Is your email address turning off customers?

About once a month we get that call, email, or text from our dream customer. They don’t care what the price of a photo booth rental is; they just want to book the photo booth immediately.  I wish that we could get these calls all day. However, the reality is most customers don’t book on the “first date.” There is a conversation that begins. Questions are answered. Fiances and family are brought into the mix. More questions are answered, and hopefully in the end, you end up with a deposit and a date on your calendar. Many customers are placing rental deposits for an event that is a year or more in the future and in the end will spend hundreds or thousands of dollars.  These customers want to know that their deposits are secure and that you’re going to show up as promised on the day of the event. With that being said, if there is anything that can be done to build trust and credibility faster, even a small change, take advantage of it.

If you are using a generic email account (@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc.) for your photo booth business email correspondence, it could be costing you business.  These addresses appear to customers as personal email accounts and unprofessional.  If you own the domain for your photo booth rental website, then it is pretty simple to set up an email address with your domain (ex: info@yoursite.com).  If you have a self-hosted website through a service like Bluehost, they all have tutorials that will walk you through the setup, and there shouldn’t be any additional fees.  If your website is built on Squarespace or Wix, you can set up a custom domain email address through the account management settings.  Your domain email address can still be managed by Yahoo Mail for Business or Google Mail for Business if you prefer those applications.  I use Google Mail for Business, which used to be free, but now costs $5/month.

It’s important to build a brand with your photo booth business and be consistent.  Your website domain is a big part of your brand, and you want your email to match.  With all the competition out there it is important to stand out in any way possible.  If a bride is trying to decide between a company with an email address of smilebooths@gmail.com or events@northeastphotobooths.com, which one appears more legitimate and trustworthy?

3 More Reasons to Use a Domain Email Address:
1. If you have corporate clients or customers who correspond with their company email, your emails won’t be filtered or blocked as spam/junk, since many companies block free email accounts to prevent viruses.
2. Customers are also more likely to open your emails and reply if they’re sent from a legitimate domain.
3. You’ll be promoting your brand, instead of a free email service.

Bonus Email Tip:
This advice came from my web designer, who just gave my own photo booth rental website a face-lift. It hasn’t been tested enough to call it gospel yet, but so far the results are interesting. The theory is that you should make your email address line up with the action that you want your customers to take.  Therefore, in our industry, we want prospective customers to “book”  or “reserve their date” with us, so your email address would be “booking@yoursite.com”, “saveyourdate@yoursite.com” or “reserveyourdate@yoursite.com.”  This small change may not even be measurable, but it may play on the subconscious of potential customers and get them in a more serious mindset when emailing your company.

Want to know more about email marketing? Take a look at the definitive guide to email marketing in our shop.

If you found this article helpful take a look at the 5 Photo Booth Website Mistakes then let’s start talking about The 4 Letter Word that Books Photo Booth Gigs.