Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Founders' Series - Nate Grahek, Sticky
156 Plays6 years ago
Today's guest is Nate Grahek, the founder of Sticky Albums, and more recently, Sticky Email. Sticky Albums makes it easy for photographers to create and share custom mobile apps for their clients. Nate built it after seeing the reaction his own photography portrait clients had to the custom mobile apps he was building for them and the referrals that it generated, but eventually realized that he didn't want to only provide a tool that generated leads. Nate also wanted to develop a tool that helps nurture those leads into clients, and that was Sticky Emails meant to do.
In this interview, we chat all about email marketing, how photographers and creatives can implement email marketing into their businesses, some of the do's and don'ts, and how Sticky Email can help. You can also find a link for getting started with Sticky Email in the show notes.
For more information and resources, check out the show notes at daveyandkrista.com/btb.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Photography Marketing
00:00:05
Speaker
So when you offer an email sequence, in your form, you're saying, hey, would you like our free email crash course, our seven-day email crash course on how to choose a better photographer for you? You're catching their attention with something they care about.
The Brands That Book Show: Podcast Introduction
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to The Brands That Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:34
Speaker
Today's episode is part of the Founders Series, where we chat with founders and CEOs of companies that have created products and services that help creatives run their businesses.
Nate Grahek's Journey and Sticky Albums
00:00:45
Speaker
Today's guest is Nate Grahek, the founder of Sticky Albums and more recently, Sticky Email.
00:00:50
Speaker
Sticky Albums makes it easy for photographers to create and share custom mobile apps for their clients. Nate built it after seeing the reaction his own photography portrait clients had to the custom mobile apps he was building for them and the referrals that it generated. But he eventually realized that he didn't want to only provide a tool that generated leads.
00:01:08
Speaker
Nate also wanted to develop a tool that helps nurture those leads into clients, and that's what Sticky Email is meant to do.
Email Marketing for Creatives
00:01:15
Speaker
In this interview, we chat all about email marketing, how photographers and creatives can implement email marketing into their businesses, some of the dos and don'ts, and how Sticky Email can help. You can also find a link for getting started with Sticky Email in the show notes.
00:01:28
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. And I'd like to hear from you about what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands at Book podcast as we move forward. I'd also like to know what episodes you've enjoyed so far and why. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davian Christa Facebook page and send us a message. Now, on to the episode.
00:01:55
Speaker
Well, Nate, welcome to The Brands at Book Show. I'm really excited to have you on, especially as part of this new series that we're trying out where we get to talk to founders like yourself who have come from a service-based industry, but have noticed that, you know, there's some sort of issue that needs to be fixed and you went out and built this solution for it. So welcome to the show. Davey, it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, so we were recently introduced by a mutual friend. And during that conversation, you were telling me a little bit about your product, we're going to get into that and the story behind it. And almost immediately, I thought to myself, you know, he has to come on the podcast, just because it was so evident how excited you were talking about it, how passionate you were about it. So I'm really excited to share that with the brands that books audience. So could you tell us a little bit about what sticky email is or sticky the company is?
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, right on. I think just a little bit of history. I was a Porsche photographer for several years. And then in 2012 is when I had my first idea to kind of take a thing. There's this pattern you'll hear is I take lucky ideas I have, or I see working in other markets in our market. And I tried to make like them available to all photographers, essentially. So I was.
00:03:17
Speaker
doing my own photography and I knew I had to find out a better way to spread word of mouth. And so without telling the full Sticky Album story, cause I think many people have heard it and know about Sticky Albums, it was a strategy of making a custom mobile app for each one of your portrait clients. Just a really cool leave behind that it's like a better business card. That way your clients have this great way to show off their favorite pictures from the wedding or from a shoot and
00:03:46
Speaker
Over the last, that took off and we have thousands of customers now all over the world in all different niches, helping create millions of page views and referrals and all of that.
Turning Referrals into Bookings
00:03:57
Speaker
But as we've grown a team of really smart people and we've been imitated by dozens of other services, it's driven me to keep finding more, to keep finding, how can I help photographers? Cause the challenge is still there. And I'm sure you've talked to so many photographers yourself.
00:04:17
Speaker
The main challenge is how do I book more clients? And that's been, there's been all different places I could go with software. That's what's been fun at the last six years. I've learned that through having a team that's really good at building software, we can kind of build whatever we want, but it doesn't mean it's going to make sense. It doesn't mean it's going to solve a need. And so I really start by listening to our audience and listening to the market.
00:04:42
Speaker
And I think the big aha in the last couple of years was while we were really good at helping photographers get referrals, a referral does not equal a booking. Like getting somebody to show up to your website, like you guys do amazing design work.
00:04:59
Speaker
Just to get to make that amazing first impression right where you put people put all of this energy into their website and all of this energy getting people to visit their website but then nothing happens it's such a sad thing yeah that's an important distinction to between getting referrals and what happens once you get that referral.
00:05:19
Speaker
I'm really excited to dive into this latest product as well, Sticky Email. I would love for you to tell us what that is. Just because email building or email list building is such a buzzword right now, and it's something that's been around for decades now, but I think in the creative industry, it's something that has just been started to be talked about more and more.
Simplifying Email Marketing with Sticky Email
00:05:39
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit? I noticed that. I was trying to teach email marketing years ago.
