193: Why Your Mini Sessions Aren’t Selling Out Anymore (It’s Not Your Pricing or Your Photos)

Welcome to Shoot It Straight. The podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Ebhart, and around here we believe in clarity over hustle, alignment over burnout, and giving yourself permission to want more, more ease, more beauty, more income, more space to live. So if you are ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

Welcome back to the Shoot at Straight Podcast, my friends. Today we are talking about something that I am hearing a lot currently. In real time. I’m getting dms, I’m getting questions inside of my groups. I’m hearing from one-to-one students and women in my mastermind. They are saying that they have done everything right.

They have written the emails, they have scheduled the launch. They have posted sneak peeks, and still. The spots are not filling the way they used to. They are not selling out of certain offers or mini sessions the same way that they have in the past. So what’s changed? They are frustrated. They are immediately thinking it’s them, or it’s their offer or it’s their price.

People don’t want their mini session anymore. Here’s the deal. They are launching their offer, their mini session to the same list. The same list that has been launched to over and over the list that has stopped responding. That is not a launching problem. That is a list problem. You can have a stale email list, and it doesn’t matter how great your offer is.

It doesn’t matter how well you plan. It doesn’t matter how many emails you send. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your images are. It doesn’t matter what your prices are. If your list is stale, your audience will not respond anymore and they can go stale for so many reasons. If you are a family photographer or a newborn photographer, maybe they’ve outgrown you, they no longer are having babies, they no longer have the five and under crowd.

That frequently gets photographed year over year over year. Maybe they’ve got teens and they don’t get family photos all the time. They’re not getting milestone photos all the time, right? They’ve outgrown motherhood sessions. That’s a very common reason why a list goes stale. There could also be other reasons outside of your control, but what I want you to hear me say is that it is very rare that you are going to have a list that is not growing.

That sells out of your offers all the time, year over year, forever and ever. Amen. That the same core list of people is going to carry you from whenever they got on your list in the beginning of your business, all the way until you decide to shut your doors. That’s just not going to happen. And if you don’t realize this, here’s a few clues.

A stale email list can look like a lot of things. Your open rates drop over time. Maybe you once had crazy high open rates. Lots of responses, lots of engagement, lots of clicking, and slowly it’s dropping. The numbers are dropping, the engagement is dropping. Maybe you see people clicking on your emails, but no one’s booking.

Okay? Or maybe you get the same couple of people booking, but it’s not, it’s not gang busters anymore. Maybe you’ve grown your following on Instagram and or your SEO on your website is working, but your email list hasn’t moved. It’s staying the same. Those are reasons or those are signs rather that your email list has gone stale in addition to the main one that I just told you.

You are launching and they are not responding. This can happen again for a lot of reasons. I think the main one is the one I’ve already said where we are hanging on to this core group, this core audience, and eventually they outgrow us. They move on to other things, right? There’s other reasons too, though.

There’s other reasons too that your list can go stale. Um, maybe the only time that you send emails is when you’re selling. When you’re launching and you go quiet in between launches, you know, they hear from you twice a year. Motherhood sessions and fall mini sessions, and that’s it. Your audience is gonna go really stale really fast because they forget who you are in between their launches.

Maybe they’ve worked with you one time and then they don’t hear from you again for a year or six months. They’re not having a reason to get to know you and become loyal to you. That’s when you’re training your list to ignore you, right? When you’re only showing up a couple of times a year when you’re only selling to them when there’s no other reason for them to open the email.

I don’t know about you. I give this example all the time, but when I think about emails like that, I think about companies like Old Navy or the Gap. I mean, it’s the same company, but how many emails do you get from them about a sale? I mean, it’s so many. Okay, so they are not falling prey to the only emailing their list twice a year.

Okay. Like maybe you are, but they are falling prey to all they’re doing is selling to you. I delete those emails. I don’t even open them every single time, every single time, straight to delete. The only time that email gets opened is if I happen to come across it on a day when I have already planned in my mind that I need to get online and buy a pair of something, jeans, shorts, a dress, a new T-shirt, whatever, and I think to myself, oh, maybe they’ll have something that I want that’s on sale, and then I will click through.

