One of the best strategies I know for creating meaningful, lasting relationships with your clients is using snail mail! In this episode, I go into my experiences using snail mail to create significant impact in my business, and the methods you can use to do the same. Let your clients know how grateful you are for them by sending them some happy mail this year!

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Grab my Snail Mail Kit! These customizable Canva templates will give you everything you need, including a return address label, postcard, and a thank you card! I’ve even included a cute little video to walk you through how to customize the templates!

Let Me Send You A Postcard! (0:15)

Why Is Snail Mail An Incredible Tool For Your Business? (3:47)

Why You Want To Love On Your Past Clients (4:47)

Why I Love Sending Valentine’s Day Cards (6:04) 

How I Design My Valetine’s Cards (8:55)

Strategies For Using Snail Mail To Impact Your Clients (10:01)

How To Collect Addresses And Get Started Using Snail Mail (13:23)

Get The Snail Mail Kit (14:16)

Send Me Your Feedback: When Are You Mailing Your Clients? (15:53)

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to Quiana Marie weekly, a podcast for creatives who love to celebrate wins big or small by dancing in the kitchen photographers who are excited to serve their clients and friends who are ready to chase really, really big dreams. You can find all of the resources mentioned in this episode at Quiannamarie.com/podcast. Join me as I share weekly motivation, chat about growing pains, finding genuine connections and celebrating your wins through the lens of a photographer at heart. Come join me for a dance party ready? Loves though. Hey, my love, I am so so thankful you’re here. Before we dive into today’s episode, I just want to take a moment and share my gratitude. And thank you for listening.

Thank you for supporting my business, and honestly helping to be the fuel that helps my dreams become my reality. None of this will be possible without you. And I cannot thank you enough. In fact, I kind of wish I had your address to send you a thank you note because I am one of those weirdos that just absolutely loves sharing my gratitude and sharing my love with snail mail. In fact, if you would love to be added to my sale meal list, which I am not even joking, I will send you a postcard and add you to my holiday list. Please Please add it to the list. I have a link in my blog and added to the show notes so you can be included. Because I want you to feel so loved and so appreciated with out sounding like a creeper.

I know that sounds kind of weird. But let’s get started. In today’s episode, I actually want to ask you When is the last time that you received a piece of happy mail in the mail, something that landed on the front city, your car ended up on the counter in the kitchen. And then finally after being shoved in the corner on your desk, you opened it and you thought oh my gosh, this was hiding in here. Amongst all the bills and all the crap that we get in the mail, that one piece of snail mail just brought Happy, happy smiles to your face. When was last time that happened for you. Now, I don’t know about you. But I absolutely love getting surprise mail in the mail. Sometimes. And this is totally the old school Catholic guilt that I have.

Sometimes I’m expecting thank you notes. And I know that sounds so bad, we should not be having these expectations. We’re all working on releasing those expectations, just living in the moment. But you know, sometimes you attend a wedding. And you’re kind of hoping to get that thank you note soon. Or after you celebrate a friend’s birthday and you give her a gift. There may be a piece of you that is kind of thinking you’re going to be expecting that right? But what about those super sweet random cards and postcards? That just ends up in your life? And you just think that is so sweet, right? Like it’s just it just feels good. So I want to ask you, from a marketing and small business standpoint, are you creating those moments for your clients?

I know that we can sometimes be so caught up and dancing on reels and lip synching lately has been totally a thing, which I think is awesome. No judgment there. Because clearly I’m doing it and being silly. But I feel like there’s this, this push with small business that makes you want to just reach reach, reach, reach, reach for new customers new inquiries, and honestly just attack people that you’ve never met before. My challenge for you is to consider what if we can love on our past clients? What if we can send sweet love notes, thank you cards and just kind of like just little happy smiles

sprinkled throughout the year. I’m telling you right now, if you’re not sending snail mail, and happy mail surprises you are sleeping on it’s an incredible marketing tool for your business. Now I’m saying this from a genuine heart I don’t want to come off like I’m this like sales like sneaky person. And I’m trying to manipulate my clients. If you know me in person, you know that that’s not my heart and not my intention. However, after years and years of building this business from the ground up and doing these things naturally, honestly because my mom said so I cannot tell you how much my business has grown and built this incredible foundation of friends, followers and families that are so loyal to me. It’s crazy.