00:05:45
Speaker
And it just kind of fell flat. But now in the last two years, I think you're right. It's become a more hot thing in the photography industry and more photographers realizing they need to focus on it. And so I was a little like, there's dozens of services out there. Why would we do one for photographers? And so sticky email is simplified email marketing just for photographers. And I think the biggest thing we add to the space is pre written email sequences.
00:06:14
Speaker
so that photographers who have struggled with other email marketing tools or they struggle with what to write, which is always what I struggle with, they don't have to anymore because out of the box, we provide templates and pre-written emails that will work to help you nurture potential clients and turn them into bookings.
00:06:35
Speaker
Okay, I love that. And there's so much to unpack there, you know, and we're going to get into kind of the differences between a mailing list or a newsletter rather and email sequences and what that looks like. But I can't let you off the hook something you said earlier, when you're a portrait photographer, you said you built custom mobile apps. Am I getting that right for each of your clients? How did you have an experience? I'm guessing in like give a tech background. That's what I'm trying to ask.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Good question. So there's a couple of things I'll start with my experience. I'm not a developer. I was working in corporate in training and development and right around 2007, 2000, I think it was 2007 is when the iPhone came out a little bit after that is when the iPad came out and my company went like crazy. They're like, Nate, we got to put all of our training onto iPads and mobile devices. We got to, we have a mobile info like sales force. I was like, okay.
00:07:31
Speaker
And I meanwhile knew how to do classroom training. And I really quickly had to teach myself how to do online training and then put it on mobile. And in doing so, I learned how to put really cool content without going to the app store, just using HTML and putting it onto these mobile devices. Meanwhile, I had my first kid, fell in love way hard with photography, was growing my portrait business. And when I went to print out
00:07:57
Speaker
custom business cards, I would do like 25 custom business cards for each client with their face on them. So to encourage them to essentially pass out my business cards. And took my cousin, she went, Nate, I don't think my friends are going to want paper.
00:08:14
Speaker
And I said, oh, and as in that, I had the classic million dollar, like a light bulb moment. I says, well, I can put your images in a gallery in an app and I can put your face on the app icon.
00:08:27
Speaker
Would that be cool? And you could share it that way. And she was like, well, yeah, duh. So I did it and it worked really great for my business. And I quickly, I had a neighbor who was a developer who really helped push inspire me that I could make this into a software service. So other photographers didn't have to learn HTML the way I did. And it's just a simple builder and we're now on our third, fourth version. And, uh, that's really where it all got started. So, um, they're not actually custom mobile apps.
00:08:58
Speaker
in the app stores, they are HTML5 websites with a bunch of awesome features that act like apps. So that whenever your client shares the link, nobody has to go to an app store, nobody has to install anything. They just get a simple message like a prompt if there happened to be opening it up on a phone that has them save it offline to their phone and it opens and looks and feels like an app. So that's what we call it an app. And so what's the name of that product?
00:09:26
Speaker
That is sticky albums. That is now part of our sticky folios set of tools. Sticky folios now does a long list of one page marketing tactics like wedding websites or mini session sales pages and all these different landing page templates. And the most popular successful one is the sticky album.
00:09:46
Speaker
And that's kind of what got the whole thing started for us. Sure.
Email Lists vs. Social Media
00:09:50
Speaker
So fast forwarding, you have sticky albums, and then you realize this need. And the distinction you already covered, which is this product you built was great for getting people referrals. But then the question mark was, how do they get the booking? Because like you said, a referral doesn't equal booking. So why email?
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I think now it makes so much sense in hindsight, but I was kind of just doing my best. I was like, okay, we're getting people referrals. Now what? And we make all these really good landing pages. So now they can send their referrals to all of these cool different places and wedding websites are helping them get all these other great referrals and impressions. And they're capturing leads, but they don't know what to do with the lead. Like, okay, Nate, which tool should we use? How do I sell it at MailChimp? Why do I use this one? What do I write?
00:10:43
Speaker
And so sticky folios was like the first step to closing that gap, like helping them capture and have like a website. We have some basic website templates too, but it still wasn't complete. Like a website, an amazing website or a marketing site or a landing page, they all do something that the most important job of all of them is to capture the lead. So we got that figured out two years ago. But like I say, we just kept getting people's frustrated with
00:11:13
Speaker
the final piece of, okay, these still aren't booking clients. I think that the standard is a contact form, right? Contact us if you'd like to schedule a session. And there's still a huge gap. When somebody's visiting any of your online spaces and you offer, you jump to, hey, would you like to book a session? What I like to talk about is the best online marketers
00:11:42
Speaker
They create online spaces and interactions that feel and mimic the best marketing we do in person. So here's, let's do an offline example. You meet somebody for the first time at a coffee shop or a friend or a dinner party or wherever it might be and they say, hey, what do you do? And you tell them you're a photographer and we specialize in this, that and the other. They're like, oh wow, that's so cool. I've got a friend that's getting married or we're actually engaged. That's really amazing. You'd never in a million years
00:12:09
Speaker
would end that first conversation with, okay, cool. When's your, what's your budget? What's your date? Where are you booked? And let's, let's sign here. Do you want to book, want to book me as your wedding photographer right now? We would never do that, but our websites do it all the time. And so I've been, we're trying to help photographers break it down and make it simpler. It's like we start with the most basic online and now we got to learn how to be a little bit more savvy and smooth and just genuine.
