Constant Contact - Weekly Escape

[Aric C. Hoek]

For a while now I have been thinking and toying with the idea of creating a weekly news letter for photographers and clients alike. Of course the first thought that comes to my mind is that there is no way that I am going to find the time to do this in my already busy schedule. Never the less, it’s still something that I really want to do. Why you might ask? For me the answer has to do with my definition of success as an artist. And this is of course my own definition, or at least part of it. It’s my belief that success for an artist comes through the recognition and association of the artist’s work to the artist, and it seems to me that email is one very easy and fun way for any artist to do this.

My next thoughts were what to title this newsletter. What it’s going to be about? Is it actually going to be a newsletter or something else? I don’t really want it to be a newsletter, more than a break from reality for the reader, so I knew the title couldn’t have the words news letter. I started a word association and decided on the word escape.

It also occurred to me that the title of the email should communicate to the reader how often they could expect the next issue. I don’t know about you, but the frequency of delivery is one of many deciding factors when subscribing to something. However, one thing that I don’t want to have happen is for me to be locked into a deadline each week on a certain day. I already have enough deadlines, so I knew that I wanted something broad.

My final title was Weekly Escape.

One more thing that I really like about Constant Contact is their privacy policy and how easy they make it for people to unsubscribe from a news letter.

So the first issue of Weekly Escape is being designed, and I am using Constant Contact to design it. I love their website. It really allows me to create professional looking emails, and I can track the statistics of the emails once they have been sent out.

I do have to say that tracking the stats of email campaign can be rather addictive for me. You begin to question if changing certain items in the subject line would get more people to actually open the email, or perhaps there is a better way to get people to click the links located in the email. And then you begin to think of ways to make it easier to forward the email to friends.

Over the past month I have been very pro-active with my business and I have been going kind of email crazy. I have designed multiple newsletters and I now have 6 different news letter campaigns! I have one for everything! I have one for replying to my initial inquiries, one for promoting a sale on Engagement Sessions,, one for promoting a sale on Bridal Sessions, one email to announce to my wedding clients that their wedding day images are now online, my weekly issue of Escape, and I even have one for all of my favorite Houston Wedding Vendors. I am actually adding two more two help me sell wedding albums and parent albums. Oh, and I need to make another to help me sell guest books.

Once you have made your emails, you can schedule them to go out whenever you want. So say I book a wedding for a year from now. I can schedule an email to go out to sell an engagement shoot, and then another to sell a guest book from that shoot, and another to purchase a wedding album, and one more after the wedding to try and sell a parent album. You get the idea.

I have put a subscription link into my signature if you are interested in seeing any of these emails.

One last thing. If you are thinking of starting an account with Constant Contact any time soon, let me know first. They have a referral program and we can both get two months free! :)