I’m actually phasing [E-blasts] out of my marketing plans for the coming year. The open rates and click through rates are down considerably…click through used to be almost 20%, now I’m lucky to get 2 or 3%. And all the art buyers I talk to are actively opting out and/or deleting without viewing.

2010 is all about getting personal with our marketing. E-blasts don’t fit into that.

From an email discussion with a studio producer. Used with permission.

Recommended Posts

10 Comments

  1. I spent $5000 on marketing ( more like pitching) to just one client and got work from them. Was it worth it. Hell yeah. It was a handmade book with 25 images that targeted a specific brand that I wanted to shoot. It was ambiguous book to make because we incorporated photography, letterpress, screen-printing, and bookbinding… Each person that helped got a copy of the book to use for their own marketing and now I show it around to other agencies and clients. This type of one-up marketing has long term effect.
    As far as the surge of Eblast.. it has gotten overwhelming and it’s too easy for the receiver to just one-finger-click your shit away.. Plus the same stuff is happening in the eblast world as it happened in direct mail; people have bad promos or one great image and then you click to their site and nothing looks anything like the shot they blasted. Inconsistencies. so bad.
    It makes sense that the Eblast % is down.
    So hire a designer or barter with one, do something cool, and mail it or deliver it in person.

  2. I agree that its all about getting personal with your marketing. Which is the strategy I have incorporated with my email blasts.

    Every month my click through rate gets higher. My last blast got a click through rate of 20% and that has been consistent the last 8 months.

    Email marketing is a great way to get your work in front of buyers and editors. You just have to make sure you are targeting the right market for your work.

    Email promos arent the problem. The problem is that most photographers dont target their lists.

  3. I think epromotion is still a good reminder/education – but HUMAN contact is the #1 marketing approach I preach these days! Have a good database to use to reach out to – and make it PERSONAL – I call those HUMAN CONNECTIONS!

  4. One of my take-aways from my Hallmark Card days of the ’80’s is that the more personal the greeting, the better. The more “trouble” you go through to send it, the more sentimental it is to the recipient. I think this goes for our marketing too – after all – we are in the people > people business.

  5. Funny, I just spent a good chunk of my morning unsubscribing from most of the not-outright-spam emails I get.

    I’ve noticed that email stopped working about the time that AgencyAccess and Adbase started offering their emailers at a reduced price.

    Oddly enough, that was about the time that the industry started to take a huge nosedive anyway. Not sure which had the bigger impact.

    It is clear that there are now fewer ADs at fewer publications with smaller budgets receiving more and more solicitations.

  6. Totally agree with David Larson’s comments. The point isn’t that you have an email program, it’s what your doing with it. Personalization is easy to do programatically and today, with all the clutter, its a requisite for success.

  7. In 2009 I had a consistant 4% click through rate, which is less than fabulous. But, I have to say, my list is very concentrated on folks that hire for my type of photography, which is Fashion / Lifestyle. Though I’ve had a low click through rate in my stats, I have seen my webstats soar on the days that I do email blasts. Which tells me that not everyone actually clicks through, but Googles you to get to your website to avoid being in your “email blast stats”.

    I have seen direct results from my eblasts in the form of bids / jobs / estimates. So, as I think that it is less effective then it may have been in the past, I believe it still works. Bottom line, I think that doing it all…emails, direct mails, phone calls and face to face meetings is the answer.

  8. You guys and gal have posted some insightful comments on the quote above. I’m a photographer, green as grass, on the cusp of taking the plunge into photography from the assisting realm. My eyes are set on (food) advertising, but I think it’s only practical to market myself to the editorial realm first. From your experience, what methods of marketing bore the most success for getting editorial gigs, and what people within the magazines are the best to reach out to? And where could I find a good format for an E-card? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.


Comments are closed for this article!