00:12:37
Speaker
with our online interactions. And so back to this point, many of us have had contact forms, but you get thousands of visitors a week or a month with nobody filling out the contact form because the only people that will ever fill out a contact form are people who have already decided, number one, that they want to hire a professional photographer. And number two, they most likely already have decided they want to hire you.
00:13:04
Speaker
And that is an enormous job. Getting your website to do all of that lifting is almost impossible because you have to take them so far to show them that you know what you're doing and that they can trust you and your pricing and all of this. And so instead of just asking for their information on another big mistake, I see a lot with the advent of so many studio management tools out there.
00:13:30
Speaker
People will ask, the context
Crafting Engaging Email Sequences
00:13:32
Speaker
forms will be like 30 questions, right? Like that's good to know. And I know it's so powerful to know that information about your clients. But again, you would never ask that many questions when you first met somebody. And your website's job is to make this amazing first impression and to make sure that when somebody's there for the first three minutes of getting to know you, that they don't disappear forever. And so instead of asking,
00:14:00
Speaker
30 questions, you can ask those 30 questions later, but you want to make sure you at least get an email. And the way you do that is by offering something first, you give the best people in the market that when you are your best friends are people that like make a first impression and give you something you care about. So that's what sticky email lets you do.
00:14:22
Speaker
And it kind of closes that gap so that you offer a free seven tip or attend tip email course about a thing your potential client cares about.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I appreciate you going through all of that because it very much is like relationship building, you know, and now that this digital world has existed for as long as it has existed, there's a certain level I think of market sophistication, right? And so people kind of are getting used to the normal marketing tactics. And so like you said, I think it's even more important
00:14:53
Speaker
to take all the best practices that we would employ offline and take those online. One thing that we often see people do with their websites is they put a link to the contact form front and center on their homepage. Like you said, that's like meeting somebody for the first time and saying, hey, let's go, let's do this. Meeting somebody for the first time like, hey, let's get married.
00:15:18
Speaker
And there's a certain level of nurturing that has to happen between somebody meeting you and somebody trusting you enough to give you money to perform a service. And so I want to know specifically why email and how does email get us there?
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, great question. I think that email is still where people want to communicate with small businesses, like with the huge rise in text messaging and Facebook messenger and all these other platforms. That's where we want to talk to like our friends. I think that's where I talk to my friends.
00:15:55
Speaker
I want to talk to small businesses and if I'm hiring a painter or a contractor or a lawn care provider, our generation and younger, we don't want to call somebody and leave a message. That's just never going to happen. I don't even want to call somebody. I would much rather find an email address and start the relationship that way.
00:16:16
Speaker
Because it's asynchronous, everybody has an email address. Yes, our inboxes are incredibly full. But that problem is it's also solving itself. If we look at the Gmail promotions tab, and there's all of these different filters, people still, because it's the thing that will be here forever, I believe, with email, in order to create any social media account, what do you need? An email address, right? And you can sign into so many apps with Google, with your Google login credentials, right? Yes, totally.
00:16:45
Speaker
So i just think it's where people still are where they want to communicate and that's all about the consumer side right now let's talk about why email as a business owner. As i've grown my own business again i take lessons i've learned and i want to share them with photographers.
00:17:02
Speaker
Email is if you talk to any good business owner, people don't really worry about their revenue. They worry about how many email leads they're getting because the email lead email addresses are the greatest predictor of future success. And it's all about the email. And because you can automate, you can nurture and you can run your business. And if things are slow, we've all heard the great stories where
00:17:27
Speaker
During your slow seasons, if you have an email address, you can run a promotion. You can run, you can say, Hey guys, I've got limited session openings this week. Click here to save half off or to get an extra bonus, or it's the holidays. Don't forget to schedule your holiday card session before this date to save.
00:17:45
Speaker
20% on your holiday cards. You can't do that if you don't have a list, if you don't have email addresses of people to send them to. So those are some of the quick reasons why email. I'll come back to my favorite one of all is the automation piece now. I think everybody's kind of understood the old school newsletter style where, cause you can just do that with anything. You could, Hey, I've gotten all a list of my old subscribers somewhere, my old customers. I can just send them a bulk email.
00:18:14
Speaker
But it's the it's the inquiring client that's that first impression like what how can we get more visitors on your website turn into leads.
Balancing Email Frequency
00:18:25
Speaker
So it's offering them something offering them email tips and then not having to worry about responding. When I was first starting my business of my photography business.
00:18:35
Speaker
I would have all of the alerts go crazy all over my phone and everywhere. Right. And I feel like I knew that I had to reply within minutes. Otherwise I would lose that client to go, maybe go find somebody else. Right. And so when you have auto responder sequence set up, you can rest easy knowing that the first impression you make is a great one.
00:18:55
Speaker
and you're sending them your best content right away within seconds of them entering their email address. So does that answer why email? No, yeah, absolutely. And this is something that we've written about on our blog before. I think if I talk to the friends of mine who I think are the best marketers, they're all going to say that their most valuable asset is their email list.
