As a business owner, how amazing would it be to have a tribe of super fans that look forward to working with you again and again? In today’s episode, I’m sharing my favorite way to show appreciation for your clients in order to grow your connection and make sure they always have you top of mind. You’ll learn how and why you should be sending snail mail to your clients, plus exactly what to send as the holiday season comes around. 

On Quianna Marie Weekly, we’re chatting about business growing pains, finding genuine connections, and celebrating wins of all sizes through the lens of a photographer at heart. Sprinkled throughout stories and interviews with past clients, photographers and other business owners this podcast is designed to help you step into your purpose and to truly create a life you’re proud of, a life worth photographing and sharing.

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Today’s episode is brought to you by The Green House, my resource garden for photographers! Let me help you AMPLIFY your heart online and in real life to turn bridesmaids into future brides through templates, workshops, and freebies!

Review the Show Notes:

My Favorite Way To Show Appreciation For Clients (1:53)

How To Send Snail Mail (3:04)

What To Send (4:11)

Take Control Of Your Marketing (6:30)

Your Customizable Snail Mail Kit (8:22)

Mentioned in this Episode:

Wanna Join My Mailing List?

Check Out My Favorite Photo Gift Website – Social Print Studio

The Green House

Review the Transcript:

It’s that time of year, the leaves are changing. Fall is rolling in, and it’s time to start ordering or thinking about making our homemade Halloween costumes. For us photographers, it’s worse than tax season for accountants, we know it’s the busiest season of our business, and time is already flying. Before we know it, it’ll be Black Friday, Christmas morning, New Years and soon we’ll be celebrating Valentine’s Day. It’s a season of long nights staring at our laptops. Never enough coffee, and clients asking for just one quick photo the day after their mini session to order their holiday cards. I get it.

Today, I’m a little nervous to share this conversation with you simply because I don’t want to create more work for you. Which at first, that might sound like a bad thing. I’m over here encouraging you to add even more things to your overflowing plate. I mean, I don’t want to create more work for you. But what if that’s really my plan secretly to help you book more work to help your business expand book repeat clients and create a tribe of super fans that look forward to working with you again and again.

Welcome to Quianna 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 Kiana murray.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? Let’s go.

Today I’ll be sharing my favorite way to show appreciation for my current and past clients with old school tried and true method of sending snail mail. I know we’re in a rat race trying to keep up with algorithms. But what about good old feel good mail.

I don’t know about you but receiving a handwritten note from a friend just because literally makes my week. In fact, if you look at my desk right now, it is cluttered with thank you notes from brides and encouraging notes from business besties it can completely change my mood when I get that sweet, happy nail just makes a girl feel good. Are you sending snail mail to your clients? Thank You cards and follow up emails are a great touch points for your business.

This season is a great excuse to land on your client’s kitchen counters to stay top of mind. But how how are we doing this and like I said, I don’t want to create even more overwhelm for you. So I’m going to share some quick key tips on how I stay organized to do this, how I come up with what to send and how to once again stay top of mind for our past and current clients.

So how I use postable which is literally just postable.com to host all my contacts. It’s a safe and secure way and keeps everything together in one click. I love this. Because it’s all in one spot. I don’t have a notebook with scribbled out things as friends and family move. It’s just all digital. And it’s a great way to keep them safe and stored. As for my current and past clients, I collect their addresses through their contracts. So that’s a sneaky way to just add a quick little little add your address book. And then plus this is really cool. postable offers a custom link for you to add your social media post or you know anywhere you want to add that you can add this to your Facebook wall you can even send it to your email list.

And you can have a custom link so they can add their own address based on their own well so I know that sounds really silly. But that’s a great way to organically and naturally boost your mailing list like actual mail list. Instead of just a newsletter and your email list. Anyone scrolling can safely add their address and that only gets sent to you. So what to send. This is totally up to you and what you feel comfortable with sending a cute “Boo! Thinking of you!” Halloween card.

Grateful and thank you cards for Thanksgiving is so fun. Even just super generic kind of blanket statement Season’s Greetings, Christmas cards. Honestly anything that feels aligned to you but now is the time to start thinking about it. Personally, I love creating a custom card that shares a holiday greetings updates, business accomplishments and a year in review. I’ve celebrated my weddings. That year as a business owner. I’ve celebrated just fun newsletter things. And then of course I love getting personal with family favorites. Now. I don’t know about you, but I’m still single and I just have my little puppy Faith.

