The other day on a photographers’ forum, I read a post where one guy wrote that all email marketing is spam. He was pretty adamant about it too. It’s not, and you all should know the difference. Seth Godin has a great post explaining the important difference.
In today’s more difficult market, which are you doing?
By the way, the guy who wrote the post (I’m assuming male) is anonymous and openly admits that he uses free/microstock for his other (non-photo) business. He may call himself a pro, but that is cannibalism. I take all his posts with a grain of salt the size of my fist.
Hi Leslie,
Very important post. I read Seth’s article as well. My question is how does this translate to photo marketing, specifically magazines? My first thought was that if you give someone an immediate out by asking their permission, they’ll take the out rather than another email to sort through.
Thanks,
Evan
Evan:
You are still thinking half-way backwards. You want them to ASK to be on your list, not ask them if they do NOT want to be on your list. For example, all the people on my list have emailed me and asked to be on it–I did not send out anything asking them if they wanted to, they saw the link on my site and signed up. See the difference?
-L
When I’m out there on the prospecting trail, I meet a lot of people who say “not yet.” Which means that there may be an opportunity to make a sale down the road. So, I ask them if they’d like to be on my studio’s e-mailing list. If they say yes, on to the list they go. If they’re not interested in being on the list, I don’t give up on them. Instead, I ask if I could stay in touch. Quite often, the answer is yes, and so they go on my “sporadic e-mails” list.