Email marketing is an essential part of building and nurturing a strong relationship with potential new or existing clients. By maintaining frequent contact with your new or existing clients and sending them engaging, strong email promotions, you can turn those potential new clients into long-lasting, fruitful relationships that will one day turn into a client. Building a robust mailing list of quality leads can be a difficult challenge. We’re here to help! Let’s break down the tools you’ll need for how to create a mailing list.

What You Need to Start Building Your Mailing List

Prior to creating an email list, you need to research and understand your target market. Who you want to market to will determine how you reach out to creatives. Once you understand your target market, create a dream client list.

What do those clients look like? What type of content do they want to see? How do they engage with your brand?

Strategize your image selection for your email promotions around what your dream client list and target market will want to see.

Because you’ll be interacting through and directing creatives to your website and social media channels, make sure these online experiences are completely up to date and deliver a seamless experience for each individual that interacts with your brand. If these experiences don’t give a great first impression, you’ll likely lose a potential contact before they can even make it into your marketing funnel and onto your mailing list.

Choose Your Email Marketing Platform

Don’t let the challenge of building an email dissuade you from learning how to create an email list! There are plenty of third-party email systems that provide templates to customize and match to your branding. Make sure you have explored and chosen a third-party email system that you feel comfortable designing in and sending your emails from.

While templates are useful for designing your email campaigns, it’s important to know the do’s and don’ts of sending successful marketing emails:

• DON’T use spammy words or phrases in your subject line, like “Act now” or “While supplies last.”
• DO make it personalized. Many of the third-party email systems have easy ways to personalize emails with first names or locations.
• DON’T bombard your audience with multiple emails within one week. Give some time and spread out your email cadence to avoid them clicking the “unsubscribe” button.
• DO hook them from the start of the email. The content at the very top, and the subject line, need to be eye-catching and relevant to the reader.
• DO add your physical business address and contact information to the email. This not only legitimizes your business, but it’s also required by law.

There are a lot of insightful email marketing studies that have been done over the years to help you draft the perfect email. Do your own research for what resonates with your target market, and don’t forget to test different strategies and analyze the data afterwards to understand what works.

With Agency Access’ Creative Industry Directory and access to over 100,000 contacts, you can turn those dream clients into real clients by engaging the creative decision makers that will resonate with your work and hire you. From agencies and design firms to publishers and production companies, creating a successful mailing list can be as easy as the click of a button.

Grow Your Email List With These Actionable Tips

To create a strong email list, there are a few things you can do as a photographer that will increase engagement with your online audience and get them to subscribe.

Drive Traffic to Your Website and Social Profiles

Any chance you get, direct traffic to your website or social media channels. Whether that’s with paid advertising or simply handing out a business card, you want your online audience to take that first action in engaging with your business.

Use Social Media

Social media has become one of the easiest (and cheapest) ways to increase your brand awareness, so use it to your advantage. Engage with other photography professionals and creatives through Facebook groups or Twitter conversations. Ask questions and get involved with partnerships or social media collaborations. It’s a great way to widen your audience and send them back to your own social media page, so they can further engage with your brand.

Share Your Published Articles or Blog Posts

Not only can writing blog posts improve your SEO score for your website, it can position you as a thought leader in your niche. Find topics that you feel you know well and use blog posts to teach others about them. If you love comparing different lenses, write a blog post about which lens you prefer for which scenarios. If you work in different locations, write a blog post about your favorite locations to shoot and why. Then, at the end of each blog post, ask your readers to subscribe to your email list to learn more about the topic or stay up to date with new blog posts.

Guest Post on Photography Websites

Another way blog posts can help you is by submitting guest posts for other photography websites. It’s another great way to widen your audience. At the end of the blog post, your author bio will tell the readers a bit about yourself and link them back to your own website. At that point, if your content was relevant and engaging enough for them, they can subscribe to your mailing list to learn more.

Create and Publish a Regular Newsletter

Once you’ve mastered how to create a mailing list for business, it’s time to retarget some of those strong leads. For the contacts that clicked on and opened your initial cold marketing emails, engage them with a regular newsletter filled with content that takes them on a journey with your business.

Work on building an email marketing strategy that gives your dream client the full picture of what it would be like to work with you, starting with education and ending with reasons why they should hire you. The more you build trust through your content, the more likely those contacts will turn into long-time customers.

Conclusion

Creating a mailing list may take some time, but dedicating yourself to building a strong one will ensure your business success. Agency Access’ database of over 100,000 contacts can help set you up with the ideal audience to choose from when you’re looking to expand your business reach.

Still not sure where to start with how to create a mailing list? See why so many photographers trust Agency Access to help them grow their business. Explore tutorials and articles in the Agency Access Help Center to get all your questions answered.