WHY does ZOLA.com Prevent You from Speaking with your Shopping Brides!

I have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but ZOLA prevents you from entering your contact info in a message to your shopping brides!!! This is the strangest thing.  ZOLA is not my CRM; it's a billboard to get possible clients' attention. This step is costing you valuable business!

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, world. Good morning. No um no rock and roll intro this time. No fancy, schmancy uh intro to get your attention. I'm just gonna dive right into it because I woke up this morning to a business situation that I was like, well, this is a podcast today. So, all of you working photographers out there, mainly wedding photographers, we are in the world, the generation, the social media event of our lifetime. We are trying to get in front of clients to earn their business. And all of these steps in attracting clients in general, and then continuing the conversation for becoming your client, what we can do for you, what they need to do for us, the conversation continues. Where I'm going with this is if you have ever advertised on the knot or zola.com or whatever else is out there, um, I stopped using those things a few years ago because uh the knot burned me extremely bad and I got exhausted with their their bots, and I even caught them on it, and uh, you know, I was like, there's no reason why I have 200 inquiries and every single reply I do for these clients, including their cell numbers, by the way, um and just wasn't getting any responses. It's like that's that's like impossible. It's just it's just humanly impossible that 200 inquiries and nobody is respondable. Like that's not a real person, that's not a real shopping bride. Okay, so I woke up this morning. I decided in the beginning of the summer to go ahead and try Zola. Why not? I mean, it's new, it's pushing itself to get out there. So ride their marketing, ride their SEO. Let's just see for the price. Let me do three months. I'll pay for this, I'll pay for that. Just to see if if I could even get actual real responses, like compared to what I experienced on the night. So, this is a huge problem that I have this morning, and I'm very curious what your thoughts are, man. Um, I would love to get you on the podcast and have just a regular conversation on stuff like this. It doesn't have to be anything hard and hurtful or nothing like that, just business. Okay. Zola, when you get a hello, which is basically somebody messaging you saying, Hey, how you doing? You know, my wedding date is here, that kind of thing. For whatever reason, when you have an automated response, because you can create one with Zola, um, it Zola does not allow you to enter your private your contact information. Like, I can't add a phone number in the message. It's like, hi. Wait, hold on. Let me let me read this to you. Whoops, where are we? Why'd you go away? Come on. Okay, so my automated response when somebody clicks on me here, it says, Capturing wedding memories has been my passion since the first day. I grabbed the camera. This is my automated response, but please reach out whenever you're ready to chat about your vision for your big day. I am happy to send you links to real weddings, and I got a couple more things in there. If now in the small, small, small print under that dialogue box, Zola has please don't include your contact information. It will be removed before the message is sent. So let me ask you a question. Zola is my billboard right now, it's just an advertisement. It's not my CRM, customer relations management. It is not my software for handling clients. It is just a billboard. It is Zola is just to get in front of people. That's all it's supposed to be. So, with that preventative statement, what would you do? What do you say? I mean, what's the fanciest response you can come up with that'll make them do the next step through Zola instead of me being able to do more for my searchable brides? See where I'm going with this? So I've been in business for uh this October makes 32 years. So yes, I've I've been through the whole thing. I've been through the Yellow Pages days in the very, very beginning. And I've been through um, you know, when the knot was new. Who do we have before that? We had you know local wedding magazines that everybody was doing and worked, by the way, because that's that's how it it was. That's all we had. So that was great. Um things are very different right now in today's world. It's July 2026, and you know, no disrespect to Zola, but this seems antiquated to me, you know, like in the world of everything's moving at a million miles an hour, you're not allowing me to put my phone number in a message to these shoppable brides. Like, what are you doing, man? Your job is to help me book a wedding. But well, I guess that's not true. Your job is to help me be seen. That's all these websites are really for. You know, any operating photography business has some form of CRM that they're using. There's some kind of system that you have in place, there's some kind