As a photographer, one of the best ways to connect with your audience and build a rapport is through email. Email allows you to share your work, news, exclusive content with your subscribers, and cultivate a relationship with them over time. Also, maybe it’s just me but I really don’t think it’s a good idea to rely solely on social media as a marketing tool for your business. I can write an entire blog post on the reasons why you should be using email marketing but this baby is all about how to start and build your email list. In this blog post, we’ll give you four simple steps to building your email list.
Create a sign-up form.
You want to use an email marketing platform that is easy to use, beautiful, and creates an experience that you will want to get back into regularly. We suggest using Flodesk for all those reasons and more! You will need to create a sign-up form that you can then embed on your website. Flodesk makes these forms SO easy to create. Include the sign-up form on every page of your site in some form or another whether it is on your footer, above the fold, blog side bar, as a simple space to include email and name or as a freebie opt in.
Create compelling content
You will want to entice people to sign up for your email list. This could be in the form of a weekly newsletter, exclusive discounts, or behind-the-scenes. One of our favourite ways to entice people to join our list is by creating valuable blogs and bits of information that serve you- our community. We make sure to send this content out to our newsletter list so rather than them just keeping a close eye on our blog, they can be notified every time we create serving content for them by doing what they already do- checking their email! Make sure that the content you’re offering is valuable and interesting enough that people will want to receive it in their inboxes every week.
Promote your email list everywhere you can think of.
Add a link to your sign-up form in your email signature, on social media, for sure on Pinterest and in any other places where people might see it. The more places you promote your email list, the more likely people are to sign up for it.. which seems like a no brainer but consider thinking of a customers journey and all the places they might go to check you out while researching different photographers- you want to make sure you’re email list is visible in at 7 places which sounds like overkill but that is how many times it takes for people to actually action sometimes.
Offer an incentive
People LOVE free stuff! Give them a little thank you incentive for signing up for your email list. Often called a freebie or lead magnet– these free bits of valuable content are a GOLD mine for subscribers. Similar to creating compelling content, you want to provide something extremely valuable for them that they will want to give their email address in exchange for.
Learning who your community is and what it is they are struggling with is key to a successful freebie. If you aren’t sure what type of content your audience wants from you, one tip that I have is simply to pay attention to the questions you get asked, look for the comments and listen to the conversations. What is routinely coming up? Are your clients struggling with wardrobe ideas? Put together a few different ideas for them such a style guide that they would be so grateful for! Other options are discount codes, exclusive access to top secret content, first dibs at sessions etc.
Lastly follow up with your new subscribers after they’ve signed up for your email list. Stalk them, shower them with attention and love. Send them a welcome message thanking them for subscribing, and give them some information about what they can expect to receive from you in the future. stay top of mind with your audience and this will help to build a strong long term connection with them!
Building an email list is one of the best ways to connect with your audience as a photographer. Do you have an email list? If not, what is holding you back?
