Lessons

Lesson Info

Client Communications

when it comes to the rest of the process kind of the pre wedding post reading you need to be really clear and consistent with your communication with your clients it's it's so amazing guys how important email is a client experience I hear from just random people past clients friends family but they'll say you know my makeup artist is really great I had a wonderful trial did a great job on my make up in my hair and very excited but you know I'm really nervous because she sends me these one liner emails with like no capitalization bad grammar no intro not metro card you know and it's just it's so important thorough clear consistent well thought out communication and we've come across so many situations where clients will say you know thiss vendor or this person provided a really great product they fulfilled that expectation they did a great job cordoning coordinating my wedding they play great music on the dance floor and it was an awesome party but you know their communication was just ...

really poor and it made me nervous the entire time do you want your clients be nervous about you you want that to be the feeling anxiety email communication is so important to be dialed in to be clear be consistent and the way that you can help yourself out with that is just building a body of email templates and that is the ninety percent so figure out what you're communicating over and over and over and over again for all your clients and write it out and build a template for it so don't keep riding the same things over and over again because that is so time consuming right have you guys experience that you like I can't believe I'm writing this same email again maybe I should do something about build a template and it could be anywhere it can be inward it could be in pages it khun b in notes that could be anywhere and you just copy and paste and email there's also a lot of programs and applications out there that help you with email templates and help you automate them and send them out automatically so we way use templates heavily just for the younger and we have thirty six evil templates that we use on a regular basis just for the young grins that's enquiries engagements weddings and album designs that's what using for we have two other studios do portrait's and commercial work we have a lot of email templates that we use we build one for nearly everything we possibly can and we have places in those templates to build our own voice and the templates that I've built for the young grins is different than I've built for the other studios who have multiple shooters and they need to be a little bit more professional and corporate sounding there's still personal and friendly but for me these were built with my voice this is erin talking but it's clear it's consistent it's the same communication that every single one of our couples gets and it solves a lot of problems ahead of time when that was going to there's there's the word consistency keeps coming up not like throughout the entire course but but in this interaction and I think the best I mean you know you identified issue that creative entrepreneurs have with any system but especially in a template kind of system like what you're talking about which is well my voice will be lost you know what my what I give to my clients that's unique about me will be lost and you're exactly right there's a balance that you need to strike because other side of that coin is that if you are infusing so much of your voice that you're actually delivering an inconsistent and by the way inconsistent doesn't mean bad but just means a different experience if you're delivering something different toe one bride or one portrait session client or whatever then you are the next one because your voice is is prevalent then you're not gonna have a insistent experience and so using a template model which ensures consistency no it'd save you all that time in the world by the way didn't save us so much time and it saves you ninety percent of the effort but it also ensures you're delivering a consistent experience every single bride gets told about the process that you go through to do engagement session and so they have the same experience that their friend who referred them and they're going to make sure that the front they refer has the same experience so not only are you saving yourself all the effort but you get to deliver a consistent you get to be guaranteed you deliver causes an experience and it's still plenty possible to infuse your voice at the front at the back end you can always include a hello and then go into something specific about them my joke was always the red shoes I love the red shoes you wore last time we saw you you know I don't wear red shoes but if I was a woman I got by that parent red shoes you know whatever but you know you can infuse some personality in it template template and then close out you still have your voice but you're delivering consistency yes in our pool and it's important to build those templates in your voice and there's template we can purchase from other folks but make sure to customize it to yourself and to your brand into your voice and your personality you know you guys have given some of your templates as a guest you guys have some for sale over your photographer store you have given which five do you know which five you gave I believe there's an enquiry template so and all these templates we have different templates for boutique brands and also for large studio brands these air boutique because we know that most you guys were gonna be boutique right there's an enquiry response I believe there's delivering your galleries and there's a couple others I don't quite remember what they are they are want to be identified if you would have any these are the five essential ones that you should yeah so that there's a boat thank you don't you will come to no I think we're obviously I think it's very important that's great so you need tohave interview your email communications and your enquiries as many were close you know many systems and for me a big hang up was the inquiry process because I just hadn't really sat