Are you using email marketing in your photography business? I recently asked this question to a group of photographers and got a handful of different answers. In this blog, I want to walk you through how to grow your email list. I will be sharing how I grew my email list by over 100 subscribers in one day.

One of the areas I have been focusing on recently is email marketing. I see the value of it and I wanted to try it out. I decided to host a giveaway on Facebook. This is something I have done before, but I added an element I haven’t ever tried before.

When I first started my photography business in 2014 I used giveaways to build my audience. I would post something like “Want to win a free session? Like, Comment, and Share this post for your chance to win.” A lot has changed since 2014 and that no longer works, especially because Facebook has changed their policy and frowns upon the language.

Welcome to 2019…. It may seem like Facebook is against businesses but they aren’t. Their paid to play strategy is what helps them make money too.

This time I decided to advertise a free fall family session giveaway. Instead of using entries created by Facebook comments and shares, I created a landing page to collect email entries. You might be wondering what a landing page is. It’s simply a one-page website where people have to enter their email address in exchange for something.

Grow your email list with Flodesk

I created my landing page in under 5 minutes using a platform called Flodesk. I was introduced to the brand new email marketing platform and fell in love with it. Flodesk is for creative entrepreneurs who desire to have a high quality look and a high deliverability rate with their emails.

One of the other things I did differently with this giveaway was I changed the language of the post. Facebook recognizes certain words and phrases that are associated with giveaways or selling so I was careful not to include them. Most of the text was written on a graphic so it didn’t need to be written in the post where Facebook could identify it.

Comments do matter.

Of course I still asked for comments so there would be more engagement on the post. I asked them to tell me why they wanted to win. The post still circulated in people’s feeds and people saw it for days to come.

Selecting a winner…

To select a winner, I took all of the email addresses and entered them into a random picker generator. You can find one with a quick Google search. It was as simple as that!

If you desire to grow your email list, you might consider doing a giveaway similar to this. As a creative, I kindly ask you to please change the wording so Facebook does not pick up on it.

The results?

The giveway was posted at 7:30 pm on a Sunday evening. The next morning I had over 100 entries. A week later there were a total of 135 email entries. My goal was 50 entries. My goal was definitely surpassed!

Email your list.

Once you have grown your email list, you need to make sure you keep up with it and stay consistent. Be sure they get an immediate email upon entering the giveaway letting them know it went through and when you will be announcing the winner. This primes your audience to open emails from you.

Once the giveaway is over, I recommend staying in contact at least every other week. Write up emails about your business, upcoming sessions and offers, and tips to help them prepare for their session.

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Enjoy this blog? You might enjoy this one too: The Two Tools You Need in Your Photography Business

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