Do Email Templates Work For High-Touch Client Experiences? Here’s a Case Study

Do email templates work for high-touch client experiences? When Ina joined The Experience Edit, she already had a lot going for her. In-person consultations before clients even book, in-person ordering sessions, sometimes even in-person product delivery. She’s a pet photographer in Australia with one of the most high-touch client experiences I’ve ever seen (and she had email workflows to go along with it).

But even with all of that, there were gaps. A four-to-five month silence between a consultation and a session. Emails that were doing a lot of telling but not a lot of connecting.

By the end of the five-day sprint, Ina had written 34 emails and left with a client experience that finally matched the level of care she already brings to every single session. Keep reading to hear exactly what changed and what she’d tell anyone who thinks their emails are already “good enough.”

Deciding To Start Your Customer Journey With An In-Person Consultation

When I first started, all of that initial communication took place via email. There was a lot of back and forth trying to sort out dates and work out all the details. Then, the first time I would’ve actually met a client was at the outdoor session itself. I’d be standing there in the park looking around thinking, “Is this my client? Who am I meeting?” And a couple of times, they just wouldn’t show up. 

I started realizing I needed a better client experience. I also found that with the model I was using at the time, especially when I was first trying to get clients and offering complimentary sessions with a free print, a lot of people were just taking the free print and didn’t really understand the pricing. Even though I provided pricing upfront and emailed it to them four or five times before the session, they’d show up to the ordering appointment and say, “Oh, I didn’t know I’d have to pay this much.”

That disconnect made me think, I need to do something better. I need to actually explain this to them in person.  I tried phone calls too, but I still found there was a disconnect. So I decided to try in-person consultations. I changed my website so that when someone inquires, they can fill out a contact form — but anything that says “book now” or “book a consultation” goes straight to a scheduler for an in-person consult. And I just made that the standard. That’s the only way to do it. If someone lives further away, they can always reach out and we’ll schedule a Zoom instead.

Making The Decision To Set An In-Person Consultation As The Standard (And Sharing Pricing Then)

At this point, I almost share my pricing too many times before the session (even though it’s not listed online). I just want to make sure everyone understands it at every single stage. And what I’ve found now that I’ve implemented the consultation is that by the time we get to the photo session, I already know what they’re aiming for. Most of the time I already know what they want to buy. So the ordering appointment isn’t really about selling anymore. 

But coming back to the in-person consultation, you mentioned that some business owners are hesitant to implement something like this because they want to stay flexible. That definitely crossed my mind too. I thought, “What if people don’t book?” But then I decided, you know what, I’m just going to implement it. This is the process. Any time someone asks about pricing, I tell them I don’t share it via email. The best thing to do is come in for an in-person consult because that’s where I go through everything and get to understand their needs, because the pricing only really makes sense once I understand their vision.

My services are very personalized. Now, I have become a bit more flexible in the last year and started experimenting with Zoom consults as well. I originally started doing in-person consults in 2022, and when I compared my numbers, my average sale from Zoom consults was a bit lower. That’s why I kept pushing the in-person model, with the exception of clients who live two or three hours away (I don’t make them drive to my studio).

The Logistics Behind In-Person Consultations

For scheduling, I do have Saturdays for people who work nine-to-five, and then Thursdays and Fridays as well. I have specific time blocks set aside for consultations so I know those are my consult days. For clients with a regular work schedule, they can book a Friday afternoon or evening, or a Saturday.

It’s my home studio, so I’ve set up my home to serve as both the consult space and a small working studio. When clients walk in, there’s wall art everywhere: dog photos covering every surface, big wall collections, collages. On the coffee table there’s a portrait box and an album. They see it all the moment they arrive. And by the time I’m walking them through pricing at the end, after getting to know them, getting to know their dog, understanding what they want and why now is the time they’re doing a session, I actually pick up the products and hand them over so they can feel and touch them for themselves.

Some of the wall art pieces even have different finishes. For example, I love metal prints, and I hand one to them and they’re like, “Oh, we’ve never seen anything like this before.” And a lot of the time, they buy what they see.

Doing In-Person Consultations and Sales Doesn’t Reduce The Number Of Emails You Need For Good Client Communication

Email communication is really important because it keeps clients connected with me in between those in-person touchpoints, between the consultation and the session, and it also reinforces everything we covered. It’s like saying, here’s a recap, here’s all the information again if you want to review it, here’s everything you need to look at before your session. It keeps that consistent thread of communication going.

A lot of my clients actually say, “Oh, this is so great that you included this,” when I send information because they love having the session guide, the location tips, the Google Maps link all in their inbox.

Email communication matters regardless of how high-touch the in-person experience is.

Writing More Client Communication Emails Between The Booking and Service

Some of the most surprising emails the sprint had me write were the ones that fill the gap between the consultation and the session when there’s a longer wait time. Sometimes I completely forget that if there’s a big gap, there’s just silence.

I have clients booking three, four, five months in advance. My autumn sessions, for example, people book early, so from December I’ll already have clients locked in for April and May. That’s a four or five month gap between their in-person consult and their actual session.

