Email marketing for photographers is one of the most asked-about topics inside The Motherhood Anthology community, and for good reason. Your email list is the one platform you own. But for many photographers, getting their emails into the inbox, rather than spam or promotions, feels like a mystery. In this episode, Dawn Richardson of Flodesk and Tech Savvy Creative discusses what’s really going on with email deliverability and what you can do about it.
Why Your Emails Aren’t Landing in the Inbox
The first thing Dawn wants every photographer to understand is that email deliverability works on an algorithm, just like Instagram or Google. Inbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and iCloud are not trying to ruin your business. They are, first and foremost, in the business of protecting their users from spam and malicious senders. When legitimate small businesses get caught in filters, it’s usually because something in their sending behavior looks like a red flag to those providers.
The single biggest factor? Who you’re sending to. If you blast an email to your entire list and only 15% of people open it, Gmail interprets that as a signal that your content isn’t wanted. That drags down your sender reputation across the board, including for the subscribers who do want to hear from you. On the other hand, if you send to a smaller, highly engaged segment and 70 or 80 percent open the email, the algorithm takes notice in the best way.
The other piece photographers consistently get wrong is consistency. Inbox providers value it enormously. If you only email your list when you have a sale or a mini session to announce, you’re essentially showing up as a stranger who wants something. Dawn is direct about this: “These providers do not love surprises. They value consistency.” The bare minimum recommendation is once a month, with weekly sends being the gold standard for strong open rates.
List Hygiene and What the Metrics Actually Mean
One of the most important actions you can take for your email marketing is also one of the hardest to bring yourself to do: clean your list. Dawn recommends auditing your list every three to six months, moving unengaged subscribers into a cold segment, excluding them from regular sends, and eventually removing them altogether. The key reframe here is that people who aren’t opening your emails aren’t necessarily rejecting you. As Dawn put it, “Maybe they’re in a season of overwhelm. Maybe they’re in a season of repairing some mental health and they’re just trying to disconnect from things.” It’s not personal, and they can always resubscribe later.
Understanding your metrics helps you know whether your strategy is working. Your delivery rate (the percentage of emails that didn’t bounce) should sit close to 99 to 100 percent. A bounce means the email never made it to the recipient’s inbox at all, which is different from landing in spam (a delivered email can still land in spam). Open rates vary by audience, but industry average hovers around 20 percent. Dawn noted that a 20 percent open rate is still significantly higher than the roughly 5 percent engagement most businesses see on Instagram. If your numbers suddenly drop far below your own baseline, that’s when it’s worth investigating, not just when you’re below a general industry average.
A few technical foundations matter here as well. Sending from a custom domain email (not a gmail.com or yahoo.com address) is now essential, not optional. Free email addresses are the first red flag inbox providers look for. Authenticating your domain tells providers that you are a legitimate sender. And if you use Flodesk’s custom font layouts, always include alt text on those blocks, since they render as images, keeping your emails accessible to all readers.
The Email Strategy That Actually Builds Your Business
Beyond deliverability mechanics, Dawn and the TMA team spent time on what makes an email worth opening in the first place: connection. Dawn described the difference between social media and email as the difference between waving at someone across a room and sitting down with them for a real conversation. Social media is the wave. Email is the coffee shop chat. Photographers are already invited into some of the most intimate moments of their clients’ lives, and email is the natural place to continue that relationship between sessions.
Kim shared her own experience with this firsthand. When she relocated from Virginia to South Florida, her email list allowed her to fly back, run mini session days for her existing clients, and supplement her income while she built her SEO in a new market. “If I didn’t have that, I would have just been stuck,” she said. That stability, built on real relationships with real subscribers, is what gives photographers the freedom to be intentional about the work they take on.
Segmentation is the other major lever here. Rather than sending every email to your entire list, you can use tools like Flodesk’s link actions and poll segments to understand what your subscribers care about and send them the content that matches. Someone who clicked on outfit inspiration posts gets an email about your favorite looks. Someone who expressed interest in a specific session location gets the first invite when you launch there. The goal, as Dawn put it, is “the right message to the right person at the right time.” That specificity improves open rates, improves click rates, and builds the kind of loyalty that keeps clients coming back.
Listen and Learn More
This episode is packed with practical advice from one of the best voices in email marketing. Whether you’ve never sent an email to your subscribers or you’re troubleshooting a deliverability problem right now, Dawn’s framework gives you a clear place to start.
Find Dawn at techsavvycreative.com or on Instagram at @itsdawnrichardson.
TMA members love Flodesk, and we’re excited to share an exclusive deal with our community. Get 50% off your first year of Flodesk using our affiliate link: flodesk.com/c/N12FH6. You also get a 14-day free trial, so there’s truly no excuse not to get started building your list today.
Ready to build a business that reflects your own creative voice? The Motherhood Anthology membership gives you access to expert mentors, live coaching, monthly marketing suites, and a private community of photographers who are invested in your success. Learn more and join at themotherhoodanthology.com.
The Motherhood Anthology is a community and educational resource for photographers who want a profitable and sustainable business they love. With 15+ expert mentors and 7+ years of proven content, TMA helps portrait photographers build confident, thriving businesses through monthly education, mentorship, and a supportive community of 700+ members.