So my mom will usually send out a card Most card for us, like for me, my mom, my brother, and then you know, my new sister Lauren, and we’ll probably have a card of this year celebrating their wedding and bringing faith home and just fun adventures in Arizona. So it’s kind of like our own little family kind of newsletter that we send out for Christmas.

And then I’d say probably the last, gosh, six or seven years, I’ve been setting up my own business Christmas cards. And that has been so fun. And what’s funny is, okay, so last year, for example, and already launched the podcast, and the podcast had already been going for. So we launched it in October. So by the time I send things out to December, I mean, that was already three to four months, that my podcast has been up in action.

And I can’t tell you how many text messages, phone calls, and even just random Facebook messages that I got from my old school family and friends, like people that love me, I’m, I’m confident that they see my stuff. But they didn’t even know that I had a podcast. And so this is a gentle reminder to you that even the people that love us most, and I’m talking like the people that you celebrate holidays with the ones that actually call you on your birthday. And don’t just send a Facebook message, which is really sweet. But these are people that know you and know you well, they may have no idea what’s going on in your business.

Okay, so this is a great excuse to once again be top of mind and to just have control of landing on their counter. Now remember, we’re always battling social media. So take control of your marketing and share multiple ways of sharing your business with your people. I also love adding a personal touch to the card by simply adding like one printed photo or a gift print from I love using this one website. It’s called Social print studio. So they have like super cute filmstrips, or you can even invest in little buttons or magnets, oh my gosh, one year, I send all of my mini session families a magnet from their session. And it was a huge hit.

It’s the coolest thing because now when I go to my friend’s homes, I look on their fridges, whether it’s their fridge in their kitchen, or their garage fridge, and they have those magnets or those prints and it just makes my heart so happy because it’s a timestamp. And it’s just just a piece of their love story. It’s a piece of their family that they see every day. They may not even think about it, but it’s there. Okay. And so those are the types of things I want to talk about. And as I’m kind of sharing this, I want to make sure I’m clear, I don’t send out individual prints. For my Christmas cards. Like if I’m sending out a Christmas card, everyone is getting the same one.

But if I were to send out a thankful card for thanking them for being a client, that may be a generic card. I’ve done those before. But thank you cards is where I want to get specific ensure that that’s what I’m actually sharing a gift print for them. Whether that’s you know, a gift, little photo filmstrip or just an actual print. I love sharing photos.

I mean, obviously we’re photographers, right, so sometimes we forget about that we can get so caught up in posting reels and tiktoks and content content engagement engagement. But don’t forget that we’re actual photographers and that it can be a really sweet surprise to send a photo to our paying clients. Okay, so I just wanted to kind of clarify those different types of things. Now, to help you get started with sending fun happy snail mail, I created a customizable kit just for you. I use Canva to whip up the easy designs and print through Vistaprint for affordable but really great quality postcards, actual cards like folded cards and flyers. Check out the greenhouse for even more resources to help your business grow organically and strategically.

If you would like to be added to my own mailing list, please check out the show notes for this episode to be added to my list today. We may not have met in person yet, but I hope you know that I’m cheering for you. Always, always always. I would love to have you included in my Christmas card list. As a reminder, I hope you know that you’re amazing. You’re showing up always eager to learn and providing incredible experiences for your clients. Don’t stop loving on them. Create moments to be top of mind and always share your appreciation.

I know sometimes we can feel the struggle for finding new clients. But leaning on our friends, family and past clients for future referrals will help your business grow for generations. pop on over to Instagram please please please send me a DM and let me know if you’re planning on sending some Snail Mail this season. I’d love to chat with you and support you. I love coming up with really fun creative ideas like words of affirmation and playing with words is totally my love language.

So I love to help you out and get creative create some fun puns, something that’s specific to your business or to your clients. Like let’s share some appreciation but also have a lot of fun with it. Because like I mentioned earlier, yes I feel kind of bad. Create Need more work for you? But that’s kind of the point right like if I can hit this home I absolutely want to create more work for you I want more dream clients on your books I want you booking more dream weddings and I just want you to create a business and a lifestyle that makes you feel good let’s not let this busy season drown us and lose sight of why we’re doing this in the first place.

All right, they keep on dancin, I am always in forever supporting and cheering for you. Love you hope you have a great day. 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 show your support by leaving a review and rating on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, keep on dancing.