down and figured out what increase look like how I should respond to them what I should do what the timing looks like and so I'd call some I'd e mail some you know it's sometimes I would call that day sometimes the next day sometimes a couple days and it was just never consistent I just didn't really I just hadn't thought about it and now once I started thinking about and saying how do we need to respond to these what's gonna be best for our brand it really became clear and we really were able to start rolling so we live in a millennial driven market especially if you're a wedding photographer with younger folks millennials millennials want fast they want informative and they want personal fast informative personal they have an expectation that they're going to be able to get things really really really fast that it's going to be a personalized experience and that they're going to get a lot of information right away they want to make decisions because there's so many people write coming after them and there's so much noise and they're being pulled in all directions so what that meant for us is we need teo we need to call them right away and like as fast as we possibly can if it's in minutes that would be ideal if we just need to call them right away it's a couple hours later if it's within twenty four hours that's it that's what we want to do call them and then leave a voicemail if they don't pick up and then send him a personalized email it's a template but I personalized according to whatever I received from the contact form and we gear the contact form in a way that I can get some answers that I want so that I can send them a really personalizing well back and then the next day I follow up with another phone call and all that has happened very fast very consistently but I at least knew it's easy that's an easy process to put in place right but when I didn't know it was just really inconsistent and I wasn't able to ride a consistent experience every single person I just wantto just really quickly kind of reset we're at because for us non systems people which I actually sort of assistant person but a lot of hope maybe aren't even on that you know we've talked so far about splitting your business into non branded semi branded and branded the non branded stuff the stuff that just doesn't have anything to do with your business accounting the bookkeeping this is the stuff that robs you of doing the things that matter and it doesn't even need to have your your stamp your brand stamp we're going to be talking about the branded stuff and when you got delightfully delightfully unexpected which I love that terminology creating systems for the unexpected if you will how to add your brand stamp on these things since we've started building to the shooting the marketing those sort of things that's coming in the next segment right now we're really deep diving and I love how you point out like this is where the semi brandon where you need to have your stamp but you have to set up some systems to make sure you're not doing every single thing in it that's kind of what we're living right now I believe we have a question over here is that correct yes just a quick one you were saying from from your customer's contact which I'm going to assume comes mostly from your website and you have a contact page and so you recommend that kind of formalized contact page rather than just email or call I recommend having a contact page but definitely very clearly having her phone number and email address as well okay so have a contact for him but you for sure need a phone number and email address that's very clear right there in your contact form or other places on your website there are people who want to contact you who maybe another vendor or someone that wants to just contact you with a phone call or an email versus a contact for him okay all right great question so there are there's a lot of benefits to using email templates on one of the biggest benefits is that you can track them and he can prove them and jared has been talking about how to track and improve and analyze how your marketing is doing and you could do the same thing with email templates you can improve them and you don't write them and refine them over time because you're sending the same thing and you can say oh you know what maybe if I tweak this I'll get a better response or maybe if I tweak this it'll be more clear and we can avoid a miscommunication and so that alone saves you a lot of future time you know you can avoid a lot more problems because you were finding these templates so once you set them up that's a lot of work but once you set him up then you can tweak them along the way and make them better and better and better and have them grow as your voice grows as your brand grows as you define your target audience more and more and more make sure you develop your communication along with that so it matches use the ten percent to your advantage so we're going to be talking about this just a little bit in depth but ten percent is I also like to think of it as the communication that's not necessarily vital you know you don't the essential communication is responding to an inquiry sending them a booking proposal letting them know that their image is their online different things like that are essential communications that you need to have a need to refine but then there's a lot of communication that's just extra and it's informative and it helps solve problems for your couples ahead of time and so you can use them as a way to make your life easier save you a lot of time and it can also serve your clients and help them feel like they had a really great experience answer their questions ahead of time so we've created a you know wedding day tips document how to make the most of your wedding photography as well as a few other email templates for tips for your engagement session how to dress how to do all those different things and we just identified problems that we were having and we solved them in this document the simplest thing ever but it's so important it saves you tons of time and helps you create an even better product means better experience so one of the