of way to communicate with your clients, and um, I'm pretty sure people aren't messaging and booking right on the site, you know, like, oh, you're a guy on the first message, boom. Like, I'm pretty pretty sure that's not happening. Um, so I'm just curious, these companies, these online companies are abusing the wedding industry to a level of insanity, you know. I'm I'm I'm sorry, but your job is to help me stay in business when I decide to pay for you. All right. So I'm just curious if you are like me, you know, get into the comments if you can. Um, you know, uh again, message me somehow. I would love for you to join me on a podcast and just chit-chat about where we are in our industry on, you know, this whole procedural thing. I know as a mass exodus on the knot, but recently in conversations with clients, um, people are using Zola. So the thing is, you know, these shoppable clients, these bride and grooms, um, they're the ones who are not photographers, because good Lord knows everybody's a photographer these days. Um, if you're not a photographer and you're shopping this entire industry, if you use Zola, you're telling me that the florist, the band, the photographer, the videographer, the venue, like like anybody in the wedding industry, when they respond to a client, you're not allowing our contact information to be in the message. So you're sticking us, you're you're putting walls up to stay on Zola. So my question is, why don't you help us with that then? Then what is step number two? That would be fabulous. See where I'm going with this? It's like I feel like there's a step that's not listed, like it wasn't designed, it wasn't created. I'm finding the error and I'm putting it out there. So I'm genuinely asking for assistance. Okay. Um, I'm not just criticizing. I don't like that. I don't like going out publicly and just dissing people. This is a genuine question that I have. What am I supposed to do when all I can do is write some fancy little message, and you're not allowing me to put my phone number or contact information. It's just it's the weirdest thing ever, dude. I've never heard this before. Um, I will be calling the numbers that I can find them on Zolos, I can speak to somebody because um, honest to God, I would love to come back tomorrow's podcast and give you an answer. I'll give you an update. How about that? Um, you know, subscribe to this podcast if you're on any way of listening, Spotify, Apple Music, I mean, you name it, just hit the plus, hit subscribe. Um, you're more than welcome to unsubscribe later. But if you subscribe, at least you'll get a notification when I have a new episode coming out. And hopefully the next one will be an answer to my question, which I'm sure many, many of you photographers, um, or just anybody in the wedding industry that is using these kinds of platforms, I'm just I'm I'm I'm sure somebody else is looking for the same answers. So um, all right, today was more of a PSA. I apologize, it's only 10 minutes. Um, I honestly didn't plan on doing a podcast today. I have a much better, longer one coming up um over the weekend. But today just seemed urgent to me, and I'm I'm pretty darn sure there's many of you that this is urgent for as well. And I highly suggest that if you are paying for these online services, to um go to the bottom of their webpage and look at other ways of getting in touch with them. Look for a phone number, like call them. Don't do the bot, don't do the message. It's all pre-designed for FAQ answers that is basic. I'm talking, give me a human. Give me a human being that works for this company that can explain your ways. Because if, let's look at it on the bright side here, if this is an error that they're not aware of, they can fix it if it's a human. Okay, because they could they'll they'll get the ball rolling, they can turn into the manager and say, hey, we have an issue, we gotta fix it, we're gonna lose a lot of membership because it is one little problem. You know, I mean, seriously, come on, Zola. You guys have got to be better than this. I think Zola has the potential to be better and bigger than the knot. I know that sounds impossible because the knot is huge, but as we all know, it's not how big you are, because the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And I have seen many large businesses, excuse me, with my very white voice over here. Good to see you, y'all. That's not an effect, that's just me. It's morning, y'all. Even had I had my coffee already. I don't know what's going on. Um, it's not the size of the business, it's the quality of the customer service. That's what keeps you in business. And I have seen quite a few large entities uh have an almost going out of business sale because of poor customer service. You know, as soon as everybody agrees it's a bad deal, you lose money. So, all right, you guys. Um, tell you what, I didn't do the intro, I'll do the outro. You guys have a freaking fantastic day. You're alive, you're here, you are energy. We all need your energy. Be creative, be positive. I'll see you in the next one. Yo, please.