Please enter your email and website or LinkedIn to receive more information about our free and paid accounts.
Please enter your email address below and we’ll send you instructions on how to change your password.
After making some changes to his business, Justin Maconochie of Detroit, was ready to refresh his marketing efforts. Over the last 20 years, Justin has created architecture photography for clients across the Midwest and built a strong reputation for his brand. In that time, he’s established a solid base of regular clients, but in recent years his marketing activity had gone dormant. Justin was ready to reconnect with old clients and link up with fresh leads. He signed up for our Email Marketing Campaign to initiate a marketing practice that would help him consistently stay in touch with new and potential clients.
As a project manager and marketing specialist at Wonderful Machine, I speak with photographers around the world about what kind of consulting projects we can offer. With every project, our goal is to target each photographer’s real needs rather than just offer a standardized service. In Justin’s case, as is often the case when we start marketing work with a photographer, he needed to polish the way he presented himself.
It had been awhile since Justin had redone his website, so, before we started anything, we enlisted Senior Designer José Silva to design a new Web Template for Justin’s website. The new template shows off not only a lot of new work from both Justin and Trever Long, the second photographer at Justin Maconochie Photography, but it is also a showcase of his award winning projects for potential clients. Once his presentation was ready to go, we started marketing.
Our email marketing campaigns consist of emails that we send to your mailing list on a monthly basis. First we set up an editorial calendar so we can see our email topics in advance and plan accordingly. This calendar also includes a place to add download links for images and a place for project notes. The editorial calendar helps busy photographers like Justin plan ahead and facilitates collaboration because it allows us to design the emails independently. For example, once we had few months of emails campaigns planned, Justin could load up photos when he has a break in his schedule and I always have new images to build emails each month.
In addition to organizing and managing the actual email campaigns, we also spend a considerable amount of time on optimizing deliverability. Sending out mass emails doesn’t guarantee that they will all be received. Deliverability means emails landing in inboxes rather than in spam or floating around the interwebs and is determined by your “sender reputation.” We verify and authenticate the photographer’s email address to ensure email service providers (ESPs) recognize them as a legitimate person and not a spoofer or spammer. Then, we run their contacts through a list cleaner to make sure they are all functional email addresses. This reduces the likelihood of bouncing emails and maintains a good sender reputation.
As Justin was preparing for a busy spring and summer, I wanted to make this process as easy and flexible as possible. I also, of course, wanted it to be effective. I asked Justin to create a list of contacts by exporting the relevant information from his invoice software. As we cleaned up this list, we recognized that it would be good to have a larger list to work with. To reach more potential clients, I whipped up a Custom List Build based on past architecture clients he had lost contact with due to industry transitions and ideal clients for the next phase of his career.
Since José was already working on designs for Justin’s website, we gave him the additional task of creating an email template that we could use in Mailchimp. The first email out of the gate is an introduction email, or in some cases a re-introduction if there are a lot of current clients on the list. Justin sent me a “Best of Selection,” of images, and I curated them into a series that showed off the breadth of his work. I also wrote up a draft for the text that introduced Justin and Trever. Once I had everything set up in the Mailchimp template, I sent Justin the first draft to see what he thought.
Justin and I had plenty of back and forth in between his jobs to finalize the emailer. We tested out different photos as well as messaging and word choice. As we dialed-in the email edits, I tried to keep our communication efficient, flowing, and mindful of his tight schedule. During the editing process, I always planned ahead and made sure we allocated plenty of time to assemble and tweak the drafts.
We decided it was best to send out two separate emails because Justin was marketing to two distinct lists of clients. One email targeted contacts on his original list and another for contacts on his new list. We would reintroduce Justin to old contacts with one message and set of images and make an introduction with another.
Both lists delivered encouraging results after the first round of emails. The email for the original contact list got a 43% open rate and a whopping 13% click rate. The new contact list got a 58% open rate with a solid 10% click through rate. Justin was happy to know people were excited to hear from him again.
In the next 2 emails we featured Justin and one of his projects alongside Trever Long and one of his projects. Currently, we’re planning out the next three months of emails. We will feature various projects and collections of images, including a few projects that benefited from having both photographers working on them at the same time.
Over the months collaborating together, we’ve built an effective and laid back working relationship while accommodating his busy project schedule. Maybe it’s because we’re both Michiganders, but it’s been no surprise to me that Justin has been easy to work with. I do miss that laid back midwest attitude. As our collaboration evolves, I continue to learn about his work, style, and what’s important to him so we can build more effective campaigns going forward.
Marianne has been great to work with on the eblast. She is very collaborative and never phones it in. Best of all she is there to keep me on track each month with a task that I would otherwise find reasons to procrastinate
The major benefit of an Email Marketing Campaign is that photographers can remind their contacts every month about their work. Optimally designed and delivered emails, with an eye catching image and message that reminds clients of why the photographer is unique, can be the key to new projects. Over all, Justin’s contacts were happy to hear from him and learn what he’s been up to. As for the new contacts, our goal is to consistently keep Justin’s work in front of them so he’s on their radar when the right project comes up.
See more tips from the experts @wonderful_at_work
Further Reading
Case Studies: Email Marketing Campaign
Expert Advice: Email Campaign Analytics
Listicles: Best Architecture Photographers