The Top 7 Email Marketing Strategies For Photo Booth Owners

Social Media marketing might currently dominate the landscape in this hyper connected online age we all live in. However, that doesn’t mean traditional marketing channels like Email Marketing should be forgotten.

It is one of the few channels where you have total control over your messaging and your audience. Social Media is subject to frequent changes in ranking algorithms and terms of service. This makes Email Marketing an extremely powerful tool while being cost effective. All photo booth businesses should be using Email Marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

To help you, here are our email marketing strategies to do this effectively:

The Top 7 Email Marketing Strategies For Photo Booth Owners

1. Build An Email List That Converts
2. Schedule Your Content
3. Write Awesome Subject Lines
4. Create Stunning Visual Designs That Engage Your Audience
5. Create A Call-To-Action That Motivates Your Audience
6. Analyze Your Campaigns To Measure Success
7. Improve Your Campaigns With Split Testing

Build An Email List That Converts

How amazing would it be if thousands of dollars worth of photo booth bookings rolled in every time you sent out a promotional email? Well, this is totally achievable if you build your list the right way.

Tips To Build An Email Marketing List The Right Way

• Choose a powerful email marketing platform e.g Mail Chimp for beginners or Omnisend for advanced marketing
• Have a sign-up form on your homepage and other main pages on your website
• Use pop-ups when a new user visits your website to entice sign ups
• Integrate your sign up form with your chosen email marketing platform so all details are  automatically added to your database
• Drive sign ups from both online and offline e.g. Social Media profiles and live events
• Give incentives to sign up like a monthly prize draw
• Place a CTA (call-to-action) on your email signature
• Never add anyone without their consent or knowledge
• Ensure there is an unsubscribe link (for CANSPAM compliance)
• Offer additional “member” benefits to signing up like exclusive offers and deals
• Be active on social media, blogs and forums so people find their way to your sign up form
• Promote on your invoices and quotes
• Leverage another businesses email list. (They must have a similar target market) e.g. offer some advertising space on your next newsletter or email in exchange for the same on theirs

One method that is not recommended is buying a third-party email list. Aside from the risk of fake information, the problem is that none of those emails have opted-in or know anything about your business. The last thing you want to do is get your business email blacklisted for sending spam. There are strict guidelines about spamming.

2. Schedule Content

All the major email marketing platforms have an inbuilt scheduling function. It allows you or your marketing team to brainstorm and create multiple campaigns and then simply schedule them to go out to your audience as required.

Working in tandem with this functionality we recommend creating an editorial calendar for the following quarter, six months or year. An editorial calendar allows marketing campaigns to be prepared well in advance for upcoming events, holidays and seasonal themes.

Approaching your marketing this way will also ensure you aren’t scrambling last minute for ideas or missing opportunities due to lack of planning time. In the middle of silly season when you have more photo booth bookings than you can handle you’ll be glad that you planned and scheduled your marketing endeavours.

3. Write Awesome Subject Lines

The importance of getting your audience’s attention from just the subject line can’t be understated. You have just seconds to convince them to open, otherwise your unread email goes to the bin.

Tips To Write Awesome Subject Lines

• Write the subject line first and keep it short (5 – 8 words max)
• Put the most important words at the front to avoid being cut off when viewed on a mobile device
• Be specific and to the point, avoid filler words
• Use emojis where appropriate to help make your subject line stand out in a client’s inbox
• Try to offer an incentive of some sort to encourage the reader to open your email like giveaways or special offers. You can also allude to something interesting they might want to read about like “Guess which celebrity jumped in our photo booth this time!”
• Use a familiar and inviting sender name e.g [email protected] and not newsletter@ or info@ which dehumanizes the content and makes it easier for readers to delete without opening

4. Create Stunning Visual Designs

Opening a text only email, no matter the content, is never going to have the same impact as one that is appealing to the eye. Be it imagery or simply design you should always be creating something that is visually appealing. Most email marketing platforms have content builders to help you create compelling designs. There are also content creators like Canva which has thousands of free templates and design elements to help you. Use your best images to showcase your photo booth business’ products and services.

5. Create A Call-To-Action That Moves Your Audience

Now that you have your audience reading your email you need to gently but directly tell them what you want them to do and how.

Tips For Creating Great CTA’s

• Use compelling action verbs such as Sign Up, Book Now, Learn More, Get Offer etc.
• Integrate a large button link into your email which takes them to the next step
• Use contrasting colors for the button to make it pop
• Create urgency by placing a limiting factor e.g. First 5 bookings, available for 3 days only
• Keep it simple

6. Analyze Your Campaigns To Measure Success

No matter what your goal is with an email campaign you need to be able to measure its success. Email marketing platforms have some great functionality to help you do this. Knowing your benchmarks for open rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, click-throughs and conversions is vitally important and something you should be monitoring with every campaign to determine success. This knowledge will allow you to make informed decisions not only as to the success of your campaigns but also what areas need improvement.

7. Improve Your Campaigns With Split Testing

Split testing refers to creating two or more versions of the same marketing campaign and then sending those to different segments within your database. You can then analyze the results and determine which wording, subject line, CTA, visuals etc. were more successful in achieving the desired outcome.

When done the right way every Photo Booth business can achieve great results with email marketing.

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