That example doesn’t really apply to you because you are not a major corporation. That’s called always running a sale, right? You don’t have an email list of hundreds of thousands of of people. It’s not the same marketing strategy, but similar, similar mindset of if you are only showing up in people’s inboxes, when you are selling something, they are going to start ignoring you.

Okay? Because you’ve become spammy, right? And you don’t want that. The truth is that circling back around to many sessions and selling your offer, you can have the best concept, the best, most nailed in pricing. The most beautiful images. You can still hear crickets if you’ve been emailing the same 300 people who have seen four of your launches, six of your launches, eight of your launches.

If it’s the same people over and over again and they didn’t buy last time or the time before or the time before that, your list is stale. It doesn’t matter how great of a concept is, it doesn’t matter the pricing, it doesn’t matter the images, it doesn’t matter the dates or the locations. Your list is not buying from you anymore.

So it’s time to get a new list. This is where I want you to pause, and if you are currently planning a launch, I want you to stop. You have got to plan list growth. You have got to plan a strategy and a time to grow your email list before you launch again. You have to because otherwise you are going to launch the next thing to the same list and the same thing is going to happen.

Okay? Your list is telling you there’s stale. You have to listen. It is time to grow your list growing. Your email list is not sexy, it’s not glamorous, it’s not super exciting, but it is a lever. It is a lever because a fresh brand new baby lead is infinitely more likely to purchase something when they are sold to the first time than someone who is passed up on the same offer three times in a row.

Do you see what I mean? We gotta get fresh blood. We gotta get fresh meat onto this list. You are not bad at launching. You are telling me, I’m hearing from you that you wrote the emails, you scheduled it out, you did the wait list, you did the sneak peeks, you talked about the offer ahead of time. You did all the things right?

You’ve already, you’re launching to an audience that’s already made a decision about that offer or about you. So what can growing your email list actually look like? I’m just gonna throw out a few different things. Take any of them or run with them. Here we go. First and foremost. You’ve gotta have a freebie.

Here’s what I want you to hear me say loud and clear. A freebie is not a what to wear guide. If you currently have a freebie that is a what to wear guide, and you’re like, why isn’t this thing converting? Because that’s not a freebie. That should be a blog post. That should be part of your client, um, experience your client preparation.

That should be for serving your people. That is not a freebie. I am so tired of hearing photography, but I have a what to wear guide. That’s what my freebie is. You and 3 million other photographers. It’s not exciting. I can get that anywhere at any time. That’s not special. That’s why it doesn’t perform.

Yes, it’s valuable to your clients. I want you to serve them. I want you to prepare them for working with you. That’s not a freebie. I want you to think of a freebie that will attract your ideal client, not someone who wants free stuff, okay? Those are two different people. The person who wants the free thing because it’s free.

That’s not who we’re going for. We are going for your ideal client. And here’s what I want you to do. I want you to think outside of the box. Think about something that does not relate to photography. I know shocking. If you’re a family photographer like many of you are, or even if you’re not a photographer and you are outside of the industry, I know there are so many of you listening who are in different industries, and I love you and I’m so thankful you’re here.

Just a reminder, you can take any example I gave you and apply it to something outside of the example I’m giving you. The theory is the same. I am a woman, I am a mom. I have three kids. I’ve raised them. I’ve been through the seasons. How can I connect? With my ideal photo client, mom, the mom who’s still having babies, the mom who’s balancing a toddler or two, the mom who is trying to figure out summer camps, the mom who is stressed out and worried and Should I homeschool?

Should I make homemade baby food? Those are the things. How can you connect mom to mom? How can you serve her? What can you give her that is valuable? That’s where I want you to pick your freebie from. Not a dang what to wear guide that’s been done a zillion and one times. Think of something valuable, a good freebie right now in the year of 2026.

