Why Brides Don’t Reply To Your Inquiry Emails (And How To Fix It)

After reviewing dozens of bridal hairstylists and makeup artists' email responses, I know exactly why you're getting left on read. In this video, I'm going to show you 4 simple quick fixes and 2 real email makeovers so you can go from slow to book to same-day yes. Hey, hi, hello, I'm Marissa Brennan. I grew my bridal hair business to over half a million in just under 3 years without a wedding team. One of the biggest shifts I had to go from crickets in my inbox to same-day bookings was how I was responding to my inquiries. Your emails are a part of your sales system, and right now a lot of bridalpreneurs are missing the sale in their inbox. Your inbox has money in it, girl. And quick thing before we dive in, I created the Dying to Book Blueprint, which is a customized blueprint for your exact business, which is a customized blueprint for your exact business to tell you where you're leaking money, how much revenue you're leaving on the table, why brides are actually ghosting you. Because you plug in your real numbers, answer a few questions, and I'm able to tell you exactly what's missing in your business, where you're leaking money, why brides are slow to book, and how you can fix that ASAP. I'll link it down below and we can talk more about it at the end. Okay, let's get into it. The quiet mistakes that are actually killing the sale in your inbox. The most common mistakes that I see are numero uno, a huge wall of text. My girl, I know you know that your brides don't read anything, so why are we sending them an email that's like this? I know you're not reading it. Brides are busy. If they open that and they see that, they just kind of glance at it and then they shut it down. If it looks like an essay, they're out. They're not reading it. That's why you're getting ghosted. Two, you're saying the same thing that everybody else is, so you're not standing out in her inbox. If you started off with, congrats on your engagement, guess what? The 5 other people she inquired with said the exact same thing. You disappear into the void. Three, one of my personal favorites, you don't end with a call to action. You end your email with, let me know if you have any questions, let me know how this lands for you. So you put everything back on her and she's like, well, I don't have any questions. So she doesn't respond. 4, something that I see so much is you front load your email with like contract verbiage requirements. Please no. Your first response email is feeling like a contract requirement between her and a lawyer versus like a celebration of her being excited to work with you. One of my least favorites is typing out your entire rate sheet within that inquiry email versus sending her over something that she can click into, like a beautiful proposal. Grab the cups, you're going to jail for that one. Okay? Remember, clear beats clever. You don't need to sound professional in your emails. If you're reading it and you're like, wow, I would never say that in a real conversation, delete it. Okay, your email needs to tell her the exact next step that you want her to take, like click this proposal, book a call, schedule a trial, pay this deposit to secure your date. You gotta spell it out for her. So what you want to do instead is use the 4-part email structure. Here's the structure that I used and tested for 3+ years, and then now hundreds of bridal stylists and makeup artists are using it. 4 simple parts, okay? You got the introduction, the body and information, next steps, and call to action. Introduction is the top of the email, so 1 to 2 lines. Make it customized, personalized to her. The biggest part here that I see a lot of people miss is you want to match her tone, you want to match her energy. If she's super hype in her email, you want to respond in that first introduction like, yay, I'm so excited that I'm available on your date, I'm absolutely obsessed with the vibe. That's how you would talk IRL. Then you can follow that up with asking her a simple question about something she put in the inquiry form personalized to her. Maybe that's her skin type, her hair type, her bridal party size, her venue, something along those lines. Then we move down into the body and the info of the email. The biggest takeaway for this part that I want you to walk away with is keep it human, keep it personalized. If you're ChatGPTing all of your email responses, I can almost guarantee that's why you're getting left on read and brides are slow to book. A simple thing you can do is when you're responding to emails, have her inquiry form open on one side of your screen, and then on the other side of your screen, have the email that you're typing out. You want to respond to what she is giving you in the inquiry form. Answer the questions that she asked. Talk about the venue. Talk about her bridal party size. Recommend the package that fits her best. And then to keep it designed so she's actually going to read it, you want to make sure you're bullet pointing things out, maybe bolding a few things so that way it's skimmable. We don't want it reading like ChatGPT threw up on it. Okay. And actually one of my clients did this. She had ChatGPT write all of her emails, rewrite her sales page, her content, and she didn't get any inquiries for like 4 months. It completely ruined her business until she learned the 4-part email structure and how to actually talk to your bride's buyer type and use sales psychology. Then she was able to hit, I think it was like a $12K month in bridal bookings. So ChatGPT wrote it, delete and rewrite, miss. Okay. The third part of the email structure is going to be next steps. You want to tell her what happens now. Okay. She's inquired with you. You're available for her date. Now, what are the next steps that you want her to take? What does that look like? You want to guide her attention. So, okay, what does that look like? Open up the proposal. Review the packages, select the one that works best for you. Here's what the wedding morning is gonna look like. And then you always wanna end your email with a call to action, CTA, one clear, confident action. This can look like, to secure your date, click accept in the proposal, sign your contract, pay your deposit by Friday so I can make sure your date's still available in my books. Once that's in, your date's officially secured with me and, um, yours. Then you could put a bunch of emojis. That's what I would do, like celebration, fire, heart. Again, personality. That's me. Maybe that's not you, whatever your your personality type is like, add it in there. And one clear thing that you want to walk away with on the CTA is you want to assume the sale. We want to use confident language. Let's get into it. Okay, so first let's talk about what's working in this email. What's working in this is I like where she kind of bullet pointed it out, giving like, here's how you can secure your project date, which is the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 steps. I feel like that's really good. And I like how she added some customization. So where it says project in those lines, I can tell that that's likely the Project date that this bride is inquiring about. I like that there's customization and personalization there. I do like how she outlined like booking process, minimum service requirement. Here's how you can secure your project date. I like how we structured it that way, but very first impression, you already know what I'm going to say. It's a huge wall of text. So just sit with this for a minute and look at it. Where is your eye going? It's likely looking at it feeling overwhelmed, like, whoa, and you probably don't even read it. Skim it. That's what our brain does. So you might feel like, oh, I'm giving her more information.

