Hyper promos

My friend Kenneth likes to joke that I'm somewhere around 80% made of computer parts, and my friend Jason likes to call me "Dot Com" as in "johnloomis.com" -- but the truth is that out of my group of photo friends, I'm not even close to the most technologically knowledgeable, advanced, or interested. I didn't shoot more digital than film until this year, and was basically the only photographer left shooting film at all while I interned at the Hartford Courant, Palm Beach Post, and Arizona Republic during college.

Despite my weak proof of not being a tech nerd (I'm certainly the other, more traditional type), I've recently started to try and better use the internet to promote my work and because of my efforts have gotten calls from at least a half-dozen friends and fellow shooters in the last month asking "how do you do that?" What they are referring to is my latest effort, which has already been in extremely widespread use in many, many other industries, but which is just being implemented en masse by photo folks: the HTML e-mail.

Basically... its a web page, but in an e-mail. Yep, that's all. The big deal of it is that by using HTML you can replicate and replace the traditional post card mailer that many of us have long since sent editors (and hoped their assistants didn't immediately trash them), and do so at a very small fraction of the cost. And instead of just having a simple picture, you can also deliver a hyperlink to your web site and e-mail, include news on your recent efforts or awards, and give the busy photo editor and easy way to save your image and pertinent information right there in their mail program (much simpler than keeping filing cabinets).

I send monthly promos using HTML to my address book of clients, and friends, which displays a single picture and deliver a bit of news. Some people send them quarterly (which is how often I still send out traditional 8x6 mailers with Redux), and others e-mail even weekly (which is too often, if you ask me). My design has changed slightly over the 8 months (also connected to a web site change), but its always been pretty simple. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is my most recent promo -- which is going out tomorrow morning (9 a.m. if you want to set your alarms, editors) using an online "e-mail newsletter tool" called Campaign Monitor. Through using CM and other similar services, not only do my e-mails go through easily, but I get immediate stats on how many were sent, opened, bounced, which links were clicked, etc. Very cool, and its allows you to learn if and how your promo is being received.

My design is solid, but not inspired -- partially inspired no doubt by Apple's roundy boxed newsletters -- and I'll probably change it up once I get enough energy to create/commission an entirely new web site as well. By next month's promo I hope to have my new PhotoShelter archive up and running enough to include links in my "news" section so that editors can choose to jump straight to a gallery of recent work that I mention. Additionally, and this will require help from a bigger nerd than I, I want to set up a way for editors to forward my e-mail on to colleagues who I may not know yet.

The overall response to my e-mail promos has been pretty good thus far. I've booked a few jobs, had portfolios called in to be reviewed, and had a lot of positive feedback from editors and friends -- something that is always lacking in being freelance. I've also definitely made a few mistakes as well, including accidentally using an image of my from a new shoot that had not yet been published by my client (there had been a miscommunication, and its not uncommon for me to not see how and when things run.) Oops.

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