That is something that I will never ever, ever take for granted. In fact, it has helped my business bloom so much that I cannot help but like I can’t keep the secret to myself like I have to share this. So on today’s episode, I’m really excited to share some tactics, tricks, tools and some strategy that I use to send my mail to my past clients. Because to be perfectly honest, instead of giving my energy and money into just slapping things on Facebook walls, and hoping they stick I would rather love on my past clients give them a reason to talk about me give them a reason to be top of mind. Because I look at it this way, the people that are in my life now I can wholeheartedly say that they are genuine, loving, caring fun, most of them love country music, because it’s totally my vibe, some don’t. And that’s cool. But I’m just saying like, they’re my people. And when I can love and serve my people, we all know good people, no good people. I’ve

said that before on the podcast before and it’s so true. So the more we can love on our clients that I’ve worked with us, that appreciate us and want to talk about us, let’s give them something to talk about. Okay. So I want to dive into some tactics for you. Okay. So I think a lot of times when we think of snail mail, we think of actually sending stuff in the mail. We think of flyers, which are awesome, and I think can have a huge impact. And then I also think we just go naturally to thank you cards, we should all be sending handwritten notes to our clients to really share our gratitude. But I challenge you to think of other times during the year that you can send these little reminders. One thing that I absolutely love sending every year are Valentine’s Day cards. Now, I know if you know me in person, I can be a little cheesy, and I’m totally hopeless romantic. But sending Valentine’s Day cards is really on brand. For me as a wedding photographer. I love sending Valentine’s Day cards. In fact, when I first started sending out cards, I would send anniversary cards to my couples and they loved it I was so on top of it when I only had a couple clients every year. And I could send them anniversary cards literally like a week before their actual anniversary. I already had it on my calendar. And it reminded me to send out a sweet love.

No, it took me I’m not even kidding, less than five minutes to send a card, slap with a stamp on it and send it out. It was so easy, and it created such an impact. But then I’m trying to keep it really real with you. After shooting dozens of weddings a year, upwards in like 2017 2018, I was shooting 40 Plus weddings a year it was just getting out of hand, as far as keeping up with everybody’s anniversary dates, right? Like it was just impossible. So what I recently did last couple years is I just lump everybody together and said everybody’s getting a Valentine’s Day card. And honestly, that was the best decision for my business ever. And I’m going to dive deeper into this real fast before we move on to other holidays and things to think about. But one way that I really love to impact with my Valentine’s Day cards, is I use this website called Social prints studios. And I love this website because there are tons of gifts on cute, like just different ways to print your photographs into sweet little gifts. You can make stickers, you can make magnets. They even have a super cute one that I use a lot. And I haven’t done it recently.

But I love making those little film strips, which is so great because I can slip those into a thank you card, Akron mini sessions or just after a photoshoot. And I’m not even kidding, those are still on refrigerators today, with five years later. Like it’s insane, the longevity that those things go and I just want to pause. Even though I’m digging deeper and deeper in this conversation without going on a tangent, I want you to think about like your Instagram posts and how those are so fleeting and how those maybe like your Instagram Stories maybe last literally 24 hours. But I want you to think about a flyer that you send out or a card that literally ends up on someone’s fridge. And it could be there for decades. I don’t know if you guys are like sticker or sorry, like picture people on your fridge or if you keep it like super clean. But if you’re a young family, I’m sure you have a bunch of stuff on your fridge and if not in your kitchen, in your garage fridge.

But these things last forever, especially when they have a special attachment to it. And they’re pictures of their family. Right or their their wedding day. It’s just they just last forever. So back to my tangent here about social print studios. So I love this website because I will create a template in Canva. So all of my couples will get the same back. So it’s a it’s printed on front and back. And so everyone gets the same of one thing which would be so cute. It’s a little saying like Happy Valentine’s Day to your forever Valentine. Something really sweet that just says Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s a cute little card and then it’ll just say XOXO Quianna. Sending you love from Arizona, Big hugs, whatever. And then on the front side, everyone gets their own photo

so it’s personalized to them, which is great for past weddings, and mini sessions. And I love this because it’s just so personal. And I love actually thinking outside of the box. So if you’re a photographer listening, this is a great opportunity to send an image from their gallery that may not be one that hit the album or is blown up in their home. Just a sweet intimate moment that they may have not even ever thought of printing. But it’s just something really fun that they can once again add to their fridge, take it to work slipping into cabinet in the garage like you know what people do with their photos. Like it’s just they hide them right and then they somewhere special. I know I’m really excited about Valentine’s Day cards, but it’s coming up soon.

And I just placed my order. So I’m really excited about this. But I also want to share a couple other opportunities to send out just random cards, okay, so I want you to really be strategic about your business, and how you can impact your customers and your clients. So, for example, a couple things that you can do is look through the holidays, okay, and I’m talking like the generic holidays that are on our calendar. If there’s anything that is so pertinent to you, then send out a card, send out a flyer, it could simply be as simple as St. Patrick’s Day and how you’re so lucky for them to be in your life. Feeling lucky, here’s a discount code for your shop or for your business. Or another thing that you can do, which I absolutely love doing, it’s been a little goofy, and stepping outside of the box is checking out the, like the national holiday list. And from that, you could pull up things that are specific to your business, right. So maybe you’ll I don’t know, it’s, I have so many thoughts in my head about all these different businesses. But the first thing that comes to mind would be like National cookie day or something if you are obsessed with chocolate chip cookies. And that’s like your thing. Maybe you send out a little reminder, with a cute little recipe card. You don’t have to send out mass mailing chocolate chip cookies to everybody.