00:19:16
Speaker
It's not their various social media channels, it's their email list. So a big following on a social media channel, sure, maybe to a certain extent is a predictor of revenue, maybe. But like you said, I think the best predictor of revenue is a well-nurtured email list. And I'm sure you're going to get into what that means, nurturing an email list for sure. But unlike a social media following, when you blast something out on Facebook, you blast something out on Instagram, not everybody sees it.
00:19:43
Speaker
with email provided that you're following best practices, you're most likely ending in their inbox. They've subscribed to your email list. So they've said, yes, I want to hear from you. And so they're much more likely to take action. One thing I think especially we work with a lot of wedding professionals.
00:20:00
Speaker
And so I think when people think email or list building, they think newsletter. And almost a lot of times I think the two terms are used synonymously when they're not necessarily the same thing. They don't kind of take the same thing. So can you talk to us about the difference in the practices that you're preaching about as opposed to what people think of as a typical newsletter?
Providing Value Before Business
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, really good stuff. I love that we're going really into the weeds here. This is, I think going to be really helpful. I think that traditionally newsletter email marketing was kind of the early frontier that that's been around for probably 20 years now.
00:20:42
Speaker
And let's talk about what that is and what it isn't. So a newsletter means that you have a form on your website that lets people opt in and say, yes, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. And we've seen those for decades now. Hey, would you like to subscribe to our newsletter? And I'm going to talk about some of the negatives right as we talk about what it is. The first negative is that's just old school and nobody really opts in to just a newsletter anymore. Like they need.
00:21:07
Speaker
Nobody says, I'm going to wake up today and go subscribe to newsletters. No, you need a reason to get onto somebody's list. What are you going to send me? I need you to earn my trust before I give you my email, right? I think when you say, just join my newsletter, you're basically, it's like saying, hey, can I just send you mail? Can I fill your inbox in the morning? Exactly. Can I spam you whenever I need some business?
00:21:33
Speaker
Nobody likes that and they're not going to do it. Okay, so then the other part for you as running an email, how do you want to send a newsletter, meaning send one email to hundreds or thousands of people at like the click of a button? What are you going to send in it? And if you are just talking about yourself, if you are just asking for business and it's always just, we all get them. They just get, they end up in the spam folder of all you're doing
00:21:59
Speaker
is asking for, hey, save 50% off, and you're not giving any value. Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, is all about, in any marketing, you've got to give value, value. You've got to give experience, sharing, free training, free education, wisdom, talk about what they care about, and then, only then, do you earn the right and the permission to ask for their business.
00:22:26
Speaker
So where photographers, I know a lot that have succeeded, but I know most that failed with newsletter marketing because you had, it meant that you had to sit down and write every week or every month consistently and write, not just a lot of people would try, they would just send like a blog post, every blog post they made of just pictures, they'd send that to their whole list.
00:22:50
Speaker
Nobody cares about that. And so you'd wear out your list and you'd watch your open rates means when you send 100 emails, how many people actually open it? And you're going to watch your open rates just plummet if all you're doing is talking about yourself and just sending a list of pictures where instead if some of the best ones, Heather Donlan, early days, she does amazing travel photography in Florida.
00:23:16
Speaker
And so it was always destination people coming to see her, but she would always keep people active on her email list by sending travel, like amazing travel destinations, travel tips. She knew that people would come to her city once a year, so she would keep them clued in to all of the cool restaurants and travel destinations in her city. That is a kick-ass newsletter that people will open, people will click on, and then once in a while when you offer a special, they're going to respond to it.
00:23:46
Speaker
That sounds great, but I think you should also hear, that takes a lot of work. And a lot of photographers don't have the discipline or time to write all of that content, right? They don't like writing, and I'm the same way. I don't like sitting down and writing all of that stuff either. So, okay, that is a newsletter.
00:24:01
Speaker
That's been around for a while and I think it still works, but it just takes a lot more time to get the return. It's kind of liken it to like SEO optimization. Again, it's another strategy that is hard for photographers because you don't get the return on it for like months to come, right?
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's hard for not just photographers, but just anybody, you know, because like you said, the return isn't instantaneous, you know, it takes consistency. There's things that happen behind the scenes that you can't necessarily see. So, you know, I think that's a good comparison. And I also think, especially when it comes to photography and specifically wedding professionals, one of the issues is
00:24:40
Speaker
you don't have forever to nurture them, right? I mean, so if you're just sending this weekly email and it doesn't really have, even if it's a good content, if it doesn't really have a point to it, if it's not gonna get you a client within that narrow timeframe that you have to get that client, because once they get married, they're no longer a viable client anymore, right? So let's talk about the other part, the other part of nurturing. Yeah, yeah, totally. So on one end of the spectrum is newsletter.
00:25:07
Speaker
Let's go all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum or another something on the opposite end, I would say, is a e-mail out of office autoresponder.
Using Pre-written Email Sequences
00:25:16
Speaker
I think everybody knows what that is. If you're going out of office and you want, as soon as somebody sends you an e-mail, the system automatically replies back with a predefined pre-written e-mail. Really powerful, right? Well, you can take it a few steps farther. MailChimp has some of these features too, but this is where
00:25:37
Speaker
Sticky email really exceeds. It's the process of as soon as somebody subscribes Instead of them having to wait for a week or a month to get your next newsletter in the next couple days you first they get their the first email is a great tip email and then a day you skip a day and they get another email and then you skip a day and they get another email and so in the first like
00:25:59
Speaker
14 days of being on your list when they are the most likely to open your email to their most curious, the most eager, the most likely to book you, you're sending them like 10 emails while that lead, while that potential client is really warm and interested. And that is what, wherein lies the power of what is now called sequence marketing or nurturing sequences.
