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Great Ways to Expedite Wedding Album Turnaround Times

Zook Book Lustre Book and Replica

In today’s marketplace, you can order groceries, pet sitters, vacation rentals, and even cars, online. We live in a fast-paced world where everything you need is at the tip of your fingers. Simultaneously, Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and other social media platforms put day-to-day activities in front of fans and friends in real-time. It’s no surprise that modern customers are looking for a great experience and instant gratification. Therefore, when wedding couples have to wait 6 to 12 months to receive their professional wedding album, anticipation and excitement can fall flat. It’s time to find great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times and keep your clients delighted! 

Have a goal AND have a plan.

It’s great to tell clients that they will get their custom wedding album 3 months after their event. However, if you don’t have a timeline and plan in place, that’s more of a wish than a goal.

Examine your process, from downloading raw files to delivering a finished wedding album. Next, get a calendar out and block off the number of hours or days it takes to get a project from one step to the next. Then take a look at where the bottlenecks are and where things slow down. This will help you discover where to focus on improving your process. Once you pinpoint your pain points, you can focus on where changes can be made. 

great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times, Great Ways to Expedite Wedding Album Turnaround Times, Zookbinders
Take the time to create instructions and email communication to share with clients so that they stay on track with the album process.


Here are 4
great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times.  

  1. Communication is key.

Lag in communication and slow decision making can be one of the struggles in offering professional wedding albums.  Be sure you have excellent and consistent communication with your customers. Let them know what to expect and when they must take action. 

Use a studio management software or email marketing provider to schedule reminders. By being proactive in communicating with your clients you’re more likely to be top of mind with gentle reminders and exciting updates.

  1. Delegate.

So, the event is photographed, and you’ve got 2,800 images to sort through and edit. Stop right there. Nobody said you have to do it. You are a photographer, not an editor. While some professionals feel like culling and editing is part of the artistic process, it is also a giant time suck. If you want to retouch and enhance hero images for the album or wall art, great. Basic culling and editing can be handed over, or shared, with others to free up bottlenecks in the album process. 

 Zookbinders offers culling and editing services using Lightroom Smart Previews making it easy to share your presets and preferences. There’s only one you, but there are multiple professional editors at Zookbinders. So take the work off your plate and delegate! You’ll prevent a backlog and accelerate workflow with a few other members of your team.

 

great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times, Great Ways to Expedite Wedding Album Turnaround Times, Zookbinders
Weddings = thousands of images. Using the Zookbinders culling and editing service accelerates image delivery. Creating a selection order for your clients can also speed up the final album order.

 

  1. Set them up for success.

Help your clients choose images for their wedding album design with the Zookbinders Selection Service. If there’s anything your clients are going to procrastinate on, it’s going through 1500 images to pick out their favorite 50.

Let Zookbinders’ design team help with that. Selection provides your clients a gallery of recommended images for the album.  Don’t worry, nothing is carved in stone.  Clients have the opportunity to swap out images or add additional images to their albums. Bonus – you get to set the price on any add ons for a nice upsell! Selection galleries take just a few days to set up. You could have clients finalizing their images in a week rather than months.

  1. Let the pros handle it.

Some photographers love designing a wedding album layout. For others, creating a design for a custom album is a tedious chore. Either way, wedding album design can take several hours. You can expedite projects by using a design service. 

If you’ve got multiple albums to design, images to edit, emails to send, social media posts to schedule, blogs to write, and clients to meet with, album design turnaround times can tend to get lengthy. With the Zookbinders album design service, you can have a design to show to your customer in 5 to 7 days. Get your clients their designs in a week rather than a month.

 

great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times, Great Ways to Expedite Wedding Album Turnaround Times, Zookbinders
The Zookbinders design service has three different design styles to choose from. Contempo (pictured above) has layered images and customized backgrounds.


From Shoot to Album in 3 months!

Implementing these great ways to expedite wedding album turnaround times can positively impact your client’s experience. Preparation and communication are the foundation.

Here’s a new timeline from raw files to the finished wedding album.  Times are approximate and allow extra time for client decision making and revisions. 

  • Week 1: Send images to culled and edited.
  • Week 3: Finalize editing and create a Selection Order.
  • Week 4: Send Selection Order to the client. Allow them a specific time frame to finalize.
  • Week 6: Send Image selection to Album Design
  • Week 7: Send Album Design to client
  • Week 10: Approve album design and any revisions. Place album order
  • Week 12: Album ships 
  • Week 13: Rave reviews from happy couples!
Maureen Miller CPP

Maureen Miller CPP

Contributor to Marketing & Client Experience at Zookbinders. Professional photographer for 25+ years. An advocate for making money and doing what you love. My motto, ”Photography is a BIG DEAL!”

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