198: Email Marketing Is Not Optional Anymore

Welcome to Shoot It Straight, the podcast for women building businesses and lives they actually want. I’m Sabrina Gebhart, 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’re ready to grow without losing yourself in the process, you’re in the right place.

Welcome back to the Shoot It Straight podcast, my friends. We’re talking about email marketing today. And I know that for many of you listening, you’re probably ready to hit Skip, because you wanna plug your fingers in your ears and say, “No, no, no, no, no.” And just ignore anything that I have to say. You’re busy.

You’re busy trying to show up on social media, you’re busy with your kids, you’re busy trying to blog and update your website. You’re busy with photographing sessions, editing sessions, client communication, all of the things. And you don’t wanna do email. And so you don’t. Email is one more thing on your list, and I hear you.

I fully understand that the list is long. However, email marketing is not optional. It is 2026. It is not optional. If you want to be running a profitable, successful, and sustainable business, you must be doing email marketing. Now, hear me when I say this. If you are only emailing your audience when you have something to sell, you’re not doing it right.

I know that that is the kind of emails that we get from Gap and Nordstrom and Sephora and Target. You are not a major corporation with a marketing department. You are a small business, most likely a solopreneur. The way that you are going to attack email marketing is very, very different than a major corporation.

So don’t ign- don’t pay attention to what they’re doing. You can ignore them. If you are only emailing your audience when you have something to sell, okay, and I’m speaking to those of you who email once or twice a year when you’ve got many sessions, and I know that you’re listening, because I can’t tell you how many women I coach or chat with at conferences or have in my DMs that tell me that that is when they email their list, when they have many sessions to sell, and it’s once or twice a year, and they don’t email otherwise.

So if that’s you, listen up. If you are doing that, you are leaving so much on the table. You are leaving connection on the table. You are leaving relationships on the table. You are leaving trust on the table. And most of all, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. You are. Even though you are only emailing when you have things to sell, you could be making way more money by emailing your list regularly when you don’t have something to sell.

I know, it doesn’t make sense, but hear me out. In this episode today, I want to try and have you change the way that you are thinking about email marketing. Here’s what you need to know. There’s data behind this. Okay? I’m not just giving you one more thing to add to your list. I’m not just telling you that email marketing is a non-negotiable because, well, it’s a buzzword or a buzz topic or because I’m a Flowdesk partner, which I am, or because I teach marketing, which I do.

I’m telling you this because there is data and I’m gonna give it to you. On a good day, on a good day, when your social media content is really getting seen, anywhere from one to 5% of your Instagram followers are seeing your posts. I’m gonna go ahead and let you pause right here and get out your phone and look and see how many followers you are and calculate that by 5%.

It’s not great. It’s really not great. And here’s the thing. Just because, let’s call it 5% of your followers are seeing your content that day, doesn’t mean they’re engaging with it. Seeing and engaging are two different things. Coming across it while they’re scrolling is not the same thing as stopping, reading, clicking a link, commenting, et cetera.

Now, on the other hand, your email list, 100%, assuming everybody gave you a real email address and not a fake one, 100% of the emails that you send will land in their inbox. 100%. An average open rate is anywhere between 30 to 50%. So even if your email list is a fraction of the size of your following, which it most likely is, there’s actually more people that are seeing your email than your social media content.

It’s just a numbers game. Email numbers are just different. This is where you think about the shift in strategy. Instead of putting so much time and effort and attention into social media, feeling like you’re screaming into the void, feeling like, “How can I finally go viral? How can I finally create that one piece of content that’s gonna bring me tons of new followers that are also my ideal clients in my area?”

Instead of chasing that impossible dream, what if you shifted your strategy to prioritize email, to prioritize growing your email list, to prioritize your efforts in your inbox because the data supports that more people will pay attention over there than on social media. I want you to think about that.

Back in episode 193, I talked about the strategy behind growing your email list. So if you don’t have an email list or you have a very, very small one or you have never put any effort into growing it, go back and listen to that episode, okay? That’s not what we’re gonna talk about today. T- today we’re actually going to talk about emailing.

Um, but growing your list is a really important part of this because what I said back in that episode is that you don’t want to be emailing the same list forever and ever amen. It needs to be growing, otherwise it gets stale. So keep that in mind. Here are some things that photographers get wrong when it comes to email.

