lot of tutorials they do content marketing very well save a lot of tutorials about how to get started on those sorts of things that's that's part of why I recommend and they are free service up tio a decent number of email address is like a lot second thing is you guys have a course in creative live that I've actually watched by a friend of mine named jeff coins it's all about email and how to use email marketing I have recommended I think it's a two day course and I've seen it it's in its entirety and since then become friends with jeff simply because of its so good that's perfect yeah thank you for that all right let's ask a couple questions here and then we'll wrap up today we had one from sarah v and wonderful idea that's a little bit curious what about customers that get divorced how did you track of that for wedding photographers or family photographers or other people who it is all about the relationship in the images you don't want to send out an email and then have them right back uh yeah I don't like that person anymore yep it's tough I don't think it's a reason not to engage them I think that once you do engage them you obviously at that point oughta move them into a different bucket of interaction I'm not sure it's something you want to continuously interact with that's up to you but I don't think it's a reason not to engage them you shouldn't assume the worst in the way you're building out your content plan it does happen it's a natural byproduct of it it's a it's a real bummer andi something to be sensitive about especially in the in your e mails you need to make sure that you're not saying something that would offend somebody like that so understand that's always a possibility for everyone you're e mailing but but still continue to carry on and engage people assuming that it's gonna work out just great more quick ones something just says what if you're sending out e mails and not getting responses just send email out past clients about a mini session I'm having in hopes they or someone they might know might be interested and nobody responded yeah I would say you haven't engaged that group of people enough to where they see value in what you're doing and that was the thing we usedto because we didn't do this obama photographers I didn't actually actively investing these people I would just blast him once a year with some albums special so I go everyone didn't order now let me just blast him and hurt for me a year didn't know who I wass they didn't mean it's like who is this oh it's just some sick I don't know who they are and I'm not saying that's what she's doing but I'm saying that's what I did and I did it terribly I didn't establish a relationship give give give before you ever ask your asking in that email there's nothing wrong with asking like jason said every once in a while you can ask you can say I'm gonna many sessions but like jason said you cannot do that until you've given and given and given and given and given to them and show that there's trust and value I would think that there's probably just not enough trust there and that's why there isn't the response that she's looking for perfect on then less question here before you wrap up levina creations one of the person wanna know so if you've neglected your email list of old clients how do you approach restarting yeah I think it's a great I would argue you just go out and you say hey guys we have neglected this this is I'm so sorry I don't know what happened to me I got buried in work I I have lost sight of my favorite people that I've gotten to know through my business and I apologize for that and I would like to invite you teo I'd like to invite you if you're okay with it for me tio start reengaging you we realized that you know and this is I hope it's the truth it's not supposed to be rhetoric but if you do believe that you know hey these you are our best clients you are exactly the type of clients we love to shoot we have realized that we were I want to focus our efforts on our authentic brand that we want to focus our efforts on people who are a part of that perfect group and you were part of that and I've realized that I've completely lost touch with you and so let me start off by apologizing and let me start off by reengaging you and tell you a little about what's going on with us right now and then start giving to them start giving them get them together the people that respond ask him to email you back and say I'm elin two thumbs up I want to keep engaging maybe every the emails you back put together a cocktail hour put together a coffee saturday morning coffee session get back together with them if you have to go back in your act some one on one that might be the best place to start with a lot of people that you've lost touch with I like doing that just saying hey because I haven't been doing my job eso I'm gonna give you the option if you don't want to be on this list great no problem let me know we'll get rid of it will be done yeah and then keep going that's fantastic and I think that's a great way to end it because that's you know something that I think a lot of people who have been doing things wrong might need to do that yeah it's a true fact way don't all do things right which is why we exist and you know even a big company like hub spot who you can tell I really follow a lot of house spot even recommends to these big business is way bigger than us here than shoot dot it these big businesses they talk about hey if if you have people in your e mail list that haven't opened when your emails in like six months go to them and say hey we've noticed that you don't really care about what we're saying can we just take you off our list or has there been a mistake is there something we could be doing differently I mean that is truly what is about now is it is not about talking about delivering the wrong message to the wrong person at the wrong time is going to get nobody and where and so it might not even be the wrong person with your past client but is about respecting their inbox respecting that relationship and for them that might not be the best time for them right now all right let's let's preview tomorrow what we doing yes so let's talk about tomorrow so again wait up on the screen we'll bring it back up on the screen here in a second we've gone through the three phases of what we're doing and we're really trying to build this authentic brand message use content deliver that message and then set up a system to where you're shooting in your marketing and you have planned systems for that and you're not focusing all of your energies and all the other stuff that does not bring you profit we call that attract nurture prophet we've talked about attract yesterday I can't believe that we're done with nurture and tomorrow is all about how to profit so what we're gonna be doing tomorrow is building out all these systems of marketing system a marketing plan there are different and a business system the first thing we're going to do though is this we are going to spend our time we're gonna spend our time going over some homework that I have for you guys so there's for thee in studio audience the morning session is going to be really focused on really reviewing some of the things that we put in a place yesterday and today and flushing that l a there's been a lot of questions online especially today there's been a lot of interact today and so tomorrow first thing in the morning we're going to go through the results from our facebook page that we built this morning we've since added a couple other things inside of there caitlin has gone through and added a couple of the things that we have some accurate results to evaluate tomorrow and look at and we'll see what we look at we'll see what we see we're going tow understand how to use those for your business and we're going to flesh out a little bit more of the details that we didn't have time to talk about about facebook today now that we have some results to look at second thing we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about guides and this is where your homework comes in so each person in studio here I want you guys to go home tonight I want you guys to put together a many guide and I want you guys to do all the design all the links all that stuff but I want you guys to do though is take a topic that you know will solve a pain point for someone for a customer of yours and right out roughly speaking seventeen fifty two a thousand words seven fifty thousand words it doesn't have to be perfectly proofed it isn't I would recommend that you spell check it though I think people around here a little sense of that but what I do want to dio is take a faint point of specific fame point and write a little mini guide so write out of many guide and bring it back tomorrow and tomorrow morning we're going to go through and we're going to talk about these many guys that we've created we're going to critique um we're going to celebrate him we're gonna learn from him and in the rest of day is going to be spent all on building out that system so that everybody can walk away from here not feeling like oh my goodness how like it was done but having a plan to put in a practice for your business that gets you shooting and gets you marketing and get you focused on how to do all these things in a given week and still let your business grow and succeed

