My ‘target’ market is a bit more ‘general’ then just photography (I’m a ‘mid-career’ multi-disciplined artist/author), so I wanted to reflect that in my ‘eflyer’. I tried to make it a good blend of ‘personal & professional’ for those who might be interested in what and how I do things … I also announced three shows coming up in the fall, and gave a link to the ‘Canadian Copyright eConsultation’ that was VERY active during the summer.

Intellectual Property Rights, especially with the advent of infinite digital replication, are transforming the dynamics between creators & consumers. I was very vocal in that symposium …

The results were surprisingly good. First, before sending, I edited out those I KNEW were not appropriate and/or simply don’t like them. This got me to a ‘start up’ of 730.

I sent the flyer on Sept 23rd and was still getting ‘traffic’ by October 10th, which kind of surprised me, in that, it seems people ‘held on to it’ and read it later. Kind of a good thing to know.

Overall, and thus far, 55% of the total mailout viewed the mail-out, ‘direct hits’ to my blog touched 130, and only 13 from the total list ‘unsubscribed’. The unknown ‘gray zone’ of 45% lwho didn’t register in the ‘trackback’ probably equal half who dumped and half who viewed without opening the graphics – so say my email ‘experts’. (I’ve done this myself with stuff I get, so this seems likely.)

So, all in all, I THINK thems fairly good stats.

I have decided I WILL be doing it again, and have even also added a ‘subscribe to my newsletter’ widget on my blog. It will be interesting to see how that pans out over the next year or two. ‘ I intend to do a mail-out 3x’s per year. For now.

If the number of ‘opened’ starts to fall off dramatically, I will stop.

Thought I’d put this out there for others to compare.

Great blog Heather.

We don’t send promos to the same recipients once a week, but accidentally did to you in September. Good catch. We are very conscientious about not being overbearing to art buyers in our promotions, in-person portfolio breakfasts, etc.

Thanks for the mention….

Promotion is such an odd beast. I remember the first time I went to Ogilvy as a student on a tour and they wheeled out a shopping cart, literally a shopping cart of mailed promo’s most of which were unopened. It was wonderful, we got to pick and choose and keep, a friend grabbed a big thick Hans Neleman promo still shrink wrapped… All I could think of then is how he would feel knowing they just wheeled out out a cart and gave students free reign over promos never looked at. So much $ that thing must of been. I think it shifted and then shifted back again…. as it will again soon.

As usual, the best answer to all this seems to do the best with what you can. The right piece at the right time seems key above all else, do hard mailers, do emails – make it all as interesting as you can. The rest ain’t up to us (photographers).

Jonathan