Number one, I already said it, they email only when they’re selling. The most common thing I hear is, “I email my list one or two times a year, spring mini sessions and fall mini sessions, or motherhood sessions and fall mini sessions.” And that’s the only time they’re utilizing their, their list. Yes, they’re making money.

They are booking those sessions, they are filling those spots, they are making money, and so that feels like they’re doing a good job, right? It feels like, “Oh, I’m making a ton of money off of these one or two emails I send a year. I don’t need to do more.” And the thing about it is you are missing all those things I said before, connection, relationship, trust, value, and year round sales, year round sales.

I cannot tell you how many times over the years when I would email my photography client list, and it would be a connection-based email where I am not selling something, okay, and we’re gonna talk about this. And I would get a response or multiple responses from clients saying, “I love this email. Also, it reminded me it’s time to book Johnny’s milestone session.”

Or, “We need to get a family session on the books before summer.” And I would book sessions from that, from showing up in someone’s inbox. It happens over and over and over and over again. You will make money even when you’re not selling. So hear me say this. Yes, you’re making money when you send those couple times a year emails about mini sessions, but you are, if that’s all you’re doing, you’re missing so much more than that.

I wanna talk to you about something for a second. I see this all the time in the industry, photographers who are good at what they do. They are genuinely talented, but they still feel like they’re one slow season away from questioning everything they’ve ever done. They are still making decisions from a place of scarcity.

They’re still running their businesses in a way that quietly exhausts them. I know that feeling because I’ve lived it, and I also know what it costs to stay there longer than you have to. Route to Rise is my mastermind for photographers who are done waiting for things to click on their own. It’s a high touch group program, and it’s one I’ve been running for years, which means it’s been refined, tested, and built on what actually works, not a theory, not what worked for someone else, what is working for photographers in real businesses at real stages of growth.

The women inside Route to Rise aren’t just growing their revenue. They’re changing how they think, how they make decisions, how they show up. That’s the work, and that’s what makes the results stick. The next cohort isn’t open yet, but the wait list is, and that’s where you wanna be. Wait list members get first access, more details, the chance to have a conversation with me before the door’s open to anyone else, and a discount at enrollment.

If you’ve been circling this and wondering if it’s for you, that’s your answer. Get on the list,

sabrinagebart.com/mastermind-waitlist. The link will be in the show notes, back to the episode. The second thing that photographers get wrong is selling to the same list over and over again, and I just said that. They’re like, “Oh, I’ve got 300 people on my email list. That feels like a really solid number.

I don’t need to prioritize growing my list and having it get bigger. I’m just gonna keep emailing the same list.” And that list will work for a little while, but eventually, it’s gonna go stale, okay? You’re gonna have clients outgrow you, you’re gonna have clients move, you’re gonna raise your prices so high that you are out of their budget.

Various things are gonna happen, and the list is gonna grow stale, and you’re gonna be emailing the same list and not making sales and not getting responses, and it’s going to, like I said, go stale. So you have to prioritize not just emailing your list when you are not selling, but also growing your list.

The list that you have now is not gonna get you to the next level. We’ve gotta continually drip new names and email addresses onto that list. The third thing that photographers get wrong when they think about email is that I don’t have anything to say outside of my business. And this is where I want to lovingly put my hand on your shoulders and look you in the eye and say, “You are so much more than just a photographer.”

You are so much more than just a photographer. I highly doubt that you walk around in your day-to-day regular life, carpool, volunteering, walking the dogs, family dinner at the table, whatever it is. I highly doubt that you walk around in your day-to-day life only talking about your photography business.

There’s literally no way that’s possible. There’s no way that you are walking up to pick up your child from school and the mom that you run into and you’re like, “Hey, did you know that I’ve got mini sessions coming up? I’m super excited about them. You want your name on the list?” That’s not what you’re talking about.

When you’re striking up a conversation with somebody in the boutique when you’re shopping for, you know, an outfit to wear to a graduation party, I know that you’re not saying, “Oh my gosh, I photographed the best session yesterday. I have some sneak peeks on my phone. You wanna see them?” You are talking about other things.

You are being a human. You are talking about parenting things and kid things and mom things and the books that you read and this great new restaurant you found and this amazing dinner that your husband made and whatever. You’re talking about stuff that makes you a human. That is the same kind of stuff that you can talk about on your email.

