When we first start working with a photographer for Marketing Partner projects, we ask a series of questions to find out more about them, and also to understand the goals they have for their business. For Jeremy Segal, an accomplished architectural photographer, the objective was to reach more hospitality clients. Jeremy is based in Vancouver and has a steady stream of work from a handful of architects in that area. He was interested in diversifying his income streams and reaching new prospective clients by showing how his work is relevant to other industries.
This initial conversation and questionnaire helped to shape the language for the outreach emails. I always have the photographer prepare something as an attachment. I feel like it’s a valuable opportunity to show some work even if you don’t get that coveted click-through to the website. Jeremy also wanted to show off his video work. He has a great video that takes advantage of the latest trend in architecture: to include people. Our initial emails to clients included appropriate images in the promo for each category. Then in the follow-up email, we included a link to the unique video. In general, this resulted in higher click-throughs on the follow-up email. Jeremy did a fabulous job of assembling groups of images for his promotions using Canva.
Jeremy had a good base to start from, being one of the Marriott-approved photographers with a few solid hospitality clients in the Vancouver area. He does mostly architectural-based work for them and wanted to peddle his lifestyle skills as well. We also discussed the opportunities that might lie outside of Vancouver proper, where there’s lots of winery tourism. In addition to hotels, we decided to investigate developers and retirement communities.
Our first list was mostly hotel contacts around Vancouver, but we also included a couple of developers and retirement communities. The results of that list resulted in several positive replies, including one retirement community that was ready to line up a meeting with their marketing team.
Because of this success, we ended up doing another list primarily with more retirement communities and rounding out the list with some development groups as well. The subsequent lists covered design — think furniture and architectural accessories — and lastly more architects.
Our final list was a really deep dive into hospitality clients around British Columbia, finding new prospective clients in Canadian wine country and along the coast. This list resulted in several replies from clients that were interested in speaking with Jeremy in early 2023. Overall, Jeremy was pretty happy about the potential for more hospitality work in the upcoming year.
Many photographers continue with Marketing Partner long past the initial 6 months, but some are ready for a change or need help incorporating these new contacts into their regular marketing. Moving forward, Jeremy’s going to be taking advantage of our new Email Blast service. We’ll take all the contacts he’s gained through Marketing Partner and send a monthly email through Mailchimp for him.
Further Reading
Wonderful Machine: Expert Advice: Email Marketing For Photographers
Wonderful Machine: Expert Advice: How to Build Your Web Presence
Wonderful Machine: Expert Advice: Client Job Titles