Does Your Mailing List Comply With The Law? - Part I

This post is part 1 of 3 posts.

If you are a freelance photographer or creative (or any sole trader for that matter) who uses mailing lists to market your services or send out newsletters with updates of your work or blog, and you are based in the United Kingdom or the European Union, or email people who are based in any of the two, this post is for you.

On May 25, 2018, the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come in effect. The GDPR is a privacy law which will apply in the EU and the UK and will affect anyone who processes personal information of EU citizens. The UK Government has confirmed that the UK’s decision to leave the EU will not affect the commencement of the GDPR, and it's introducing measures related to this and wider data protection reforms in a Data Protection Bill (DP Bill).

The UK DP Bill is an evolution of the current Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). It will apply the GDPR and it has been amended to adjust to the national context and the UK citizens.

How does this affect freelance creatives?

Freelance creatives make use of mailing lists to send out promotional material, blog updates and newsletters to current and prospect clients. All the information in those mailing lists (emails, names, addresses) is considered personal information and are part of the scope of these privacy laws. Keep in mind that personal emails of employees of companies fall into this category and both laws have become more strict in terms of what they consider personal information (IP addresses are now part of the scope).

What does this mean?

It basically means that for you to be able to send your self-promotion material you need to have the consent of the recipient that you can use their email for this purpose.

What is consent?

Consent means permission, and for you to send marketing emails to your clients or prospects you must have their permission to do so. If you send blog updates or newsletters to people who have subscribed and agreed to receive them, and you use services like MailerLite or MailChimp, you mustn't worry. On the one hand, by subscribing to receiving these emails they have given you their consent. On the other hand, both services have taken measures to help you comply with these laws (MailChimp wrote about it on their blog and MailerLite has assured me that they are working on these as I am writing this post).

But if you are sending emails to people who have not subscribed to them, you must ask for their consent. You can send, for instance, emails to your existing client list if the email promotes similar products and services to the ones they bought from you. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has prepared a very thorough guide for direct marketing. The ICO is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

What if you bought an email list or compiled your own?

This is where it starts to get confusing for me. There is a lot of misinformation on this matter, especially because all the official communications target large organisations, but there is very little written for freelancers and sole traders.

As freelance creatives, we all have a mailing list of some sort for our marketing and self-promotion. Some of us have compiled these lists using contact information of people that we have met along the road, people that we have worked with, people that we wish we could work with, information of people that we find in the mastheads of publications or on websites, and the list goes on. Other creatives buy mailing lists from companies like Bikini Lists or Agency Access.

Freelancers and sole traders are considered individuals under the privacy laws. When we send out our promotional emails to prospect clients, we address these emails to companies but also to other freelancers. If freelancers and sole traders are individuals, and we email other freelancers and sole traders, then these communications are between individuals, but because they are business related I understand that they are considered Business-to-Consumer (B2C) communications.

On the other hand, if freelancers and sole traders email companies, and these communications are business related, they should be considered Business-to-Business (B2B) communications and not really fall under the scope of these laws (the CEO of Bikini Lists, Ross MacRae, wrote a post about this). To make things more confusing, and like I mentioned earlier on this post, personal emails of employees of companies are considered personal information too.

So, it seems to me that in any of these two cases, whether freelancers and sole traders are writing B2C or B2B communications, we must comply with the privacy laws. I have written the ICO asking for more help on this matter because it is really confusing. Watch this space. Yesterday they published a post on their blog announcing that they will launch a dedicated telephone service aimed at helping small and micro businesses prepare for new data protection laws.

So, what can you do in the meantime?

While all this information is clarified, you must definitely make sure that you are taking into consideration best practices in what personal information refers to:

• Only use personal information that you have consent to use and use it in a fair and lawful manner;

• Use this personal information only for the purposes for which you have obtained the consent;

• Send direct marketing emails that are adequate, relevant and not excessive;

• Keep personal information in your mailing lists accurate and up to date and not for longer than is necessary;

• Keep personal information in your mailing lists secure and password protected; and

• Do not transfer to third parties or to other countries without consent and adequate protection.

