When you are first starting your business you may ask yourself, “is email marketing something I really need to care about?” The short answer- YES! In today’s blog, I’m explaining to you why email marketing is so important! I’ll also give you some simple steps for getting started with email marketing in order to grow your business.
How to Get Started With an Email List
Should Photographers Care About Email Marketing?
The short answer is YES! After all, my mission as a photographer and mentor is to help you seamlessly step into the role of Photoboss, so that you can market and brand yourself while getting paid to do what you love. And an important piece of the puzzle is email marketing!
Build An Audience That Is Yours To Keep
The first key component of email marketing is that an email list is the only list of audience members that you truly own. Think about your Instagram followers, your Pinterest followers, maybe even your Youtube subscribers. You do not have a guaranteed way to get in touch with these people. Nor do you own your profiles on any of these social platforms!
When you build an email list, you are not at the mercy of any algorithm changes or updates in a platform. Your list of email subscribers are yours to hold onto and to communicate with in a way that is empowering and personalized.
It’s Harder To Market On Social Media
More and more, consumers are bombarded with marketing messages all day every day on social media. So, in a way it has actually gotten harder to market to your ideal clients on your social media platforms. It is harder to stand out in all of the messaging that says “buy this” “download this” or “invest in this”. When you begin email marketing, you are able to:
- Send a message to them in a place that they probably check multiple times a day
- Get in front of them in a more personalized, long-form way
- Stay in their inbox where they can return to your message again and again
- Built a relationship and communication with audience members in the long term
How Do I Get Started?
Here are some of my favorite softwares and tools that you can start using today to email market to your audience!
My Top Recommendation: Flodesk
Flodesk is my top recommended email marketing software. It is so affordable, and unlike other softwares, the price does not go up as your email list grows.
It is also extremely user friendly! You do not have to be good at coding or be a tech wiz to create beautiful emails. You can use automations in Flodesk, send Freebies, create sequences, and so much more.
Other Options:
Convertkit is also another software that is available to you for email marketing! However, the price for Convertkit does increase as your subscriber list grows, so keep that in mind.
Another Software that is great if you are new to email marketing is Mailchimp. I actually started on Mailchimp because it was free for an email list under 1000. But, as soon as you want to create an automation or email to a large audience, you have to pay. This is ultimately why I recommend using Flodesk from the get-go!
What’s Next?
So, once you get set up with your email marketing provider, you are going to want to strategize! How are you going to get people to subscribe? What are you going to send to your audience once they are subscribed? How will you keep them engaged? We will be talking about exactly how to do this in next week’s Youtube Video and Blog, so stay on the lookout for Part Two!
