7 Ideas To Stay In Touch With Your Photography Clients
You delivered the gallery, your client is paid up…now what? It’s important to stay in touch with your photography clients after their sessions. Before you get upset over yet another task you have to add to your list, hear me out. Not only does staying in contact help you get repeat clients, but it also helps increase your referrals.
After all, the saying “out of sight, out of mind” is 100% true!
But I hear you. It is hard to keep up with past clients when so much of your energy is invested in getting new clients and delivering for current clients. So today, we’ll review 7 ideas on how to stay in touch. For the sake of your sanity, we’ll keep them to low-effort ideas or tasks you’re already doing.
1. Automate Life Milestones
The first thing on our list is something everyone loves: recognizing major life milestones. Birthdays, anniversaries, babies – these are all worth celebrating! Just because your session ended, doesn’t mean you can’t chime in to say congratulations.
If you’re a wedding or engagement photographer, make sure you send an email on your couple’s anniversary. If you’re a maternity photographer, send a personalized note around their due date. Save time by creating an email template for these milestones and automate the process in your CRMs. (Honeybook has easy workflows to let you do this!)
2. Send Holiday Cards to Past Clients
I don’t know about you, but I’ll take any excuse to share my holiday cards! As a photographer, sending your holiday cards to clients is a great way to remind them to do the same (hopefully through your Pixieset). You might even see the same clients ask you about Christmas mini sessions and printing their own photos as cards.
If you want to go the extra mile, include a special incentive for anyone who wants to print their photos as holiday cards. They’ll love the discount and you’ll love the extra sales!
3. Email Newsletters
Once you secure a new client, you should be adding them to your email list. (Flodesk is the email marketing platform I use and recommend!) From there, you can start sending monthly or quarterly email newsletters to update past clients on new offerings, promotions, recent reviews, and your latest work.
I know you may think clients won’t want to hear from you after they get their photos, but they do! Many of my clients use their email lists to book out their mini sessions, fill in last-minute cancellations, and incentivize clients to refer them to friends. You don’t have to go crazy sending emails. It really only takes one short email a month that you can outsource if writing isn’t your thing.
4. Share Blog Posts
You’ve heard me talk about how important it is for photographers to blog for SEO. The truth is, it’s a great way to answer questions for current and past clients too. Include any blogs in your newsletter. Share a combination of blogs that appeal to clients preparing for their session and those who need to know what to do with photos after their session.
As someone who actively shares blogs with their email list, I promise you people actually do love to see your posts!
5. Stay in touch with Photography Clients on Social Media
Clients don’t just unfollow you on Instagram after their session. Social media is a great place to keep up with past photography clients. They will still follow you to see teasers of their photos, keep up with your life, and see other beautiful shots.
You can also keep up with their lives by following them back. Social media is great for finding out which clients are starting families and hitting life milestones you didn’t already automate. It takes just a few seconds to send a quick voice note congratulating them or to tell them you are posting a blog with their photo in it. But doing this is how you continue to create super fans!
6. Host Annual Events
I know a lot of photographers who like to host annual events for their clients. Some keep it casual as a group coffee date to catch up. Others make an entire show out of it – hiring a photo booth, DJ, and turning it into an excuse to dress up and dance. (Huge fan!)
Clients love this because it allows them to network and have fun. You’ll love it because throwing a client mixer makes for great social media content to woo future clients.
7. Send Exclusive Offers
I hinted at this before, but your past clients are perfect prospects to be future clients. They already hired you once, so they know your work is amazing. I like to send past clients exclusive offers once a year. Not necessarily for “sales”. I like to get creative.
Send promos for mini sessions, model calls, or something closer to home – like an anniversary photo shoot. Doing this incentivizes them to book you again and allows you to add extra profit to your books.
Past Photography Clients Are Invaluable To your Business
Keeping up with them doesn’t have to be hard. Some of the best ways to keep up with your photography clients take little effort. The best part is most photographers don’t bother to keep up with past clients. Doing so will make you stand out and shine! So, even if your clients have used other photographers in the past they’re more likely to think of you since you are the one who reaches out regularly.
Check out the blogs below if you want more tips to improve your client experience or ideas to drum up more sales.
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