00:26:25
Speaker
Okay, so I want to back up a little bit. So we're talking about sequences now where somebody's going to get an email on specific days. So like you mentioned, it could be so they get an email right away when they subscribe and then maybe they get an email two days later and then one seven days later. And these emails, can you explain to us what they're doing? So why would somebody subscribe to one of these? Can we back up and talk about like, how do I get somebody to subscribe and then what do I send them?
00:26:54
Speaker
And most importantly too, how does that lead to booking a client? Really good stuff. Okay. So the best email onboarding or nurturing sequences are again, writing about things your target market cares about. So I think most of your listeners are in the wedding space. So let's start there. We've got some pre-written ones about how to choose seven tips to choosing the right wedding photographer for you. Seven tips to getting engagement photos that you're going to be proud of.
00:27:24
Speaker
seven tips to choosing the right wedding venues or the right wedding vendors in your city, things like that, where you're targeting somebody who's engaged, who's in that decision process, something they care about, right? Seven tips to your makeup on your wedding day or whatever it might be. We also have some for anybody listening, like in a photography family portrait space.
00:27:49
Speaker
A really popular one is to do 10 tips for how to take better pictures with your smartphone.
00:27:55
Speaker
And so it's all about, you're not going to have every single visitor say, yes, I want it, but it's filtering for the people, for your exact target market who cares about that thing you're going to teach them. Yep. So for instance, if you're talking about seven, seven tips for engagement photos, you're going to be feel proud of somebody who's not engaged is not going to be interested in that or somebody maybe who's going to get engaged might be somebody engaged might be somebody who's married already wouldn't be interested in that.
00:28:24
Speaker
So you're really targeting the people that you want to book. And then in addition to that, right, it sounds like you're providing value for somebody who might not be ready to use your contact form on your website to reach out for more information about your specific services.
00:28:40
Speaker
But they are really interested in making sure their engagement photos look good. So now you're getting their email, and you're able to follow up with them. Or in other words, we've been using this term a lot, nurture them. So take us through this nurturing sequence like you so you mentioned you send them email, you know, day one or
00:29:02
Speaker
And again, this can vary, you know, different people are going to do this differently. But I guess the question I'm getting at is, in your example, you had mentioned, okay, email day one, then two days later, they get another one, and then two days later, they get another one. Should we be worried about sending them too many emails?
00:29:17
Speaker
This is really good. God, you have so many good questions. It's like helping organize my marketing. So cool, man. I love it. So I think the first thing I want to go back to is the difference of why a sequence of emails many of you might have seen or probably opted into like an e-book and a download. Some great photographers will do a PDF, what to wear guide or a venue guide or something like that. That is a one time offer.
00:29:46
Speaker
So if somebody has done that, I think that is amazing. That is like so light years better than doing nothing. But now let's talk about the difference between offering a PDF download and a series of seven to 10 emails. And it all comes down to permission.
00:30:04
Speaker
permission marketing is coined by Seth Godin and it's really he coined it over 10 years ago and it's really what's led to all of this GDPR stuff in the EU where you have to be really really explicit what what I'm gonna do with your email and why I want it and the more again it just comes down to being treating people online the same way what you would in person like if somebody gives you their business card and
00:30:29
Speaker
You're not going to just make a bunch of copies and share it with people. You're not going to be a jerk about it. And you want to be upfront with people with what you want to do with their email. Okay, so back to the PDF. Number one, it only earns you permission to send them one PDF. That's it. That's because I was like, yeah, I want that PDF.
00:30:49
Speaker
And then we all happened to us we opted in to get that pdf for that white paper and then all of a sudden we're on the list and we're getting emailed every day like no dude i just wanted to download i didn't want your emails. So that is what we're helping photographers not do the other benefit so when you offer an email sequence in your form you're saying hey would you like our free email crash course or seven day email crash course on how to choose a better photographer for you you're catching their attention.
00:31:18
Speaker
with something they care about. And then they go, oh, well, yeah, this is an email course. Of course, I have to give you my email. The other frustration with PDF is when you catch their attention with a PDF download, there's this subconscious or conscious frustration that's like, dude, just yes, I want it. But technically, you don't need my email address to give it to me. Just give me a download link right here on your website so I can read it. Why are you getting my email? I don't want to give it to you. You haven't earned that yet. So catching their attention with the right thing
00:31:48
Speaker
has them more likely to give you their email address because it's like, oh yeah, yeah, it's an email course and they're gonna break it up into seven friendly tips. Okay, cool. So now you've earned the permission to send them seven to 10 emails instead of just one. And then you break up in the email, you just break it down into short, simple tips. The other benefit when you do it this way is people actually read your emails.
