Thanks for joining us, Sarah. For starters, what’s the deal with Stocksy?

Thanks for having me! Stocksy is a stock photo cooperative, which sounds hippy-dippy, but is actually really rad. It means every member has a voice, a vote, and a stake in the company. Members are paid 50–75% of every sale, before we take a penny to keep the lights on. Someone recently asked me if being a co-op was a PR tactic. It’s really not. Running a transparent cooperative is a huge amount of work, and trust me, we’re really doing it.

What’s the difference between a normal stock photo and what Stocksy offers?

Stocksy’s primary objective is to provide our clients with stunning, 100% exclusive images that defy their expectations of stock. We also enjoy a little shock and awe thanks to our members who are really pushing the envelope. Every photographer — and image — in our collection is hand selected by our team of editors, keeping the quality of our collection very high.

Surprise! Guerilla GIFing to make you look twice.

What’s your background, and how did you get involved with Stocksy?

My education and background is in graphic design with a focus on marketing. I’ve worked with design firms, not-for-profits, and countless clients, before moving into publishing, where I art directed magazines.

The Creative Direction role at Stocksy presented itself at a perfect time in my life and career, and mirrored all the values I was looking for in an organization.

Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with many brilliant photographers — so I feel very lucky to be working with over 900 Stocksy photographers, from around the world, everyday.

What’s a core email marketing principal at Stocksy?

Because our collection strives to be useful, awe-inspiring and delightful — we aim to mirror these values in our marketing efforts. We’re constantly balancing our edgier content with more wholesome fare, to ensure the breadth of our collection is being highlighted, and clients are always discovering something new — thus driving sign-ups and sales.

“Finding images that surprise, engage — and help tell the email’s story — is paramount.”

What does your build-out process look like? Can you explain your logic from start to finish, who is involved, and how you keep track of everything?

Quarterly, our little marketing team (consisting of a writer, designer, and myself) map out our marketing plan for the season, including themes for our email marketing. Being a small team allows us to be very fluid in our process. We use colored post-its to schedule everything on a big calendar — and then move them around constantly as we adapt to our ever-changing schedule. I’m striving to be less of a luddite; Jordan (our awesome designer) is slowly easing me into Trello. But dammit, I like post-its. For the longest time, I was a one-man-marketing-band at Stocksy — but since bringing Jordan on board, we bounce back and forth designing our emails. It’s fantastic.

“If emails aren’t fun for us to design, they’re probably not fun for you to look at.”

What emails do you use to engage with your customers?

We create three types of emails at Stocksy: marketing, transactional and cooperative/member facing.

Because Stocksy is a cooperative, home to over 900 artists, we strive for complete transparency with our members. Monthly, we’ll send newsletters with sales reports, creative briefs and general co-op communications, and depending on the time of year, we’ll run email campaigns around Member Director Elections, resolutions, our AGM, grant programs, etc.

Industry-specific newsletters to help photographers bring their A-game.

What are your main strategies to increase your list size, and have that growth be more than just a bigger number, but actually have engaged, happy customers who love to talk about Stocksy?

One of our main goals for 2017 is to further segment our emails and content for various localized markets and client personas. As we come out of the start-up phase, and into our “teenage years”, we’re slowly building the capacity to be more strategic with our marketing and ability to speak to various markets in their voice.

The initial segmentation we’ve done has proven to increase both opens and clicks dramatically. Everything we do at Stocksy, in every department, strives to build strong, real relationships with our clients — whether it’s email marketing or face-to-face connections.

Ultimately, happy customers have an impact on our bottom line, but for us it’s about fostering business practices and relationships we’re proud of.

What email tests can you share with us?

GIFs all day, mang.

Our open rates and click throughs are incredibly consistent. Edgier, risque mailers have the same results as more wholesome campaigns. (Though we offend more people with the edgy campaigns. Seems a lot of folks are adverse to breasts.) That being said, we’re seeing staggering increases in engagement as we begin to segment our lists. A recent holiday mailer, targeting Australia which featured regionally and seasonally appropriate curations, saw a 20–30% increase in opens over emails being sent to our entire promotions list.

What’s your strategy for dealing with offended users? You mention segmentation, but I’m wondering how/if you respond to those people when they reach out.

It is (of course) never our intention to offend our users — but we love to find concepts that challenge us, and we will continue to celebrate those genres, lifestyles and concepts in our collection and marketing efforts. If we’re marketing a photo of marijuana, we’re not endorsing drug use — we’re marketing a concept that we’ve identified as relevant and useful to our client base.

Consistently, I’m amazed by amount of kickback we get at the slight hint of breasts or cleavage. We have a female CEO, Creative Director, Sr Counsel, and a whole gang of rad women on our team. We’re all about empowering women and celebrating all forms of beauty — including breasts. ;)

Our incredible Client Relations team is adept at responding delicately and thoughtfully to any and all issues, ensuring everyone feels heard.