Where can I find more information?

• If you are dealing with EU citizens, visit https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/data-protection/2018-reform-eu-data-protection-rules_en

• If you are dealing with UK citizens, visit https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-bill/

• The ICO keeps a blog where they have started a series of blog posts to sort the fact from the fiction by busting some of the myths around the GDPR and the DPA: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs

Photo credit: Behind the scenes photography by Stef Mic

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To Satisfy Your Clients You Must Understand Them

As I write this post I am finalizing the migration of all my self-promotion and marketing communications from MailChimp to MailerLite. After 4 years of using it, I came to realize that MailChimp doesn't fully understand the segment of their target that I belong to. In the words of Eugen Herrigel, author of Zen in the Art Of Archery, in order to hit the target, the archer must become "simultaneously the aimer and the aim". If you don't understand your target, how can you serve them well?

Don't get me wrong, MailChimp is an outstanding service and it has gotten to be one of the best mailing services in the market today. I have used it for my mailing campaigns, for my weekly newsletter, for my blog subscription service, and until I finish migrating to MailerLite I will keep on using it for my documents download workflow. Nevertheless, over the last few months, I have encountered problems with some of the templates that affect only specific geographies. But, because I am on their free plan I do not have access to their technical support. They don't offer a means of contact for their non-paying users.

I am a freelance photographer, and like most freelancers out there I have a very limited budget for my business expenses. Therefore, I rely on services which offer free plans to be able to operate my business. "So you are a business who's trying to make money from your clients but expects free services from your suppliers?", you may ask. As contradictory as this may sound, businesses like these that offer free plans are not really doing it out of humanitarian reasons.

By offering free limited plans, free trials or even free forever options, these services grow their client base faster and have more chances of becoming mainstream without having to invest too much in their marketing. They also get thousands, if not millions of users to test their services and give them feedback on potential issues. But ultimately, and more importantly, is that they can go to their investors and show them how popular they are and ask them for more money. So, in a way, they put their free plan users to work for them.

Obviously, a business model where the majority of your clients don't pay you is not the type of business that we all dream of running. But I am sure that, like me, a lot of freelancers and small businesses out there end up subscribing to the paid plans of these services when they can finally afford to or when they consider that it is time to use the more advanced features that the paid plans provide. I have done it myself with some of the services that I use, and the only reason why I hadn't done it with MailChimp yet is that frankly, I can't afford them at this point.

But then I ran into MailerLite and from the start, I felt that they were the right fit for me. They are an unpretentious company based in Lithuania that prides itself in having a small team of people who work for other people. No big corporation aspirations, no nonsense. That's the kind of supplier that I want to have because that is the type of business that I want to be. On top of that, their templates are beautiful, their website is easy to use and so far I am in love with their service.

So, even if this sounds like a paid post I can tell you that it is not. This is a client testimonial from someone who fully identifies with their ethos. Because why would I want to be the client of a business that doesn't really understand me and that doesn't even offer a communication channel to hear what I have to say.

Photo by Andrzej Gruszka.

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I Think That I Have Finally Converted

When I decided to become a full-time photographer, I knew that an important part of my marketing strategy should be Social Media. In particular Instagram. So I put all my efforts into building a name for myself as a brand, and a portfolio that would represent who I was as a photographer. But, like most people, I got obsessed with followers, comments and likes, and not having a clear goal for my social media efforts and an understanding of what these terms meant made me constantly worry that I was doing something wrong.

In hindsight, my first mistake was not knowing my brand enough. Which is strange, because I created this brand myself, and as a freelance photographer it is an extension of me. But not knowing what my brand stood for and what type of branding I was trying to create made me follow social media strategies that were not suitable for me. JC Candanedo is not Nike, is not Tesco nor Walmart, is not even similar to other photographer's brands like Tim Walker or Mert and Marcus. So why was I trying to copy what those other brands were doing on social media if I wasn't like them in the first place?

