7 Time-Tested Ways to Dominate Email Marketing
You've been in the photo booth business for a while now and you have a hefty list of email addresses that you've collected from people, but what are you supposed to do with that list?
Every day that passes that you're not taking advantage of email marketing for your photo booth business, or any business for that matter, you are losing money. Plain and simple.
Not only are you losing potential clients, but you may be spending advertising dollars when they're not needed. Some of our booth owners spend $0 on advertising because of how effective their email marketing is.
Intrigued?
We're here to teach you a few simple tricks that will help you dominate email marketing and grow your photo booth business exponentially.
Let's get started ...
Tip #1: People Love to See Themselves
It's true, people love to look at pictures of themselves. If you've hosted an event and you have an online gallery there are two things you absolutely must be doing:
1) Make sure people know you have an online gallery
If you have an online gallery of photos from your photo booth, but nobody knows about it, it doesn't do much good. Make sure you let people know after they've taken their photo that there will be a gallery online later where they can view their photo as well as the other photos from the evening.
2) Collect their email!
When the guests from the event go online to look through the gallery, don't just require a password. Make sure you have a section where they have to input their email.
Why?
This is an easy way to collect the email addresses from the guests who are interested in look through the photos. After all, if they're looking through the photos it's because they have some sort of interest.
Those are the people we want to target!
Additionally, you should have a "Subscribe to Our Newsletter" button on your website. This is another good way to collect email addresses from people who have visited your website and are interested in the services you offer.
Tip #2: Drive Your Brand Into People's Heads
Okay, so this tip isn't just related to email marketing, but it's good to know anyway.
Make sure your brand and company are known to the people who are interested. This will ensure that when someone is looking for a photo booth company that they don't have to look one up on Google and see the sea of competitors. They'll immediately think of you and find your website or social media accounts.
Talk with the guests that are using your photo booth. Don't seem too sales-y, but it's important that the guests know what services you provide and what your photo booth is capable of.
People need to know that you're capable of more than they may think!
Tip #3: Let People Know of New Products
Once you've developed a good list of email addresses of previous clients and interested guests, let them know when you have something new.
Did you just buy one of the beautiful mermaid backdrops? Let them know!
Are you now offering GIFS or Boomerangs? Let them know!
Did you just upgrade your photo booth to our Salsa iPad booth? Again, let them know!
It's important to let your email list know of new and exciting changes to your offerings. You know what's new because you're using your equipment every day, but they don't.
And who knows? Maybe your equipment has vastly changed since you hosted a client's event last year.
Tip #4: Ask for Feedback
You can utilize email marketing to ask for feedback from your clients. Asking questions like:
- How was their overall experience?
- Did your products and services meet their expectations?
- How were your staff? Did they make the event fun and stress-free?
- Is there anything you wish we would've done better?
Asking these questions encourages engagement and open discussion from your clients. It shows that you, as a photo booth business owner, care about the experience you provide. It'll also allow you to continue to better yourself and your business as you continue to grow.
Tip #5: Contests
Contests are a great way to drive and guarantee future business. After all, if someone wins a gift card for your company, they'd be silly not to use it, right?
When you're going to offer a contest, it's important that you advertise it on your social media and website. If you only advertise the contest via-email marketing, you're not taking advantage of new leads.
With that said, make sure your contest has stipulations depending on the size of your business and following.
For example, let's say you throw a contest where people have to submit the best photo of whatever category you choose and the winner is selected based on votes. That's great, but if the winner only receives 10 votes, there clearly was not much engagement in the contest.
You don't want to give away $500 for 10 votes, do you?
In general, just be smart and know your business and its following. If you're going to throw a contest, make sure it makes sense for your photo booth business. After all, you want to encourage engagement and interaction - that's why you're doing this!
And again, collect the email addresses from all of the people who enter! You want to drive business and interaction with this contest, but you also should take advantage of all of the contacts that you'll receive!
Tip #6: Content Schedule and Subcategories
If you don't have a content schedule for your marketing emails, you're doing something wrong.
And if you don't have your leads split into subcategories, well you're really doing something wrong.
Content Schedule
It's too easy to go weeks without sending an email and it's also too easy to send five emails in a single week without realizing it when you don't have a schedule.
Having a content schedule will allow you to plan in advance what you want to say and offer in your email campaigns. Not only that, but it will also regulate the amount of emails that are sent because you'll know exactly when to send them.
Subcategories
I would say that subcategories are even more important to email marketing than the content schedule. You have to make sure that the email campaigns you're sending are appropriate for the people you're sending them to.
Collecting emails is great, but make sure that when you collect emails at events, for example, that you put them into a subcategory for that particular event.
You really don't want to send an email campaign about weddings to corporate event clients. There could be some overlap, but you're taking a huge risk that they click that "Unsubscribe" button at the bottom and never hear from you again.
Just don't do it, alright?
In general, your content should always be relevant to the people you're sending it to. Use common sense and you'll be golden.
Tip #7: Trial Groups and Campaign Content
Trial Groups
The last thing you want to do is burn all of your emails in your email marketing list, right? That's why trial groups are important, especially if this is your first time utilizing email marketing.
Let's say you have 1,000 emails that you've collected from guests and previous clients. What you should do is split up those 1,000 emails into groups of 100-200 people.
This is important because nobody is an expert in email marketing right away. It's important that if you burn your email contacts that, instead of burning 1,000, you burn 100-200.
Stay on Brand
You've spent so much time building your brand identity for your photo booth business, it's important that you stay on brand.
If your website and social media are modern and clean, your email campaigns should also be modern and clean. If your colors are gold and black, your emails should have those colors.
Stay on brand and be recognizable. Your email campaigns should make people think of your company right away.
Keep It Short and Sweet
I know you're excited to share with your email list all of the new additions to your photo booth company - your new backdrops, that you offer GIFs and Boomerangs, and your new photography service you're adding as well.
Don't overwhelm your readers.
You should aim to stick with 250 words or less. Any more than this and it's very likely that people will either ignore the email completely or unsubscribe.
If you want to share a big news announcement, you can, but try to offer a link to your blog so that your email isn't overwhelming. This way interested readers can read more at the link you've provided.
Discounts
This one's easy.
Don't offer too many discounts.
If you offer too many discounts in your email campaigns, people will start to think of you as the discount guy/gal. This means that they may hold off from booking until they see another discount and that's not the idea.
Remember, the goal behind email marketing is to drive new business, not make yourself a discount company.
If you follow these easy tips, you'll be an email marketing pro in no time!
Want to learn more tips and tricks on how to have a successful photo booth business?
Check out our other blog posts and our 2018 Booth Summit videos where you can hear from real PBSCO Photobooth owners on how they've led their businesses to success!