00:32:12
Speaker
just same way people just scan websites and don't read them anymore. When you give them a PDF ebook, we've all done this to ourselves, it sits on your hard drive and you forget about it. You don't actually go through and read it, you skim it once and forget about it. But when you take that same content that could be in a book,
00:32:30
Speaker
And you break it up into tiny bite size, like two minute paragraphs. They're going to read it and go, Oh, that's awesome. This is helpful. And the next one comes and go, Hey, that last one he sent me was really helpful. I'm going to read, I'm going to open and I'm going to read this next one. So it's just breaking the content that they care about into small steps. And now the final.
00:32:50
Speaker
magical piece that I know you're gonna ask next is, okay, now what about the booking, right? How do you ask for their business? And what I've learned works well, and what is inside of our templates already, is you just gradually get more direct. So email one is like, hey, thanks, purely a gift. Like here's our first tip. If you have any questions, just hit reply. And we're standing by, right? Nothing about,
00:33:16
Speaker
your booking, nothing about pricing, none of that, unless they've asked for pricing and your form includes it. But then naturally, like then the second, third, fourth email, then you can go, Hey, I hope these you end at the bottom of the email, you say, Hey, I hope these tips have been valuable. By the way, if I can answer any questions you have about your planning, your wedding, just hit reply. I'd love to jump on a phone call. Here's a link to schedule a consult.
00:33:41
Speaker
Here's a link to our latest portfolio. And then here's a link to our investment guide. Let me just hit reply. I was listing all of those calls to action. I would never put all of those in one. Sure, sure. Those are just ideas. But they're possibilities for an email. Yep. Exactly. And so long story shorter, you just gradually start getting more direct.
00:34:02
Speaker
with offering the business or asking for the business by the time you get to emails nine and ten you can say hey i really hope this guide was helpful click here to share with a friend that you think might appreciate it and we'd love to know if you're interested
00:34:16
Speaker
and sitting down and talking about your engagement photos. Click here to schedule a phone call. And just being really direct with, or, hey, we've got limited spots left in 2018. If you're considering working with us, we'd love to know so we can get you our available dates.
00:34:33
Speaker
What's so great about that is once that stuff is built and written, it runs on autopilot automatically. You don't have to remember where somebody's at in this nurturing sequence.
Targeting the Right Time for Conversions
00:34:44
Speaker
It's all stuff that many of you have done your whole career just in your head, but it's too hard to keep track of as you start getting busier and busier. It just has to be automated.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think the value of this again is that you're meeting people where they're at. You're probably still going to have a contact form on your website. So people who maybe they've known you, they've followed you for a while, they're ready to reach out and get prices, those people can still do so. These are for maybe the majority of people who come to your website because they're looking for a photographer, but they're just not quite sure yet.
00:35:14
Speaker
And so they're not quite ready to commit or take that action of reaching out and saying, hey, can I check out your prices? I'm interested in talking to you about you shooting my wedding or shooting my session or whatever it may be. The other thing too, and this is especially when we got into email marketing, I think it's a fear that people just have to get over is like,
00:35:35
Speaker
oh, I'm going to send them too many emails. So I'm not going to send them really at all. And then they go back, they default back to this newsletter type mindset, where it's just like something that I do once a month. But the point is, is that when somebody reaches out, they're excited in that moment to get whatever value you're offering for them. And so as long as you're offering them value upfront, they most likely want to hear from you
00:35:56
Speaker
again. And again, there's all sorts of best practices there. At any point, people can unsubscribe from your list and you should make it easy for people to be able to unsubscribe and get off your list should they no longer want to receive
00:36:11
Speaker
emails or whatever it may be. But I'm glad that you dove in and took us through each of those steps and it feels much more like a relationship, right? I mean, handshake when somebody lands on your website. Hey, let's meet up again when somebody subscribes to your list. And then just that gradual building of the relationship through those emails to a harder sell or a harder ask rather and saying, hey, I'm available or I might be available for your wedding and love to talk to you about it more. And
00:36:40
Speaker
instead of having to nurture somebody or going the newsletter route, where you may or may not be nurturing somebody, you know, by sending them one email a month, you're hitting them in that golden timeframe of that, you know, I don't know how maybe a month where they're thinking about who am I going to hire to shoot, you know, my session. So again, really, really enjoyed that you walked us through that.
00:37:03
Speaker
What's fun you did really good questions man i haven't walked through it in such as i think i feel like i understand it better just me you guide me through it that way that's really good well one thing that i really loved about and i got an opportunity to jump into sticky email and take a look at the things that are in there one thing that i really appreciated and i saw one of my friends the harris company mckaylee jade specifically has a
00:37:24
Speaker
if you go into sticky email, there's and you choose your niche. So whether it's weddings or not, I know we talked about weddings a lot. And the reason that I brought up weddings just for people listening out there, because not everybody's a wedding professional that listens to the show. But I think weddings are a unique scenario in that the the timeframe in which you can nurture somebody is much shorter than in a lot of other niches. So I guess by starting with weddings, I was hoping to make clear that
00:37:51
Speaker
even a wedding professional could have powerful results from this. Think about how much more powerful it could be for somebody who doesn't quite have that same timeframe in nurturing somebody. But back to what I was saying was when you jump in and you choose your niche, you get a selection of
00:38:09
Speaker
templates to choose from. And you can go in and edit those and customize those templates, you know, however you'd like. But I think it's awesome that they're there, you know, so you can get, I think Michaela's with a series of seven emails maybe, and you can go in there and you can see exactly how she corresponds with, with her potential clients. And then you can go in and put your own twist on that. But at least you see kind of how it's done. It just makes it super easy to get started. I think there's no harder thing as a creative as sitting in front of a blank screen, right? The saying goes like it's eat so much.