biggest problems we're facing sing was that hair and makeup artists bless their hearts I love them they make our pride and our bridesmaids and everyone look just beautiful and they're really talented what they dio but they were always running late and I'm talking really late I mean we would lose like an hour of photo time okay who has been there with me it's it's so tough and you're on the hook so we just we were just like I don't understand why this is happening time and time again there has to be something wrong if different makeup artists are running late and what we realized was that we were giving our couples the start time for photos you know when we were going to do their first look but we weren't giving them any backup time beyond that so they were giving that time to their makeup artist and saying oh first looks that too so I need to be done by two make up artists is great how does to fifteen sounds before you know it we have to put on their dress we have to get the first look location we have to actually set up the first look and do it and you just lost forty five minutes of time so we started sending an e mail communication that said make it on your schedule your wedding day schedule that I just put together for you there's a hard stop time listed for hair and makeup and that is a an essential time you need to have it and get that time to your hair and makeup artist and then scheduled to be done an hour before that that gives them cushion to do a great job and by the way all of your bridesmaids mother of the groom mother of the bride everyone needs to be done at that time even though their photos or later on we had bridesmaids they were dressed in looking awesome for when the bride puts her dress on we had time to do bridal portrait there relax and nice because the bride isn't stressed out of her mind and way were able tio you have really great first looks we rarely rarely have a wedding they run late because of that one change and it all came down to systematize ing a communication every single one of brides gets that communication and now I just know it's gonna happen I don't have to think about it rewrite it every time make sure I wrote it the right way you know and make sure that it was clear and consistent so that was a big problem that we were able to solve and we do that through our e mail templates another problem common problem that wedding days the getting ready room is just a disaster right you walk in and it's just bridesmaids have just exploded all over the room and it's it's you're barely able to photograph anything so we've very simple very quick we told them have someone come in and clean the room and keep his title as he possibly can and I think what gets them the most we really don't want a broad hanging up in the back of your photos to you and they say oh yeah you're right now I don't so when we walk in not only do we have everyone ready to go here and make up finishing up and the rooms are much cleaner they're not perfect but there are much cleaner and then we can say all right well let's tidy up this area this is where she's going to put a dress on and we could make a really beautiful looking space for these just gorgeous elegant classic bridal portrait that we want to take in that space and that helps make our lives so much easier and make their lives easier because they probably have to check out of that room at some point and so they pre clean and it makes it easier on them that's another way that we've made it really easy on our couples through email communication this is something that is directly applicable to basically any kind of photography prepping your clients for the session as faras what to wear what to expect what's gonna happen when you get there and just making sure that they come looking the way that you want them toe look best for photos people just don't know howto look best in photos you are the expert and you need to be their expert and the more that you communicate that you're an expert and that you are going to curate their experience the more that they will trust you trust in today's currency email communication is built that's appreciate what I had to use my preaching very allocated it um trust is today's current easy and jared has been talking about this over the last three days how to build trust with your clients great consistent clear communications great way to do that and in this upfront communication you can also serve them by answering these questions making sure they're prepped and prepared our big problem was that couples would come to engagement sessions and they would just be wearing outfits that for jeff and I were just really block boring uninspiring they didn't look flattering and photos we were going to locations that the couple would suggest and we weren't really inspired by it but we just weren't being proactive in this experience we weren't we didn't have communication around any of this and so is another problem that we had to tackle how are we going to curate these shoots so that we can produce work that really proud of but they connect with our target audience and that helped them feel the best about their photos so we built a whole template and I ever find this thing time and time and time again and it's changed a lot as our style has changed but I let them know what outfits they should wear I've written articles on our block about it and I put that link in that email communications so use all this content that you're building in your marketing strategy and implement that in your communication with links to those block post links to those guys send those out to your current clients you know make sure you're reusing that evergreen contact was going that was what just kind of came out of finally for the first time there was a little little light at the end of the tunnel if you will like oh you khun sort of connect all these things together and we talked about last segment in the marketing side of things the block post turn into guides and the guys turn into evening hosting events and the hosting events turn back in the block which turned and it all connects well here's the beauty of a guy's your marketing efforts connect to