My second mistake was not knowing what I wanted to get from my marketing strategy. In my obsession with metrics, I confused engagement (likes and comments), with post views (impressions and reach), with conversion and awareness. Not understanding what these terms meant and how they could work for me made me apply trial and error tactics that were not suited for JC Candanedo. Probably the biggest confusion that I had was not really knowing if I was creating posts for conversion (and exactly what that conversion was) or for brand awareness.

But in starting my blog and writing about me, about my brand, about the industry, about the issues that I care for and about how important the sense of creative community is for me, I have come to realize that what my marketing strategy has been about all along is brand awareness. And that is the conversion that I should have been measuring. This fact has never been clearer to me than during this last Fashion Week.

I moved to London in 2013, but it wasn't until mid-2014 when I decided to go full-time with my photography. In just 3 years I went from not having a portfolio nor even knowing a single person in the industry to where I am at right now. It may sound like a slow process to some, but for me, it has been an exhilarating journey. And this past weekend, while shooting the runways and the backstage in Fashion Scout during London Fashion Week, I had a moment of self-reflection.

Some of the people in the event (designers, models, guests, organizers)  knew me from previous seasons; while others who didn't know me at least had heard of me. And this is what I have been working so hard for over the last few years. To make myself a name in the creative community in London.

So the lesson here is that I shouldn't have been worrying so much about getting more likes or accumulating more followers; or so concerned with the number of impressions versus the size of my reach. None of that matters. What I should have been focusing on, and what I was actually doing without realizing it, was in presenting an authentic image of myself and of my brand so that my audience felt organically attracted to me. Which in turn creates an engagement that translates into a conversion trackable only by the number of meaningful connections with actual people that I make.

Photo by Wayne Noir.

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A Guide For Perfecting Your Photography

On a previous post, I mentioned that I had been invited to talk during an event for bloggers called "Breakthrough in Blogging", organised by the people of the Creative Industry Hub. For the purposes of that talk, I put together a short guide with composition tips and tricks to help anyone interested in photography to take better photos. It has been so well received that I have decided to make it public for anyone to download for free. Just click on this link to get your own copy and start taking better photos!

The "Breakthrough in Blogging" event took place at The CoClub, a fantastic co-working space in West London. Almost a 150 bloggers from different disciplines (fashion, travel, food, beauty) came to listen to a line-up of great speakers of the likes of Paul Goldsmith from Wearisma, Katia Bololia from Daisy London, Ulrich Boulon from Burberry, Victoria Reddington from FP Engage, Caroline Towers from The Content Edit, and Philip Gamble from Found.

Apart from the talks, the attendees had the opportunity to network, and also speak in person to some of the sponsors of the event: Alexandra Ursan from Kites and Bites, Funmi Deri from Funlayo Deri, among others.

Creative freelancing can be a very lonely path. But If you are a creative working in the UK, the good news is that the guys at the Creative Industry Hub organize some of the biggest networking events in the country. Their next event called "Breakthrough In Fashion" will take place on October 26th, 2017. You can't miss it!

All the photos, except for the guide's cover, by Luca Dominique Marchesi and Maria Teresa Fiatamone.

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Learn The Rules Then Break Them

The idea of rules to regulate art goes against the notion of creativity, but in order to explore and express your creativity, you have to understand at least the rules of the medium that you are working in. Once you understand those rules you can and should break them, and only then will you be able to fully unleash your creative self. If artistic growth is about breaking the rules but you haven't learned any rules in the first place, can you even say that you are breaking them?

A couple of posts ago I spoke about the importance of knowing what the subject of your photo is. Only then will you be able to apply the rules of composition to your images to improve how you present your subjects. On September 2, I will be giving a talk on "Perfecting Your Photography" to a group of bloggers during the "Breakthrough in Blogging" event organized by the guys over at the Creative Industry Hub. Join me and learn basic photography composition guidelines and start taking better photos!