It should cost something, but you’re not going to charge them. That’s how valuable I want it to be. I want your person to download this freebie and think, man. This was so valuable. I cannot believe this was free. That’s when you know you’ve got a good one. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was a checklist. It was a one page PDF.

Okay, that doesn’t cut it anymore. I need you to have links, coupon codes, examples, video clips, photos behind the scenes, insider information. That’s where you create value. So I want you to ideate. How can I serve mom to mom, woman to woman, member of this community, to member of this community? What do they need?

Put it together in a super valuable, juicy freebie. That’s how you’re gonna get people on your email list that are your ideal client. Another way you can grow your email list is using your offers or your mini sessions as a wait list. I’m sure you’re probably doing this, but in case you’ve never done this before, this is a really easy strategy.

The downside to this is that you, it’s seasonal, right? A freebie is something that you can have going year round, right? Unless you create a, a seasonal freebie, obviously, but most freebies can be year round. They can be kind of evergreen. A wait list is seasonal, right? Like you’re gonna create a wait list for your motherhood sessions, and then when your motherhood sessions have filled up or they’ve passed, then that wait list goes stale and you’ve got to create something else.

A wait list can work for different times. The best way to use this is using social media to push people from social media to the wait list. That’s where you’re converting people from followers to getting on your email. So that’s a great way. Collaborations. Collaborations is another way. This is where you are getting your, your business in front of someone else’s audience.

You can collaborate with small businesses that are inside of the circle where you and your ideal client live. Or shop or spend time or spend money or whatever. Um, Facebook groups, community groups, neighborhood groups, preschools, there’s, there’s the list goes on and on. Use. Those are exa as examples to just kind of brainstorm and get started.

Where can you collaborate with someone to serve their group, serve their people, show up and support them, and hopefully in turn, get some of their people on your email list. There are so many ways to do this. I talk about this in as an entire module inside of my course marketing that attracts. So if you’ve always been curious about collaborations, you can grab that course.

I’ll have it linked in the show notes, but collaborations are kind of an underrated, slept on way to grow your email list and to grow your audience. When you collaborate with another business, they’re basically vouching for you to their entire audience. Let’s think about this example. When I have had someone on this podcast, you guys know as listeners of this podcast, when I have guests on 99% of the time, I have either worked with them in some capacity, I’ve met them in some capacity.

They’ve come in and trained one of my groups, like I have a level of relationship with the people I have on this podcast. It’s rare. I have a stranger on here. So when I get on here and I recommend. A program, a service, an opportunity hopping on a call, whatever, with one of my people. You guys jump on that because I am vouching for them.

You trust me as a listener of this podcast. You trust me. Thank you very much, and I am vouching for them. Therefore, you automatically have a level of trust and excitement about them. The same thing happens when you do a collaboration with a small business. Whether it’s a podcast interview, a magazine article a blog, swap a newsletter, swap.

Going live together on Instagram, an in-person event. The list goes on and on and on, and on and on. You are getting them to share about you to their audience, and they’re vouching for you. That’s huge. So if you’ve never done a collaboration, I highly, highly recommend that. Another way to grow your email list is kind of the low stakes, like just nurturing content in between your launches.

This is where you’re sending emails to your list. And again, you’re already emailing those people, but what I hope is happening is that you’re encouraging them to share the emails with their friends or to, you know, grab this guide and then share that link with their friends or whatever. But you’re also sharing on social media nurturing content, and when you’re doing that, you’re also like, Hey, make sure you get on my email list so that you can hear about this cool story I’m gonna share on Monday to my list or whatever.

Okay. There’s a lot of ways you can do it. You are nurturing your audience in between selling and you’re mentioning, Hey, get on my email list, that’s gonna get you people dripping on your list. Maybe you’ll get one a week, which is great for a small business. Don’t, don’t think that’s bad, okay? If you can get one new person on your emails list every single week, that’s incredible, right?

But if we wanna go even further, I want you to consider running meta ads just a couple of episodes ago, episode 1 91. I had, uh, my friend Brooklyn on, and we talked about lead generation growth with meta ads, getting started with meta ads. Okay? And it was a really, really great podcast. If you missed it, go back and listen to that.

