In February, Francisco Lucas and Gualter Moreira joined the Client Outreach department. Collectively, the Client Outreach team added 358 companies and 631 people to our database, updated 1386 companies and 1562 people, and sent out over 554 custom emails to producers, creative directors, marketing managers, and photo editors around the world.
This month, I worked in our Parent Companies outreach role. We evaluate parent companies and their “children” because there are a lot of large companies with multiple locations and other companies owned by them. This research often leads to valuable prospects and a better understanding of the organization within that Brand, Agency, or Publication. Later in the month, I attended calls with an executive producer from The Bloc, an agency in New York. I also spoke with a production company in Austin, TX to share our capabilities and discuss how we can work together on future photo/video projects.
My focus in February was on updating People (Brands) in our database, which was similar to my role the previous month when I was updating People (Agencies). As always, I ended up adding a few new companies as well, after coming across people who were no longer working for the company to which we had them linked. My job was to link individuals to an already existing company in our database or, if their new company is worthwhile, to add it to our database and website. As always, it’s important to be thinking about which photographers could potentially fit the company we are updating.
My Client Outreach role last month was working on Brand People, focusing on those with the Star keyword, Marketing job titles, Producers, and/or those in production positions. Additionally, Nicole Poulin and I had a capabilities call with Aetheris Advertising, a digital marketing agency in New Jersey. Bill Cramer, Nicole, and I also had a capabilities call with Agency MJ, a creative production house in Tennessee.
In February, we connected with Kohler to begin coordinating a large production for Design Week in Milan, Italy. We continued working with Cencora to coordinate executive portraits over multiple shoot days. We are currently producing six different projects for Fortive with multiple photographers around the country and the world.
This was my first full month in the Client Outreach Librarian role. My responsibilities included: meeting with the Client Outreach team to shed light on documentation, as well as address questions and edge cases; working on keeping our internal documentation updated and understood by staff members; and going through Client records for People and Companies marked with the Delete keyword, and evaluating them for deletion.
I joined Client Outreach in the second week of February. I came from the Librarian role on the Agent/Crew Outreach team. This month, I started in the Oldest in WordPress role, where I dedicated my time to learning more about all the details of Client Outreach and the way we work in this department. Then I began contributing my first updates to our Client database. I can state that the best thing at this moment in a new and different role is the pleasure of learning more about our processes and about the company as a whole, as well as the curiosity of understanding our data records on Client Outreach.
In February, I embarked on a new journey in Client Outreach, where my primary tasks involved updating the Oldest in WordPress profiles and Company Publications in Daylite. As my knowledge grew, I developed a deeper understanding of this new concept, fostering increased confidence in my decision-making. It was fascinating to me to explore the intricacies of Parent and Child companies, as well as vertical markets. I approached each step methodically and with precision, updating every data record with the maximum information I could gather. Additionally, I diligently evaluated each data record, aiming always for accuracy in my analyses.
I spent the month of February working on updating our Industry Database. Specifically, I’ve been creating a detailed list of all the industries currently found on LinkedIn, indicating which ones are still active and which ones are obsolete or have undergone a name change. My role involved reviewing these industries to determine their viability for our photographers. To accomplish this, we examined each company under each industry, evaluating their use of professional photography, size, and content updates. We also determined the number of companies we wanted to keep track of in each industry and gave priority to companies that most clearly would need professional photography often, no matter where they were in the world. We relied heavily on Sales Navigator on LinkedIn and Apollo as essential tools in our Client Outreach processes. Our list of industries expanded from 240 to 452 as a result of our efforts in February.
This past month I worked to expand the contacts for any new Client Companies that we added in our “Verticals” process. Currently, we have one researcher focusing on specific niche markets so we can add new client companies to our database. My role follows through on that process by finding the appropriate contacts for each client. After the Superbowl, I noticed that we didn’t have many professional sports teams in our database, including both the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers. I took up the challenge of adding 20 teams from the NFL, NBA, and MLB to our records, then worked on finding their creative directors, marketing coordinators, and video/photo producers.
In February, I spent time filtering through our internal database to locate People listed as Clients but not attached to a specific company. This situation occurs for many reasons. Any of our staff members might unlink a Client Person from a company when they leave that company, but not immediately link them to another company for the sake of saving time. So my role is devoted to figuring out where those people work and linking them to their new company (if that company is a valid prospect). We generally find new brands, agencies, and publications through these lateral movements of people within the industry.
At the beginning of last month, I transitioned from updating clients who work for publications to those who work for agencies. Similar to the month before, my role involved updating individuals in our database and the companies they’re affiliated with, ensuring accuracy on our website. After this, we sent emails to inform clients about our website and showcase one of our member photographers in each correspondence. Last month, I focused on reaching out to clients we hadn’t contacted in a while, aiming to reestablish connections and engagement. Additionally, I dedicated time to refining our database and ensuring its accuracy.
I had one role in February: working on Companies (Brands). First, I updated those that didn’t display the number of employees. After that, I worked on data records that had been added to our database but were not fully updated. To complete the process, I had to find a suitable person for us to promote our Member Photographers. I made sure each data record was up-to-date and that all information was as accurate as possible.
Last month, my primary focus was to update and maintain the data records of individuals employed at various publications such as association magazines, newspapers, consumer magazines, and trade magazines. I ensured that the information of each individual and the company they work for in our database was up-to-date. After reviewing the updated information, if I found an individual to be a potential prospect for us, I sent them an email to initiate a conversation. Our aim was to connect with people individually and understand their needs better, while also promoting our Member photographers, and sharing our capabilities.
At the beginning of February, I transitioned from updating the oldest Client profiles on our website to evaluating Client Companies in our database. Initially, I reviewed Publications to see if they were a good prospect for us. If deemed a good fit, I would proceed with the updates. After that, I moved to the Agencies role, where I did the same updating and evaluation process, but this time with Agencies.
Last month, I checked our Vertical Markets Tracker in Google Sheets, focusing on the oldest updates. I looked up what each market means and found prominent companies for each one. Afterward, I updated our database records. If the company was already listed in the database, I assigned the appropriate Vertical Market to it. When the company wasn’t already in our records, I added it along with its corresponding Vertical Market. If a market within our database had fewer than 50 companies, I looked for more companies to add. I focused on companies that we label as “Financial Services: Wealth Management”, “Education: Prep School”, “Agencies: Healthcare”, “Culture: Musical Instrument Brand”, “Fashion: Kids Fashion Brand” and “Education: Music, Performing, Visual Arts School”. Additionally, I assisted in updating the Verticals Guide to include the new markets we reviewed this month. We added or refined 18 new markets to ensure clarity and accuracy.
In February, my primary role was focused on Out-of-Office replies, or rather on updating any and all relevant information sent automatically to us by people who were OOO at that time. Surprisingly there is a lot of new information to be gleaned when reading through someone’s out-of-office email, such as their phone number, address, role in the company, etc. Often, we can also find new prospects for our Client People, especially in cases where the email would indicate that the person we were contacting was on some sort of extended leave. They would recommend other people in creative services roles or similar ones that we would want to have in our internal database. This role made me become even more of a detective than usual when looking for any relevant information we could use.
Have questions about how we promote our photographers? Check out our Membership page. Want to know how you can get the most out of your Wonderful Machine membership? Check out our Jumpstart page or just reach out!