The same kind of things that you are talking about with people in real life, in your bestie group chat, at the mom’s night happy hour, those are the same things that you can talk about with your email list. When we start to think about email as a connection point in our business and not just a way to sell to our audience, how do we connect?

Not just through photography. We serve them through photography. We connect woman to woman, as mom to mom, as community member to community member. So I need you to stop thinking that you are only a photographer and that’s the only thing people want from you because it is not. It is not. Some of my favorite newsletters that I get, the ones that when I see them pop into my inbox on a weekly or biweekly basis, the ones that I actually open and read, even if it’s just a skim, are emails that rarely sell.

They are telling stories. They are sharing suggestions and recommendations. Those are the ones that I love. You know why? ‘Cause it makes me feel like I know these people, because I want to get to know them, because I think, “Wow, I thought that same thing too.” Or, “Wow, that’s a recommendation of a, of something that I have been thinking about.

That’s how you connect with people. That’s how you get people to open your emails regularly. And when they’re ready for a photography session, just like the example I just gave you, they hit reply and say, “I love this email. Also, this reminded me we need to get our family session on the books.” That’s how you make money in between those launches when you’re not even selling because you’re connecting with your audience, okay?

The last thing that photographers get wrong, and I kind of just touched on this, is that email does not have to be salesy or even formal. Okay? So if you’re like, “Oh, I’m not a great writer or I’m not super polished,” cool, cool, cool. You do you. If you, if that’s how you are, I bet that’s how you are in person.

I bet that’s how your clients are used to interacting with you anyways at a session. If you’re super witty and you are all about the jokes and the sarcasm and that, and like amazing humor, I would expect you to write emails like that. If you are super nonchalant and unserious, I would expect you to write emails about that.

If you love to tell these deep dramatic stories, I would expect you to write emails like that. You do you. Don’t worry about having to be this picture perfect, formal, fit into a box person that’s only selling and only … Nah, nah, nah, nah. We’re not here for that. Again, you are a small business solopreneur.

Your audience wants to connect with you. They don’t want you to be fake, something that you’re not, trying to fit yourself into a box like everyone else. That doesn’t offer anybody the ability to connect. They want you and we want them to connect with the same person that they’re going to meet with in person if they’ve never worked with you before.

If somebody’s on your email list and they are not a client, they just, you know, grabbed a freebie or signed up for your newsletter because you shared about it on Instagram and they start getting your emails and they’re thinking about hiring you. We want them to get to know you and not be absolutely shocked by the real you when they hire you.

We want it to feel like a natural connection, like, “Oh, this is exactly who I was getting in my inbox. This is exactly the kind of story she told. She’s exactly how I pictured her to be. ” So be yourself. It doesn’t have to be so serious. It doesn’t have to be so salesy. Just be the person that you are. Email is not only a sales tool, it is a relationship tool that also happens to convert really, really well when you use it consistently and you build trust with your audience.

Email is a relationship tool that converts when you build trust through consistently sending your emails. Consistently is the keyword there. We’re not just emailing twice a year when we’ve got mini sessions. I want you to commit to doing this at bare minimum once a month. Once a month is the bare minimum.

If you want to go further than that, every other week. Yes, you have things to say. There is so much more to you than just photography and you don’t need to take it so seriously. You need to focus on growing your list. Again, that was back in episode 193. I’m not gonna get into that today. So we’re gonna focus on growing your list and then we’re going to focus on emailing your list regularly, letting them connect with you, letting them get to know you.

And before you say this, I’m gonna go ahead and put it out there. Yes, they do wanna get to know you. I hear that so often. No one wants to hear from me. They only want photography from me. They got on my list because I’m a photographer. They wanna see photos. No. Sure, they wanna see photos. Maybe they’ll wanna hire you, but they wanna get to know you.

They wanna connect with you and you’ve gotta give them the way to do that through regular, consistent emails. In Route to Rise, we go really deep on this because it’s something that is very, very important. And we talk about the strategy, the consistency, the, the confidence to show up, how to do it, and how to do it really, really well.

And the wait list for the next run of Route to Rise opens for enrollment on June 10th, and I would love for you to be on that list. I’m gonna put the link in the show notes, but you can also find it at sabrinagebart.com/mastermind-waitlist. I hope you’ll put your name on the list. That’s it for today. My friends, we’ll see you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot It Straight Podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at sabrinagebart.com/podcast. Come find me and connect over on the Gram at Sabrinagebartphotography. 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.