00:38:39
Speaker
It's infinitely easier to be an editor than an author. And so what we're seeing work really well. There's like this part of building email marketing is there's a lot of like pieces that need to come together. They all used to be in different tools. Now they're in one, like the forms, popup forms, the exit intent, that's all included all the way into the emails that go out and the pre-written things all in one spot.
00:39:02
Speaker
But that used to get people hung up with like, what do I write? And now you can go live, like right away. You guys can sign up for our free trial. And within a matter of hours, you can have the form live on your site, sending the first draft of your email sequence. And it's getting it like full circle where it's like, it's done, it's published, it's live.
00:39:28
Speaker
is going to motivate you to come back in the next couple days or the next week to make your emails better. You can add additional links, add additional calls to action, add your own stories, add your own personality, but you don't have to wait to make it live because you have a really good starting point.
00:39:45
Speaker
And I think that's one of the great differences of sticky email compared to maybe some of the other mailing list platforms out there is that when you get on, it's made for you, you know, and specifically for photographers. But regardless of what niche you're in, there are sequences that you can plug and play right away.
00:40:02
Speaker
And I just thought, you know, I thought that was such a great idea because like you said, the hardest thing to do is to get in there and then set it up and then figure it and then try to figure out, okay, so I wrote this email. Now I need to write four or five more. How many days should I space out in between? What are the kinds of things that I should be saying? When should I be selling? When should I not be selling and just giving? Those are the kinds of things that are outlined, I think, well in sticky email.
00:40:26
Speaker
Before we wrap up here, I do want to talk about some some results that people are seeing maybe or even what strategies that people are employing that are doing it really well. I think, you know, if I could go back in time, and we don't shoot nearly as much anymore, our focus is design and branding of everything that you find at davianchrista.com.
00:40:44
Speaker
But if I could go back in time, I would do a couple things as a photographer. One would be taking advantage of email marketing as we're talking about it today, just because it is such a powerful tool. And then on the flip side of that, and I won't go into this so much, especially around print and album sales, I feel like there's such an opportunity there. And back in the day, I just thought to myself,
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, why would anybody want to buy prints? They could just download them. And that's just not the case. I think you're doing people a service. And Michaela Jade, she does a really good job of educating people about this by encouraging people to buy prints because otherwise they don't get printed. But anyways, we're not talking about print sales here.
00:41:23
Speaker
So tempting. I've got so much I could share there too. Yeah, and because I think the people that are doing print sales really well, they've built and nurtured an email list. But then same thing with portrait sessions and mini sessions especially, the people that I see that are selling out mini sessions like that with no difficulty just by emailing their list.
00:41:45
Speaker
And then often they're in the great place of, okay, now I can open up another date. Because like I said, they sold out like that. And those are the people that have built email lists instead of hoping that people see your business's Facebook post about the available mini sessions this fall or whatever.
Successful Email Marketing Campaigns
00:42:05
Speaker
So I was long winded there, but can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the results that people are seeing or the things that people are doing effectively here? That's how we'll wrap up.
00:42:14
Speaker
Cool. Just to a sticky email alone, we've got hundreds of photographers that have already gotten set up and live right away and just getting the form live on their site and collecting leads. And we've got dozens already that are getting those leads are turning into clients. One specific customer here in the Twin Cities, he really helped me inspire this idea and was one of our first
00:42:39
Speaker
addresses in three months and the boudoir space and they can they turn those 300 leads into 22 clients and that was more he hadn't had 300 leads in three years right now he got him in three months
00:42:53
Speaker
And so when you add the exit intent pop up combined with like a really meaningful offer, that's where you're going to see so much more of your traffic take action.
Capturing Leads with Exit Intent Pop-ups
00:43:03
Speaker
This is sort of a ninja move here. All right. But what is an exit intent offer? Can you explain to people what that is? If you've been online, you've experienced it. So you might not know what it is, but you've experienced it. Exactly. So it's when somebody's on your page and when their mouse goes to roll off the window,
00:43:21
Speaker
we detect that on your website. And then as soon as that happens, or right before it happens, we throw up a modal that it was just a quick form where you can add copy that says something like, Hey, before you leave, we'd love for you to grab our free email course on like, blah, blah, blah, right? So it's right before somebody leaves. It's this amazing chance where somebody's like, they've been on your site, they've liked your work, and then they'll go do something else.
00:43:47
Speaker
It's right before you leave. You can say, hey, wait a second. I want to give you this thing. And many of you have seen it, I think done poorly, like clothing sites or something like that. It's like, hey, before you leave, want to save half off. Because that's still an offer. I mean, that's still you're still trying to sell. You're still trying to take in that in that instance. Yep. The reality is it works very well. Like what is illegal and what Google will punish you for is as soon as somebody gets to your site, you show a pop up.
00:44:13
Speaker
That's annoying. That's an interruption. It doesn't jive with how people want to consume content, but the exit intent seems to be working really, really, really well. If there's time, I can wrap up with one of my favorite ninja follow-ups, what to include in the sequence, and it ties into increased print sales. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. Sounds cool. All right, so I've done a couple other podcasts, the full hour, so I'll go really fast on just this thing.