I need her to know everything about my service. I need her to know all of my requirements right here, right now.

I'm gonna stop you right there. She doesn't need to know all this information at this stage. If your inquiry form is doing heavy lifting for you, she's already gonna know about your minimum service requirement, your booking process. She should already have those things before she's in this stage. That should be on your website inquiry form. So that way when you get here, we're not a wall of text. We're not telling her every single thing for requirements, the booking process. She doesn't need to know that information at this stage. Next thing I want you to look at is that first introduction of the email, the first part. Congrats on your engagement. Thank you for your interest in working with us for your wedding glam. Does that sound like something you say? I bet it does. So what that tells me is she's seeing that and reading it everywhere else. Again, you wanna stand out in her inbox. And is that something that you would actually say in person? Probably not. Next, let's go down to the bottom of the email where it says, we wanted to let you know that we received multiple inquiries for the same date.

Bookings are secure on a first-come, first-served basis and only with a contract and 50% non-refundable, non-transferable booking retainer.

Again, that's contract terms going in the first inquiry email. That's gonna take me out of the excitement of the process and that's gonna make me feel like, ooh, that's what should be in your contract. She doesn't need to read that right here. Then let's look at the call to action. So the call to action in this would be like, really looking forward to the possibility of working with you. And then it goes to the first name. I like the personalization there with the name, but really looking forward to the possibility of working with you. Ooh, I would I would never say that in an email because this isn't confident language where we're assuming the sale. Instead, it's like, oh, I hope you book with me kind of vibes. No, we want to assume that every bride who's in your inbox is so excited to work with you. She is like saving the date. She's like, oh my God, I can't wait to hear back from this girl. That's the energy that you want to be putting out because this energy is not assuming the sale. This energy isn't confident, and this is like, I'm looking forward to the possibility. I hope you book with me. No, girl. What I would reframe it to instead is, I can't wait to work with you. I'm so excited to work at insert her venue name here, or something that's more personalization customized to her. And what I would have done is I would have matched more of the tone of my bride's energy. This almost feels like a template, like a copy and paste, which, hey, I love a template. I love a template as a starting point, but it doesn't feel like there's anything customized to what the bride put in her inquiry in this email. Another thing too that I feel like a lot of people miss with emails, and that I would put a big fat red marker on is there's nothing bolded. So my eye is literally like skimming this entire thing. Again, I like how she structured it out, but what I would have done is bolded booking process, bolded minimum service requirement, bolded here's how you can secure your date. And for the booking process, minimum service requirement, I wouldn't even have put those in the email to begin with. But if you were putting that in there, I would bullet point it out. I would go through and make sure that I bold it or change the color. Again, design can really work for you in your emails and you can have that in a template so it's already set. But again, you always just want to make sure you're customizing to your bride's tone, matching her energy, personalizing it to her, how you would talk in real life. Okay, let's go to the next one. All right, so already in this inquiry email, what I'm liking is the design. We have some things that are bolded. We have our eye being drawn to those bolded things. Another thing that I like is there is a link to the pricing guide and booking information versus it being laid out within the email itself. And I do like how this email is more condensed. There's not so much text walls or text heavy. Another thing I do like is where she said in the intro, I am excited to share I'm available on November 11th, 2024. My team and I would love to be a part of your wedding day to create your dream wedding look. I do like that. I think that's really sweet. Now let's talk about what I would change. Big fat red marker over. If you notice, she started the email the same way the other one was. