Ask the agent
The cold email real estate photographers should send agents
One observation about her listing, one small question, stop. That’s the whole message. You can’t hit send on draft eleven because the message is about you, and the agent with a live listing books whoever did write this week.
You can’t send it because it’s about you
Draft eleven has your background, your packages, a link and a first-shoot discount. Four sentences, three of them about you.
Each piece does its own damage. The first-shoot discount reads as new. The link reads as homework. The background reads as a pitch she didn’t ask for.
Put them together and the message tells her three things: you’re new, you have time on your hands, and you’d like something from her. She reads it as a lender pitch with a camera.
Your gut knows it, which is why you can’t hit send. Eleven drafts is zero messages sent.
One observation. One small question. Stop
Here’s the message that replaces all eleven drafts. It’s shorter than your email signature.
It’s the one opener I teach, and the one I’d send tomorrow.
"Saw the Oak Street listing went up with phone photos. You shooting those yourself, or is that the brokerage’s guy?"
It’s the only message in her inbox about her listing instead of your business. She can answer it in four words from a driveway.
There’s nothing in it to review, nothing to click, nothing to decide. She either shoots those herself or she doesn’t, and either answer opens a conversation.
I sat on the agent side for ten years. Messages that opened with "I’m a local real estate photographer" went in the pile with the lenders. The one about my listing got read twice.
Four words is the bar. If she needs a paragraph to answer, you wrote a paragraph.
Leave out your price, your experience and your availability
A good opener still dies if you add one of three things. Most drafts have all three.
No price. Pricing comes in the close, after the work does the talking.
A price in the opener gets compared to the last price she paid, before she’s seen a single photo. You lose that comparison every time.
No experience. Why lead with your ace? Hold it until she’s asked.
No availability. "I have openings this week" reads as "nobody’s booking me."
All three are things she’d find out anyway if she booked you. Put them in the opener and they’re the reason she doesn’t.
And when her photos are rough, never say they’re rough. Blame the tech. Zillow compresses phone photos and makes them dark, and that house deserves to look its best. She gets to agree with you about Zillow instead of defending her own pictures.
Looks like Zillow’s compressing your images and making them a little dark. That house deserves to look its best. Have you thought about bringing somebody in?
Your first message has one job: get a four-word reply.
Tomorrow, send the one-observation opener to ten agents with a live listing, then delete the eleven drafts.
The agent opener scripts
One observation, one question, and the day 3 and day 10 follow-ups. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the scriptsGet my roadmapStraight answers
- What should a real estate photographer say in a first message to an agent?
- One observation about her listing and one small question. Nothing about you. Saw the listing went up with phone photos, are you shooting those yourself or is that the brokerage’s guy.
- Should I offer a discount in my first message to a realtor?
- No. A first-shoot discount reads as new, and it sets your price before she’s seen the work. Pricing comes in the close.
- How do I tell an agent her listing photos are bad without offending her?
- You don’t. Blame the tech. Zillow compresses images and makes them dark, the house deserves to look its best, has she thought about bringing somebody in.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.