I didn’t have anything filling that space before. Going through the sprint made me realize I need touchpoints in between to stay connected, let them know I’m here, the session is still set, and that they can reach out anytime with questions. Now I give them some tips on how to prepare, and maybe link to blog posts or other educational content.

As photographers, we just assume they read the session guide, but people are busy. They need reminders. And honestly, sending a full session guide all at once can be a bit overwhelming too. Pulling out pieces and sprinkling them through is so much more effective and that’s exactly what I’ve drafted into my email templates now.

Customizing Email Templates (Because Not Everything Has To Be Automated)

that’s really what the templates are all about for me — making it easier so I’m not rewriting everything from scratch each time. Yes, there are different seasons and different scenarios, but the templates are still customizable. I’ve got different workflows and canned email templates for different locations, different seasons, different client types — whether they’re coming in through a gift certificate, a special offer, or organically. When a client falls into a particular category, I just pull the right template. It’s still customized, it’s still personalized. Just because I’m automating it doesn’t mean it sounds like a robot. It still sounds like me.

For Photographers Working With A Virtual Assistant ⬇️

Having the templates means she can just use them and plug them straight into the workflow. When she’s responding to client inquiries, most of the time the email is already there waiting. But I actually took it a step further, because I have a bit of a different kind of brain, after going through The Experience Edit and listening to your podcast episodes about the 3P framework, I built an app to help write emails with that framework in mind.

Purpose, personality, and preview — every email needs all three. It has to have a clear purpose, it has to sound like me, and it has to give the client a preview of what comes next.  So I built an app where my virtual assistant can go in, and I’ve programmed in my brand voice, my tone, my personality (all based on content I’ve written, transcripts I’ve uploaded, that kind of thing). She can select which stage of the client experience she needs to respond to, or she can paste in a client’s email and say, “I need to respond to this… here’s what I need to cover,” and it generates an email that sounds like me, complete with the Dubsado custom fields already inserted.

Keeping Client Notes In One Place

I use the notes section inside the client’s Dubsado project. As soon as we finish a consultation, I generate a meeting summary and put everything in the notes. And then I have custom fields for things like the pet’s name, age, breed, and location. My VA can pull from those notes to populate the custom fields in each email.

Client Communication After the Session

Right after the session I send an email that basically reinforces how well it went because sometimes clients feel like the session didn’t go as planned, especially with dogs. I want to tell them, “It went amazingly, we got so many great shots, I can’t wait to work on them.”

And then I start getting them to imagine how they want to display the photos (planting that seed before the ordering appointment). I’ll let them know I’ll be in touch shortly with all the ordering appointment details. 

I also usually send a text right after asking them to leave a review if they enjoyed the experience. I know it might feel early, but I actually ask for reviews at a few different stages and depending on when clients leave one, they tend to say different things. Some talk about the session itself, some about the photos, some about the ordering appointment. I like having that variety. 

But coming back to that post-session email: I really do think it helps get clients excited and shifts their mindset toward thinking about what they’re going to do with their photos, which naturally leads them to start thinking about what they want to buy at the ordering appointment.

And I think it’s also about sprinkling in ideas. In that post-session email, for example, I get them thinking about their home decor, what wall space they have. But I also get them thinking about gifts, like maybe there are people in their life who would love a printed product from the session. Grandparents, for instance, from a children’s portrait session, or friends who are dog lovers. So I’m not just getting them to think about what they want for themselves, but also who else in their life might love to receive something.

There’s still a lot I want to update and refine, but going through the The Experience Edit and working with you really helped me narrow things down and figure out how to weave in the conversations I’m already having with clients into the emails themselves.

Refining Your Customer Journey

I think one of the most valuable things about doing the The Experience Edit sprint was that even though I already had my client journey set up, actually sitting down and reviewing it from start to finish, from inquiry all the way through to post-delivery, gave me a much clearer overview before going in to update everything. It really helped.

So, Do Email Templates Work For High-Touch Client Experiences? The Best Part About Joining The Experience Edit

I wouldn’t have known where to start when it comes to updating my emails. I’d be looking at my client journey going, “Okay, I need to do this, and then this,” and then I’d get sidetracked and it just wouldn’t get done. Being able to do it right then and there, in that dedicated window, made all the difference.

Plus, your ChatGPT tools were incredibly helpful too. I could put in what I had, and it would suggest, “How about this angle, how about adding this?” That was really, really useful.

To be honest, before joining, I thought my emails were fine too. I had all these workflows and email templates in place. But after talking with you and listening to some of your email case studies, I thought, “You know what, I haven’t updated these in a while.” There were some emails that could have been clearer or better structured. And I thought, I need to refresh this.

I probably didn’t need to do the course, but I’m so glad I did, because it helped me find those gaps, fill in missing touchpoints, and really refine my process to better match the high-touch experience I’m already delivering. So I’d just say: don’t be on the fence, just go for it.

The ChatGPT tools, the client journey review, the 3P framework for structuring each email — it all gave me a fresh perspective. I’d absolutely sign up again.