"Next Year I'm Outsourcing"...

Or so I thought.

On December 3rd at the height of mocking up cards for customers I twittered:

"mocking up holiday cards. It is not my favorite thing to do. Next year I'm outsourcing! Hold me to it"

Ha!  Little did I know what was in store for me.

(my personal cards & corporate holiday cards)

This year I changed some things about the way I handled holiday cards that helped me preserve my sanity.  One was instituting a $400 minimum order before volume prints or holiday cards could be ordered.  The majority of my fall orders were well above that number so it wasn't an issue for most clients.  For some folks that came to me last year more or less just for their holiday cards...it meant they went to someone else and that left me more time for clients with a broader need.  It just doesn't make sense for me to take "christmas card photos".  It is an add-on and that is how I treated them this year.

Also a big change this year: I had the client review samples of the cards so they could choose their card and photo(s) for me to work with instead of mocking up a bunch of cards for them to review.  This saved me a lot of time and also meant that I only mocked up cards for people that were serious.

However with a sick kid, a sick studio manager, and an overbooked schedule I was still pretty stressed out about designing cards.  Even with prepared templates it can take some time.  I encouraged the folks that purchased the digital package to go to TinyPrints or other online service to create their cards.

It seemed ideal and I had grand visions of just having all my clients next year buy their digital files to take elsewhere for their cards.

So as a test, I had my neighbor come over so we could order her cards from an online service.  Actually, I was VERY impressed with the customer service of inababycarriage.com and would definitely recommend it to clients.  The designs are beautiful and their turn around time was very speedy.  I was sad that watercolor paper wasn't a print option (as that is my favorite) but the print quality was good.  They also offer template for photographers if you want to buy them to offer to your customers using your own print lab.

However, my neighbor wanted to use 9 of the pictures from her session in a trifold card which would have been cost prohibitive if she were purchasing individual digital files.  It took the two of us well over an hour to choose a card, pick the pictures, fill in our special instructions, and upload the files.  For many of my customers I think it would just be overwhelming to try to do themselves.

Now, return to my regular customers that ordered cards from me.  I was able to make sure I was happy with their look, print quality, and make suggestions of what templates worked best with their photos.  And best of all, I got to include my name and URL on the back of their cards.

Fast forward to the week before Christmas.  Cards have been sent out.  And the calls and emails came in.  Friends wanted to know who took their pictures.  One of my customers told me that her friend that lives 2.5 hours away was very interested in coming to town for a session.  I had a flurry of people sign up for my email newsletter.  And no, I don't think it was a coincidence.  Being able to control the quality meant that I was putting my best face, and my client's, forward.

So, I'm rethinking my plan to simply outsource next year.  I think instead I'll try to streamline.  I'll probably offer fewer templates (I'm addicted to templates and tend to have too many instead of too few).  I'll continue with the minimum orders.  I think I'll have people come in to choose their card style (in the cases where people did that this year rather than reviewing online it was MUCH easier to mock up their cards and to get a decision!).  And who knows, maybe I'll have enough help from staff to mock them up for me.  ;)

What lessons did you learn this year when it comes to offering holiday cards to clients?

And in case you were wondering..I really wanted to send a wide format 5x7 card this year for my personal card (where the fold is on the short side) so I purchased the template for my personal cards from Swiss Miss Design Haus.  And I knew as soon as I saw the card with the bird on it from Design Aglow that I wanted to use it as my Corporate holiday card and I LOVED how they came out on the watercolor paper.  And yes, I reused the pictures of my kids on both cards...I have very little overlap between address lists and VERY little time to actually take their pictures. Cobblers kids and all.

Comments

[Keri]

Thanks for the link to the card templates! This was my first year to ever offer cards, and I definitely feel your pain! I think the biggest thing I learned is to only offer templates I totally love. And I'm starting NOW in finding/creating templates for next year. After I got all my cards in, I also realized that I loved the simple designs best. Those were the ones that ended up looking the best in their final form. So much to learn! Thanks for sharing your experience!!!

[Katie Williams]

Hey Jessica - thanks for sharing and ditto on everything!! :) curious where you can get a wide format 5x7 printed (where it folds on the short side??) TIA!

[Jessica]

Hi Katie! I had the card printed at WHCC. They came out great! I love White House.

[PJ Lee]

Amy Wenzel of SwissMiss Design Haus has the most amazing design templates and photography. So lively and tasteful. Thanks for showing us your cards and giving us your thoughts on this topic.

[jennifer chaney]

Jessica - you are so awesome... thanks so much for putting your thoughts out there. Always helpful to read another photographers thoughts. Love the minimum print order idea. I'll be back to read more later...