Better. Faster. What do we mean by this? Here at Fotomerchant, we are focused on streamlining and improving your studio workflow. One way we do this is by templating your different job types. By speeding up your workflow and removing the potential for human error, session templates save you time and money.
Before introducing you to the dazzling session template feature, let’s get acquainted with sessions. Sessions are what you may refer to as a job. A session is an event where you photograph individuals; this could be a sport, school, or graduation event. These sessions consist of stages that allow your customer to move through a specific cart experience tied to durations or particular dates. We can template stage structures and any specific tax or shipping settings you may need to be linked to a session.
How Session Templates Make Your Life Easier
As your photography season starts picking up, the last thing you need is for an easily avoided mistake to stop your flow. Building stage structures and assigning shipping and tax settings for your session every time you import a job is time-consuming and results in human error. Why painstakingly create each job when you can simply duplicate it from a premade template!
Let nothing stop your workflow as you refer back to your session template and create new jobs with this structure already in place, a process so easy you could even delegate it to other team members. Woah, what if you want to track which session templates your team uses? No worries! You can easily view which session templates are utilized for your jobs using the handy “review usage” feature.
Do you need to tweak session settings for each job that may diverge from your session template? No problem; you can adjust the job as needed after creating your new sessions from the session template.
At Fotomerchant, we understand that each job may need different stage structures, e.g., you may shoot prepay for your dance schools but only proof for your soccer teams; this would require multiple types of session templates, which you can set up. Depending on the job type, select the correct session template to ensure your tax, shipping, and other fiddly settings aren’t forgotten in the mid-season swarm of jobs. Create your new session, and presto, the category-specific stage structure, and all necessary settings are in place!
Within the hectic mid-season period, promotional marketing can sometimes fall through the cracks as you prioritize getting your photos out to buyers. Don’t worry; we got your back. Session templates help bring marketing back into your workflow as our session templates can include promotional campaigns linked to stages within your sessions. The marketing is already incorporated when you create new sessions using the template! So sit back, relax, and discover the sweet feeling of surprise sales generated by previously forgotten promotions. Our session templates can include both stage durations and specific dates so you can perfectly time your promotional campaigns. Marketing without the work? Yes, please! Click here to learn more about marketing linked to stage types.
User Stories
When thinking about a user story to introduce you to the capabilities of session templates, I had one studio in mind, Strawbridge Studios. On a large scale, this studio cannot afford to create a new session structure every time a job comes online. It would be chaos! The thought of all the human error and late deadlines met makes me cringe. Thankfully for Strawbridge, session templates were here to make their workflow better and faster. Here is what Strawbridge had to say about the use of this feature:
The session template feature allows specific settings and stages to be applied to thousands of sessions at a time. Marketing campaigns can be executed without the need for manual manipulation, which eliminates the high risk of human error.
This studio has a long list of session templates they choose depending on the type of job, pre-pay, spec, seniors, proof only, sports, if you can name it, they got it! Life without session templates for this studio would be strenuous and complicated. It gives me a headache just imagining it! Lucky for everyone involved, session templates alleviate some of the mid-season stress. Don’t just take it from me; let Strawbridge tell you:
Within our eCommerce department, session templates have become our entire workflow. Without them, our job would take a lot more time to complete, and we would experience a higher rate of human error. We would not be able to manage the volume of our company or the diversity of our offerings without them.
Well, you heard them! Session templates have become so instrumental in Strawbridge’s workflow that they couldn’t imagine life without it. So streamline your workflow with session templates and never look back. Reach out to our friendly Fotomerchant team to learn how we can transform your studio workflow.