I am a huge, huge, huge advocate of growing your email list using ads. And how you do this is you run ads to your super awesome freebie that you’ve created. Or seasonally, you can run ads to a wait list for a particular offer. That’s how you add fuel to the fire. That’s how you take things up a notch.

That’s how you can double your email list size in a month or less. That’s how you can quadruple or 10 x your email list in a year. Imagine what will happen when you launch offers when your email list is significantly larger than it is now. When you want that to happen, fast Meta ads is the way to go.

Listen to episode 1 91 first. If you are a member of First Class Lounge, you also have a, we have a training inside a first class lounge in the vault from last fall from that same guest, Brooklyn, and it is literally a play by play walkthrough of how to set up lead generation ads. Okay. Side note, if you are not a member of First Class Lounge and you want to join to get access to that training.

Absolutely you can do that. The link is in the show notes, and I’m gonna have a special code for you at the end of this episode. Okay? So keep listening. We talked about some ways to grow your list, okay? A freebie, a wait list, collaborations, nurturing content, meta ads. Those are all great ways, okay? Ideally, I want you doing all those things at one time.

That’s really like best case scenario, if that’s gonna be your strategy. Let’s go all in. Let’s do it all at the same time. Let’s do the organic and the paid. Let’s mix it up. But hear me, you have to prioritize this because if you just continue to go from launch to launch to launch, and you don’t build in time to actually do this and to do it well, you are going to keep launching to the same stale list over and over again.

I don’t want that for you. Before your next mini session launch, I want you to plan four to six weeks minimum to grow your email list. To double down, to go all in on these things. Okay, and here’s three things that you can do right now. I want you to check your list size and your open rate, and I want you to write those down somewhere.

Put ’em in a spreadsheet, put ’em in your notes app, because we need to be honest with what you’re working with and what your starting point is. Then I want you to create a new, awesome freebie, a lead magnet that will speak to and serve your ideal client that is not photography related. I want it to be so good and juicy that she cannot believe it was free.

Then I want you to set a goal. How many new subscribers do you want on your list before your next launch? 50, a hundred. Double, triple your size, whatever it is, set a goal, and then I want you to change your mindset. You are not just a photographer. You are building an audience. You are building an audience, and when you can shift, make that shift.

That is what separates the photographers who sell out from the ones that don’t. That is what separates the photographers who want to scale to their next ne their next level, versus the ones who stay stuck and frustrated in spinning their wheels. The photographers who are getting consistent results, they are not luckier.

They are not more talented. They do not have better prices. Fill in the blank with whatever sad little excuse you want to put there. They have built an audience that trusts them and they are continuing to grow their audience, period. That’s the difference. Okay. If growing and monetizing your email as to something that you want real support with, I would love for you to join First Class Lounge.

I mentioned it earlier. Not only will you get access, immediate access to that training that’s in our vault from Brooklyn, the guest expert, all about getting started with meta ads to grow your list, but. You get weekly coaching from me, and these are the kinds of questions that I get asked. So instead of waiting to hear like maybe you get a podcast episode on it, at some point, you can ask me directly questions like this, and I will answer them directly every single week.

Not just about marketing, not just about growing your email list, but about anything inside of your business. Client problems, struggles, bookkeeping, money, mindset, fill in the blank. You get to ask me your questions and you get answers from me every single week. It’s so valuable. Plus, you get monthly guest experts, zoom calls for community, all the things.

It’s only $44 a month, which is wild for the amount of coaching that happens in there. But as a listener of the podcast, I have a special deal for you. You can save 50% off of your very first month inside a first class lounge. When you check out, you will just use code podcast deal at checkout, and that will give you 50% off your first month.

I will have it linked in the show notes, but you can find it at sabrina gehart.com/membership. I hope you will join us inside. That is it for today, my friends. We’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode@sabrinagephart.com slash podcast.

Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gab Hart Photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends. Shoot it straight.