Class Description



You’ll learn how to:

  • Accurately identify your ideal client 
  • Set up a marketing strategy to attract them 
  • Use Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram to build your business 
  • Maximize SEO opportunities on your website and blog 
  • Nurture connections through email marketing 



  1. Introduction to Marketing, Old vs. New Models
  2. Companies Doing Content Marketing Right
  3. Defining Content Marketing


  4. Areas of Content for Photographers
  5. Laws of Content Marketing
  6. Phases of Content Marketing
  7. The Evergreen Nature of Content
  8. The Client Referral Ladder
  9. Building an Authentic Message
  10. Content Marketing and Your Website
  11. Creating a Blogging Strategy
  12. Image Naming for SEO
  13. Building Successful Blog Content
  14. Blog Post Ideas for Content Marketing
  15. Business Recipe and Recap
  1. Marketing with Facebook: Setup
  2. Marketing with Facebook: Posting
  3. Marketing with Facebook: Boosting and Advertising
  4. Creating a Facebook Fan Page Demo
  5. Building Guides for Content Marketing
  6. Building the Content for Guides
  7. Guide Creation Outline and Steps
  8. Steps For Releasing a Guide
  9. Why use Instagram and Pinterest for Marketing
  10. Marketing and Instagram for Photographers
  11. Using Hashtags on Instagram for Photographers
  12. Common Instagram Mistakes
  13. Marketing on Pinterest for Photographers
  14. Marketing on Pinterest Q&A
  15. Using Email for Content Marketing
  16. Tips for Email Marketing
  17. How to Launch an Email Campaign
  1. Business Recipe Recap
  2. Guide Critique: Newborns and Wedding Planning
  3. Guide Critique: Better Pictures and Family Photography
  4. Guide Critique: Adventure Wedding
  5. Analyzing Facebook Results
  6. Steps For Creating a Marketing Plan
  7. Marketing Plan for Every Shoot
  8. Marketing Plan: Weekly
  9. Marketing Plan: Monthly
  10. Marketing Plan: Yearly and Quarterly
  11. Tools to Use to Execute Your Marketing Plan
  12. Using Systems to Make Time For Marketing
  13. The 90/10 Model for Making Time for Marketing
  14. Client Communications
  15. Marketing Systems Q&A
  16. The 90/10 Model for Efficient Photography
  17. The 90/10 Model for Efficient Content and Shortcuts
  18. The 90/10 Model Q&A
  19. Final Business Recipe Recap


Linda Jullyan




a Creativelive Student