Video Walkthroughs and Building Trust
00:44:40
Speaker
There's a free screen recording tool called Loom. Use Loom.com. I'm not affiliated. I just love them. I use it every day. I made one today to help Davey learn about my website. And I signed up. I didn't realize it was free. I have some other screen recording tools. I guess point being is it is awesome. Didn't realize it was free. I signed up. Awesome. Very cool. I use it in every part of my business.
00:45:05
Speaker
answering questions, making a great first impression. But here's a ninja thing you can do. The first time you sign up for it, go get your pricing guide. And I think the first thing everybody should do who's listening this should take their pricing guide, whatever format it's in today. And like
00:45:21
Speaker
Cut it in half. I promise you you're sending more than you need to inquiring clients. Yes, save the full pricing for when you meet them in person for the first time, but a first-time inquiring customer does not need to know all of your printing materials, all of your sizes, all of your album materials, all of your prices. They're not going to attach any value to that document, so don't send it to them. Okay, that's the first step.
00:45:50
Speaker
Second step is once you have this simplified version, you turn on screen, loom, turn on your webcam, turn on your mic, record your desktop, and you walk through in like three to four minutes, you go, hey, I'm Nate Grohach. Thank you so much for inquiring. I know that choosing a wedding photographer is really hard.
00:46:09
Speaker
We love working with our couples, not only to archive the day, we specialize in outdoor weddings, say something about what's special about you. But then you also say, but what we really like doing is creating archival quality, um, prints and albums. And I'm going to walk you through what our, our clients love working with us. If you see here, here's what our albums look like. Here's how they're different and special. Here's what our canvases are like. And this is why they're different than just what you can get online.
00:46:39
Speaker
And again, you're having a conversation with them as if you would in person. And that is within, you can have them get that automatically. So within seconds of somebody
00:46:50
Speaker
Googling wedding photographer in your city. They find your website. They're kind of got the blinders on. They go, I just want pricing. They find the form on your site. They opt into your form and instantly that form redirects to this video introduction, walking them through your pricing. And that happens automatically now. So you make this, is it as good as doing it in person?
00:47:13
Speaker
Of course not, but is it like light years better than your competition or doing nothing? Yes. So that's my bonus tip. I love it. I love using video to make a good impression and to communicate so much more and to let your personality shine through to saves ton of time. And you every time that video goes out, think about how much time that's saving you every time is instead of having to respond manually to those inquiries, you just send a video response back.
00:47:41
Speaker
And then the call to action at the end of that video is, hey, I know this is a lot. Here's a link to the actual online pricing guide. You can review it however you want. I hope you like these tips. Just hit reply to this email. If you have any questions, I can't wait to get to know you more. It's photographers doing that tactic that are totally crushing it right now and finding ways to use technology to give you time back in your day.
00:48:06
Speaker
We talked about this in other episodes as well, just the power of video and how it builds trust a lot more quickly than email because again, it's not as good as in person, but you can see the person, you can hear them. I think inherently that builds trust. Something that's not as scalable as what you're talking about, but I hear is effective. People responding to inquiries with a quick
00:48:28
Speaker
Loom video, you know, saying, Hey, I'm so and so, you know, I'm really excited that you're inquired. Here's where you can find all the information that you're looking for. Please let me know if you have any questions or would like to set up a console. And it's as simple as that. And right away, you're doing something that probably your competition isn't doing, and something that builds trust.
00:48:46
Speaker
But we've talked about so much today and I'm pretty excited about it. I think people are going to get a lot out of this. Whether you're a wedding professional or a photographer or not, I think email marketing is something that can be a powerful marketing tool in your toolkit. So I hope people got a lot out of what they heard today. And if people want to sign up for Sticky Email specifically, where can they go? You could go to StickyEmail.com. If you go to StickyEmail.com forward slash start, you can try it for free.
00:49:16
Speaker
You get your first sequence, your first form, and you can get it live on your site today. It's stickyemail.com slash start. For those people who don't quite love technology as much as we do, one, I will say the actual onboarding process is super easy. Very much streamlined, very much like click this button to do the next thing that you need to do. But about the forms, how easy is it to get a form on your website?
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah, where they work on, of course, on all of our sites on Sticky Folios and Sticky Albums, but they work great on Wix, Squarespace, ShowIt, WordPress. We've got a video training for all of the main big website tools. We show you exactly how to, you don't have to know code at all. We just say copy and paste this snippet.
00:50:01
Speaker
and log into your system wherever you host your website, and we'll show you exactly where to hit paste and publish, and it's live. Awesome. Yeah, so I know a lot of people are like, okay, maybe I can do that. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much. Where can people find out more about you? Nate at sticky albums.com. Send me an email if you like this episode. I love getting feedback and sneak in my email address personally right at the end of the episode. I've got a training on that
00:50:27
Speaker
video strategy we talked about. I can get a free training that includes a free script, like a video script. So if you're not sure what to say when you're on camera, I've got a script you can use. That's awesome. And I'm sure, you know, I would be surprised if people didn't reach out about that. So thank you so much for joining me. Davey, thank you again. It was an honor to be here.
00:50:48
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to davianchrista.com.
00:51:12
Speaker
you