I mean, that’d be amazing if we were rich, but I’m just sending out a little reminder for that is huge, because then not only are they getting that reminder in the mail, but then subconsciously, every time they go to grab a chocolate chip cookie, they may think of you. So these are just subliminal messages without sounding crazy, that you can impact your clients. Okay. And then of course, I’m a huge advocate for sending out grateful or thankful cards around Thanksgiving, I feel like that’s a really safe holiday card to send. So it’s not too Christmassy, or religious, you know, it’s not like too denominational, it’s just a sweet thankful card that you can send out like the first or second week of November. That’s really sweet, thanking them for their business. And then of course, holiday cards are always a given. I love sending those too. But these are just different ways, I want you to start thinking about ways to send these cards. Okay, another one before we move on. As I love what National Women’s Day, it’s I believe it’s sometime in February, I need to check. But that’s a great opportunity to send cards, handwritten little postcards, to friends and family members that you just love and support and probably weren’t even past clients. They’re just just friends, right?

So the whole point of this I can go on and on and on is literally just rattling the universe. And giving yourself a reason to show up on your clients, family members, friends, kitchen counters, like if I can just like sum up this whole episode in that, let’s just literally show up and be in people’s faces because we can control that. Okay, we are not battling algorithms, or all these, you know, trends and these hoops and all these things that the social media puts us through, we are literally showing up in people’s homes. And I think that’s incredible. So if you’re thinking, Okay, I think I’ve got some ideas, I actually want to start doing this. How do I start collecting all these addresses. So the one way that I have collected addresses over the years is this website called postable. And I’m obsessed with this website. And because it allows what you can, it creates a link for you, that’s your own personal link. So people can click on it. And then they just get a little window boxes that they can input their own information.

And it’s great because it’s safe and secure. So they don’t have access to your address book, obviously. But it’s a great way for you to collect those addresses. So I pop those into my email newsletters, I pop them into my like into stories, sometimes I’ll say, Hey, I have Valentine’s Day cards coming out soon. If you’d like to be added to my list, please enter it here. And that’s a great way to collect them too is just creating a questions box. But it’s so nice. Just having them already prepared for you. Yeah,

I mean, that’s really just all it is. So I’ve created a snail mail kit, which is just a bundle of Canva templates that allows you to customize your return addresses. In fact, I’m so extra that I even have my picture on like a tiny photo of me on my return address labels. And it’s a cutest thing because when I send Valentine’s Day cards or birthday cards to my nieces and nephews, they literally will save it like they will FaceTime me when they receive it. A lot of them live out of state for me and they’ll FaceTime me and then like Donta key or at Kiki like I see your face and they just they love it. But that’s another way that you can input your branding into these sweet snail mail cards and postcards. So in the kit you will receive there’s a bundle of different templates for the return address later. polls, I have postcards in there, which are a great way to just send a quick little mailer out to the woman you love most in your life. Sweet thank you cards. And then of course, there’s templates for thank you cards as well.

They’re fully customizable. So you can drag and drop your images, you can drag and drop anything, you need to change the text, change the font, change the colors. And I’ve even included a cute little video to kind of do a quick little like run through on Canva. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Canva is a free kind of like editing, I would say it’s like a, like a little sister version of Illustrator. But there are so many features on there with Canva. It’s crazy. Like you can always upgrade to the professional one, but you do not need an account, you can absolutely do it for free and mess with the template for free without signing up. So I think that’s awesome. And yeah, I honestly cannot wait to see what you come up with. I would love love, love to hear what your ideas are as far as like, when are you going to send these cards out? Are you going to send out Valentine’s Day cards? Are you going to send out Fourth of July cards? Are you going to send out back to school cards? Or maybe you come up with a spring cleaning card? Right? I mean, I don’t know. You can be really creative. And you know, I just want to kind of end with a quick little tactic to is, I’m not even joking when I say I probably spend about two to $400 a year on these cards. And when it comes to the males, the mailers, the actual cards, and messing with Vistaprint is usually where I print them from. And then with the actual stamps, like I really maybe need now I’m thinking of stamps, stamps are getting expensive, maybe a $500 a year investment.

And I am not even kidding, how much it has impacted my business, how much growth it has just it has just blown up. And it’s all about creating those genuine connections. So I wish you the best. I am kind of secretly hoping that you send me something. So if you want my address, I would love love, love to be a pen pal with you and to continue growing our businesses and just sending smiles just rattling the universe and sending our love and light and good vibes out into the world so we can end up on kitchen counters everywhere. sending all my love, love you fight. That’s a wrap on another episode of Quianna Marie weekly. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. You can find the resources and show notes for this episode and more at Kiana murray.com/podcast. I’d be honored if you’d show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep on dancing.