In January, Julian joined Alex and me to work on agency research/outreach. The three of us combined forces to post some pretty impressive numbers. Together, we made 368 phone calls and sent 314 emails that yielded a total of 84 connections. We also added 225 new people and companies to our database.
We customize our messaging for each client depending on their needs, often starting with a phone call and then following up with an email where we can recommend specific photographers or point them to specific pages of our website. Agencies will sometimes hire photographers directly, so we’ll always want to make them aware of our directory. But there are other times when agencies hire production companies who may have their own roster of photographers, so we tell them about our shoot production capabilities as well.
Associate Producer Alex Subers talks to a client.
Outreach emails that are tailored specifically to the client give a much more personal feel than the massive email blast that you regularly find in your spam filter. We frequently hear from clients that Wonderful Machine has become their go-to source for high-quality photographers. Executive producer Marsha Trainer at Periscope in Minneapolis responded to Julian’s outreach email with this to say:
Hi Julian!
We already use Wonderful Machine a lot to find great regional photographers.
Thanks for reaching out — and if you are ever in our neck of the woods, please visit.
When Alex got creative director Rich Hilbert at The Anderson Group on the line, he wanted to know if Wonderful Machine handled motion production as well as stills. Alex informed him that while the bulk of our experience is with still photography, we continue to produce more and more motion projects, especially projects that combine video and still photography. Having a still photographer shoot alongside video productions is becoming more popular all over our industry, and Rich said that he regularly hires photographers to shoot alongside his motion projects.
In the beginning of January, I reached out Grafik Marketing Communications in the Washington DC area. Once our tremendous roster of photographers caught his attention, Greg Spraker told me that they produce about a half-dozen big projects a year for a wide range of clients, so I passed him over to our executive producer Craig Oppenheimer so Craig could give him a deeper explanation of all our production capabilities. One of the things that Craig explained was that developing close relationships with our photographers allows us to not only make recommendations based on their portfolios, but on their personalities too. Greg was impressed by the phone call and let us know that he would be reaching out in the not-so-distant future to have us quote on a project.
January was a successful month for our agencies team! Have questions? .
Need help researching clients? Email our project managers.
Have feedback about the clients we’re promoting to? Email Bill.