your business efforts and that's what you're bringing up this business efforts can connect back to the marketing efforts you're talking about solving problems solving problems seems to be something that we don't just do the marketing that we do it everywhere in our busy this is it all does kind of connect back together and you get to borrow from the marketing side to solve the problems in the business side and vice versa definitely and the best part about it is you can curate the whole experience to fit your brand to fit your artistry and teo to attract your target audience who tracked your ideal client you get too you get to plug in to what your target market is I mean just even hearing what you what you were just talking about I was thinking about how during this process of you solving the problem of law engagement sessions you also get to ensure that they are you get to give them suggestions on how to dress in a manner that is befitting with your turning market that you presume you've attracted you get to reinforce your brand in your style through the locations that they pick through the style of photography when you're showing them examples of the outfits that they're going they're going teo uses recommendations for the locations that you're going to pick this is all reinforcing not only that you're an expert but it's reinforcing everything that you know about your target market it's a win win win it definitely is for us in the young grins we love couples that are dressed and we want the girl to be in a cocktail dress with a beautiful piece of jewelry and a killer a pair of heels and we wanted to be classic we wanted to be elegant wanted to be sophisticated our groom should be dressed in a suit they should be wearing a suit with a jacket or slacks and a blazer you know they should have like a really fun accessory like great shoes really killer watch a bow tie wouldn't pass basically I'm close though I've got the blazer we'll wait we'll send you our yeah and they battle prep you I'm close to getting you are you're getting there so that's what we want out of our couples that's how we want them to dress and our couples I appreciate that because that's how they want to dress too we're working with clients that are ideal for us and so we're curating that building that and reinforcing that for you guys it's probably going to be completely different I know there's plenty of photographers that would just hate life if the groom is wearing a suit all the time and then just would hate it if the girl was wearing heels and I couldn't go off and have an adventure their engagement session you know we're all so different and we can curate our couples in the communication and all these templates to fit your brand your target audience we've taught so many photographers howto identify their ideal client and you will be shocked at how different everybody's are nobody has the same ideal client and this all contribute back to what you talked about which is building out systems and sure consistency and then infusing that the final ten percent of effort with your brand identity and confusing and she had the consistency that ensures it gets done you have a system in place to ensure that gets done you have deadlines you have tasks you reminders of all those things in place but yet you still infuse your brand into clank vacation editing into the album process all those sorts of things and that's why I like to think of this these unnecessary males in many ways he's non vital emails I like to think of them as ten percent because so much of them is about the brand and the personality so what communications can you guys said what ways can you providing experience it's going to be consistent with your bread how can you solve problems for them that's going to be consistent with your ideal clients what different things can you do we once once we started sending this out and our couple started coming they respond very well they started coming in these outfits and they started we started picking locations that we felt more inspired by we were able to produce work that we were so proud of and work that just built our portfolio you know we were able to start showing work that we wanted to show and start attracting more clients we wanted to attract because of building this system of communication it was a direct link to bring in business that we love so it's really important that you guys think of ways to do that um there's a lot of other things the problems that we solved throughout the process you know while the bride is getting ready we tell her by a nice robe you know nice cute white robe you'll feel like you're at the spa and that meant that they weren't wearing sweatshirts and their pictures like hoodies you know or a little like spaghetti strap tank tops you know when you're okay well this I can't show these pictures because you're in a tanked up and but where a rope and it looks classy and they all started wearing robes and they love it they would buy their bridesmaids robes and it's become a thing but now you know we can we can make the photos better but we can also make their experience better so there's a lot of problems that you've been solved by doing that yeah I think that's a well obviously resounding damon I think back to the first the first segment which seems like a long time e I talked about the problems that trip it solved that in many ways I've even no was a problem I wonder if the airlines pay trip because I want to see people they've helped make their connections because of thes e mails that they're setting that solve these problems but the idea of solving a problem not only as a marketing process but it's a business process and solving a problem in a way that maintains your brand actually betters your brand as long as you have it focused on the target market that you're dealing with you can actually elevate your brand through all these interactions way don't think of that that way we kind of systems as devalue our brand but I love your bringing up all the different areas we could elevate our brand through the use of systems they're not going to take the life of your out of your business in fact they're going to