If you live outside London and are not able to make it to the event, don't despair. Stay tuned for future blog posts where I will be talking about all these concepts.

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Do - Err - Learn - Repeat - Succeed

Before becoming a photographer, my last job was at a fashion house in Barcelona. I worked there for many years and I have to admit that in a way that company was like a school to me. I learned so much from them and I grew both as a professional and as a human being. The people whom I met during those years changed my life forever. One of the biggest lessons that I learned on that job was from the CEO of the company himself. He once told me that working in an environment which tolerates mistakes invites people to take risks and innovate. And to me that was the secret of the company's success at the time. When you fear nothing, you become a doer.

I grew up in an environment that was very intolerant to mistakes. At school, there was always the competition to be the best: best of the class, best in sports, best friend... second best was not enough. And because I have always been terrible at sports and I wasn't very popular with classmates I opted for trying to be the best of the class, which rapidly proved to be harder than I expected. There were just too many other kids better than me in almost every field. Except for English and Poetry, in which I did very well... but was never the best. At home, like in many other homes, if things weren't done the way that they had to be done, there were always consequences. Mistakes were always reprimanded, there were never lessons to be learnt from erring.

All this culture of intolerance to errors affected my personal and professional life for many years to come. Whenever I did something, it had to be done to perfection. If not, the first one to punish myself was me. And believe me, I can be my worst enemy. And if I didn't foresee a positive outcome, I just wouldn't pursue the task. I was never the risk-taker, at least not in my professional life. It wasn't until I joined that company that I discovered the beauty in making mistakes. You do, you err, you learn, you repeat, you succeed.

In just a few years, my co-workers and I took that local brand with a very niche clientele from a 60-employees company with stores just nationwide to a multinational company operating a global brand with presence in 80 countries at that time. And to do that, you not only need committed people who believe in your project and who bleed the colours of your brand. You need people who aren't afraid of making mistakes. You need people who understand that erring and learning is the path to success. You need people who feel safe working in an environment where recovering from failing is more appreciated than to never have failed at all.

Now that I am a freelancer I still try to do things to perfection from the beginning because erring can be more expensive when you are on your own. But I have learnt that if I want to get somewhere I have to take risks and I mustn't fear mistakes. There is no growth in playing it safe.

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Aspiring Models: Beware Of Fake Model Agencies

In the last couple of weeks I have gotten many calls from aspiring models who have been approached by fake model agencies promising them jobs with top clients and earnings of thousands of pounds a day provided that they came to their offices for a test photoshoot for which they had to pay a refundable deposit. These are not real model agencies, these are just scammers who are trying to take advantage of the hopes and dreams of vulnerable people who know nothing about the modelling industry and who would do anything to work as a model. Keep on reading for tips on how to recognize them and not fall prey to their reprehensible techniques.

The modelling industry is a really tough industry to work in. You are being constantly judged by things that are completely out of your control. Rejection becomes the new normal. It's nothing personal, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you are pretty or not, or whether you have the body shape, or the height or the origin. It has more to do with the trends of each market and what the clients are looking for at the moment. There is nothing wrong in trying to make it as a freelance model and probably by doing so it would get you a constant stream of jobs even if they are lower paid, but the dream is to be signed to an agency that gets you the jobs that pay the big bucks. The problem is that agencies respond to clients expectations and they only sign models who they can make money of. So if this season no one is casting redheads in London and you are an aspiring redhead model, the likeliness of getting signed by an agency in London this season is very low. If you wanted to get signed you would have to consider other markets. And it is precisely those moments in the aspiring model's life that the fake model agencies target.