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding day. Same vibe energy. The next thing that I'm not loving about this email is the process. I feel like the process is like an if or and, or it's like giving her too many options. It's like this person wants her to book a call before they book and officially secure their date, right? So if that's a part of your process, you want to make it so easy in the entire email. You want it to guide her to booking that call. But within this email, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like, okay, hey, here's my pricing guide and booking information, but also please use the link to schedule a call. I don't see a link. If my available time slots don't align with your schedule, you can inquire for another date. And it's like too wordy, too many options. Like be like super direct and super clear if that's the action you want her to take. So what I would do instead is if that's what the action you want her to take, I would say next steps, use this link, have a link, book a call here. I wouldn't talk about what you would discuss on the call. I would make the call discussing everything here. And I would say like review my pricing guide and booking information before we get on the call. So I feel like that right there is leading to confusion in this entire email. Another thing I'm not a fan of within this email is the call to action. We gotta talk about it, okay? Because this could be so much better. So the call to action, which is gonna be the last line of the email, is, I can't wait to speak with you very soon. Again, what does this do? This puts your bride in the driver's seat versus you in the driver's seat. You in the driver's seat would be a call to action telling her the action you want her to take, which for this email looks like you want her to book a call. So what I would do is assume that she's gonna book the call. So I would say something like, chat with you on our call. I can't wait to be a part of your day. Something like that where you're assuming that she's booking the call. Again, that's confident language. We're asserting. One thing I do like, I would tweak the messaging about it though, but I missed this in the, in the top of the video is, please note pricing for 2025 season will increase soon. The current pricing is subject to change. If you are interested in booking, don't hold off. So what I like is the, please note pricing for 2025 will increase soon. I'm not obsessed with how she communicated this. I feel like we could do that a little better. I feel like it's giving a little ChatGPT. And what I would have done is I would have, instead of please note, I would have put this underneath. I can't wait to speak with you very soon. And I would have did this as like a PS statement. PS statements in sales psychology are literally chef's kiss golden. I use them all of the time. I love me a PS statement to add urgency and scarcity within your email. So how I would rewrite that one is again, I would cross out the please note and I would make it PS. I would put that underneath the can't wait to chat with you on our call and be a part of your special day. That would be my call to action. I would do, P.S., just to let you know, my current pricing is subject to change and pricing for 2025 will be increasing by X date and put the actual date. And then I would put secure your wedding date by X, the date that you're increasing your rate to lock in the current rates. That is going to add more sales psychology because when you give them a date that like puts it in her mind of like, okay, I don't want to hold off. I want to make sure that I secure this rate. Oh, that would be so juicy. If you're sitting here like, oh my God, I think I'm losing bookings because of my emails, or I wonder where my booking process is is leaking me money. That's literally why I created Dying to Book with You Blueprint. It's personalized, custom to you. You plug in your numbers, answer a few quick questions specific about your business, and you're going to get a personalized audit that's going to show you why brides are ghosting you, how much money in revenue you're leaking, what's actually slowing down your bookings, why your content isn't converting even if you're posting every single day, which sales behaviors are actually pushing brides out the door. And I'm going to give you a customized blueprint so you can fix these super fast in your business. Start there if you're tired of out of budget and tired of hearing we went with somebody else. It's linked down below for you. And let me know in the comments, what was your biggest takeaway? And let me know if you're using any of these in your email responses. I love you so much. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.