bring life to your business because they're freeing up your time and it's when you think of systems you think of you know boring clockwork you know this that the other thing but all you're doing is you're setting yourself up a repeating cycle of the same consistent experience um so as we wrap up and then we're going to take some questions there's just I just want to drive home to you guys that you just can't stay above the weak please if your business keeps pulling you back down into it you can't remain the chief operations officer if you continue to see yourself as a photo editor if you continue to see yourself is just a studio manager you know I see email templates communication I see that as another system and yes I need to go in and you send the templates I need to manage the process I respond to all the enquiries I book all of my brides and took all of our couples I'm heavily invested in that process but I still see it as an overall system and I have software that helps me out and freeze up a ton of my time I have cos I have people that free up my time in all these other ways that allow me to mark it to focus on what I need to focus on which is shooting which is marketing so remember every client touch point could be backed up by a system that makes sure that that touch point happens and that your brand is infused into that touch point email communication it's crazy how many touch points you have in that one system alone with email you're going to solve a lot of your problems just by that so again systems were going for you up they're going to make sure that you khun drive your business on become the photographer that you really wanted to become because you've been able to free yourself up to do the marketing that you need to dio so let me ask you a question before we turn it over anybody else because I think they're all going quite something to ask you what is the next step for photographers that are sitting out there and kind of you know to quote a popular phrase apparently is being used in the chat rooms right now that are leaning in to everything you're saying oh oh I hear you but photographers right now they're saying yes I'm all in on this concept and what's the next what's the best first step to take how can they get something accomplished right now today tomorrow as they come out of this course for building out of system for the entire business that's still maintains their their brand and still targets everything about there are and a client I think the first step really is identified the role in your business that you're spending the most time on is it editing is a designing is a communication it could be any one of those things identify what it is that you're spending the vast majority of your time on and see if there's a way to systematize that have you built email templates have you outsource your photo editing have you figured out an efficient album designing process that's where you need to start you know I could say start with female template start with album signing start with photo editing but maybe you've already implemented that into your business and freed yourself up remember jason yesterday he said there's no way he would be able to do have such a effective instagram and pinterest strategy and bringing all that business to those systems he wasn't able to do it until he started outsourcing his editing and gave it up until he freed himself up he was able to do that so he is a real life example of someone identifying a time think and then systematize ing that area so that's the first step identify one and work on that one area don't try to do them all at once but figure out one for yourself up and then tackled the next one that's taking up your time it's funny you mentioned thie album design component and weigh just did it webinar with melissa jill from from a line album design which is analogue design company and melissa I was talking about what she called profitable album design you know actually making that portion profitable and the biggest thing that she shared was better communication system to your client and I started thinking through behind when we had bombed photographers we were so far behind on albums all the time we were always I mean we're not behind it and delivering the designs that we could just have a rapid album up for some reason how many album designs you guys inherited outstanding when you got the company there was a lot of cleaning house yeah that was one area of the systems that we just never really did a good job at and came back down to the communications we get the designs done very quickly you you of all people know that but we didn't have the right communications set up clients were not properly communicated with and what happened we fell behind in delivering a stellar experience it wasn't that we were late in delivering the design them that and that was the key I and I kind of realized in this webinar with melissa we weren't late in delivering the product to them but we were late in delivering the final experience to them because we didn't have a good system for wrapping that up and so we never tied we never tied that off and I always say that the album is the most important part of your wedding photographer that last the album no matter what type of a dog but you are the last interaction you have with the client is the most important because it's the one they leave on and here you know it took me years later melissa kinda help me unveil and here you are supporting that it's like I can't get away from it this client communication consol problems all across all of your different change your business yes and we did come in and we implemented our communication system into the albums and we were able to wrap up all of these albums are not going to say how many might be over fifty there with all of these outstanding albums and were able to wrap him up within a year and deliver them all all of our clients and get it done and just say just go on and get them all finish off so yes implementing that communication system and you know coming at it from from that direction helped wrap him up very badly and made a lot of happy client it create a better experience