If you follow me on Twitter you already know I sent out my photo newsletter for the month. Follow me @timgruber
I tried something new with my email campaign this month and made it a newsletter format rather than a featured promo on one project. I’m not sure at this point if I’ll stick with it or not. I’m watching the numbers to see how well it’s being received. I think a combo of both featured projects and newsletters might be best the option.
View my May 2009 Photo Newsletter
Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter so it appears in your inbox everytime I send out a new campaign.
Screenshot of a portion of my newsletter:
My first series of my print promos are going out today. After getting my first batch of postcards this fall from Overnight Prints and being disappointed with the quality they found a new home in the recycling bin. An expensive lesson learned. For the second batch I went with Modern Postcard. It was pricier, but a more controlled and calibrated workflow meant the second batch of postcards turned out great.
My marketing campaign/strategy for the year has me sending out staggered campaigns of my work through both email and print. My first quarter campaign is focused on my trucker project. A month ago I sent out email promos of the project and this month I am following up with a print promo of the project. The hope is to build recognition not only for my work, but for my name and brand. Research has it that it takes atleast 6-8 exposures to your name before people start remembering you.
I’ve decided to do the email promo first because of the detailed statistics an email campaign gives you. With the email campaign I was able to see what photo editors actually opened my promo email and if they clicked on any links. This knowledge meant I was able to target my print campaign to the editors that actually opened my first promo email. For those that emailed me back I was sure to write a personal note to them on the postcard. Of course I am still sending out the promos to those that didn’t open the email, which was a lot.
Anyone care to share how they’re marketing their work? Print or email? Both? Monthly? Quarterly? Every decade? Would love to hear what others are doing if you have the time or energy to respond.



Sent out my first email promo this week, which was a rather uneventful deal. I sent this first promo to a very defined list of people and magazines as a test to gauge the open rates, most effective subject line, etc. The painful part was actually compiling the list of contacts. Call me crazy, but I couldn’t justify blowing a ton of money for a list when the average editorial assignment pays far less than that and the open rate for email promos are dismal to begin with.
The designing of the promo and writing the copy were probably the most time demanding portions of the process after compiling the list. I enjoyed it though. It’s not often anymore that I get to put my undergrad in design and advertising to use.
A few editors actually took the time to email me back, which was great and unexpected.
Overall it was pretty much what I expected a very hit or miss ordeal with a lot of the emails never being opened.
If you’d like drop me a note with your email(timg at timgruber.com) or leave me a comment and I’ll include you in the second part of the email campaign that I plan on sending out next week.


Tim Gruber and Jenn Ackerman use both photography and video to tell stories for editorial and commercial clients.