It is a sad reality of humans as a species that there will always be someone trying to take advantage of the most vulnerable. If they take advantage of me, a 40 something year old man, it doesn't make it better but at least I can excuse myself by saying that I've been caught off-guard, I should have known better, and this won't happen to me again. But it is disturbing that someone takes advantage of the dreams, expectations and innocence of young people. To me, that is unforgivable. These fake model agencies target young aspiring models who are desperately looking to be represented or models who are just starting out and have no idea of how the modelling world works. They contact them on social media or on the streets, tell them that they have what it takes to become a model and lure them into their studios with the promise that they would take their photos to start developing their portfolio and then send it out to the best agencies and the best clients in the country. The only condition is that the model pays a refundable deposit which they hardly get back and after the photoshoot finishes then they have to pay for the photos if they ever want to have them. And some of these fake agencies charge up to 2000 pounds for photos that once they are given to the model they are never sent to any agency or client and the model never hears from the fake agency again.

So, how to know when are you dealing with one of these scam agencies?

1. They don't call themselves an agency: if you talk to them or if you go on their website you will see that they usually don't call themselves an agency because they are not. They use words like "platform" or "advisor" or "coach" and they will tell you that they will provide advice and guidance to help you become a model and then put you in contact with "top agencies" or "affiliated agencies" or "top clients" to get you the jobs. Real agencies call themselves what they are, Modelling Agencies, and if you go into their websites you can see that they clearly say so.

2. They charge a deposit or a fee: real model agencies never charge you money when they book you. Whatever money they invest in your development they will take out of the payments that you receive from clients once you start making money with them.

3. They ask you to come in for a photoshoot and then charge you for the photos: real agencies develop your portfolio with a network of photographers that they work with and never charge you directly for the photos. As I said before, all the development costs come out of your first jobs.

If you feel like you have been approached by one of these scam agencies you can learn more about models rights and agencies duties on these links:

• British Fashion Council

• British Fashion Model Agency Association

Modeling is not for the faint of heart and there is no easy way to make it in the industry. You don't need an agent to work as a model but if you decide to look for one you should first do your research on what to expect from the agency and what the agencies expect of you.

Photo credit: behind the scenes by Andrew Clark.

Do you like what you just read? Consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/jccandanedo where you can learn more about my creative process and the stories behind my images. I’d love to have you as part of my Patreon community.

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Assumption Is The Mother Of All Mistakes

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines the word 'assumption' as something that you accept as true without question or proof. Which basically means that when we assume something we are lying to ourselves. And sometimes assuming can be helpful, like when we research our target or when we handle statistics: it is impossible to have the 100% of the facts. But other times, specially when we are dealing with people, assumptions can lead to terrible mistakes.

This is particularly true with clients. A couple of weeks ago I was a bit dissappointed because I have been trying to work with a potential client for a while to no avail. And to be perfectly honest, I am not getting any feedback at all. So I decided to stop reaching out because I assumed that if they hadn't answered any of my emails it was because they didn't want to work with me. And then I read this post on the Marketing Mentor blog and I realized that my assumption was making me self-boycott my business.

You see, my assumption made me believe that I had the power to get into other people's mind and know what they were thinking. I was convinced that the only reason why this potential client was not replying to my contact attempts was because they didn't want to work with me. I am not good enough, my work is crap, nobody knows who I am, I don't have enough following on social media... All the ghosts in my head materialized and made me formulate my assumption. And it's not that these might not be valid reasons, but my insecurities blinded me from seeing all the other reasons why they were not getting back to me: wrong timing, too much workload, forgetfulness...

My friend whom I go jogging with every morning also pointed out that they haven't said yes but they haven't said no either. So she adviced me to keep on trying. And the truth is that some people need some insisting before they make up their mind about something. So I will keep on trying until they tell me 'no'... because until that happens, there is always the possibility for a 'yes'.

Do you like what you just read? Consider becoming a patron on patreon.com/jccandanedo where you can learn more about my creative process and the stories behind my images. I’d love to have you as part of my Patreon community.

You can also subscribe to my weekly blog posts here!