1: YOU ARE JUDGED BY YOUR EMAIL

In the digital landscape, a professional email address is more than just an email– it’s a way to build trust and establish your photography business as legitimate.

When I see a photographer who doesn’t have a website, or worse, does have a website but uses Gmail as their email, they instantly lose credibility with me.

A Gmail address screams “amateur” and frankly raises doubts about your skills.

In my experience working with vendors who use Gmail usually means they’re going to be cheap and if I’m price shopping, that’s a good thing for me.

If you want clients who value your services, that’s not a good thing for you!

Having an email that is unique to your domain is important because it shows you’re a professional, you’re a real business.

Ask your webmaster to create a dedicated email from your domain. Like vanie@poyeyphotos.com instead of vanie@gmail.com

 

2: GMAIL’S SPAM FILTERS ARE OUT. OF. CONTROL.

You can Google this and see all the complaints about how Gmail flags legitimate emails as SPAM no matter what you do to your SPAM settings.

There are endless articles on the issue.

In fact, I have first hand experience with the frustrations of using Gamil which is why years ago I stopped forwarding my emails to Gmail (there was a good reason why I was forwarding to Gmail but I can’t even remember that reason now, so don’t ask!)

If you’re doing something similar, get away from that practice ASAP because you are missing more emails than you think.

Gmail SPAM filters are so bad that we have a special note for Gmail users who book a session through our CRM saying “Gmail users, please check your SPAM or PROMOTIONS folder.”

I suggest you add the same note.

Not only does it hurt you as a business to miss inquiries but it also hurts you as a business when clients don’t receive important emails to them.

 

3: THE PROMOTIONS FOLDER

A folder I bet you didn’t even know about.

Basically Gmail has a feature where it decides certain emails are considered promotional and therefore belong in a different folder instead of a user’s inbox.

That folder is the promotions folder that no one knows about and therefore no one looks in.

I can’t tell you how many times clients email us saying they didn’t get our email and it’s not in SPAM.

Our reply is always to look in the promotions folder and sure enough, that’s where they usually find our emails.

 

4: AT THE END OF 2023 GMAIL ANNOUNCED YET ANOTHER CRACKDOWN ON SPAM

Things are only getting stricter.

These changes had us email marketers jump through all kinds of hoops through our ESP (email service provider) to authenticate and “verify” our domains so that our emails land in your inbox.

Gmail now has a SPAM rate threshold of .3% which is based on the number of emails sent vs. people who mark your email as SPAM. If you reach that .3%, your account can get suspended.

Here’s some math to think about this in real world terms.

If you send a 100 emails, with 1 SPAM report, this brings you up to a 1% spam rate. Yup.

While my emails are still landing in inboxes (I hope), I’m finding that my personal emails from one Gmail to another are not.

Moving away from Gmail is a change you can implement quickly. I hope you do!

As we know, nothing in life is truly free, and while Gmail is “free”, the cost of missing emails is too high to continue using it.

Are you still using Gmail? Let me know below if you think you’ll be moving away from it!