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Holiday Gear Up

Holiday Gear Up
Are you ready for the Holiday Season?

Maybe not since we have roughly 10 weeks to go. For most photographers, the winter months can bring a noticeable slowdown, but this also presents the perfect opportunity to seize seasonal event opportunities like Santa Portraits and holiday parties.

These festive events are in high demand, and with the right tools, you can make the most out of them!

We want to share a success story from a Santa Portrait Event that took place in the last few years, along with how NowCandid’s Workflows can help you maximize your success this holiday season.

Santa Portrait Station Success

Rachel S., a photography business owner from South Florida, a few years ago landed a Santa Portrait event at a Zoo and turned it into a HUGE win. With Candid's Scanner ID Workflow, Rachel was able to use the same techniques of a typical sports or school picture day and apply them to the Holiday Zoo Lights Santa Event.

To manage the event, Rachel used the Scanner ID Workflow, and generated blank QR cards to pass out to people while they waited in line.

The QR codes were scanned by the guests who then paired their contact info with their QR code! Once they got to the front of the line, Rachel's photographers would scan the next guest's QR with their tethered device, and then take their photos!

The device tethered to the camera would then upload the photos right after they were taken!

With the contact info and pictures both in the system, gallery links were then automatically texted directly to the subjects, right away.

Overall, this event garnered over $42,000 in it's first year!!! Not bad for a couple weeks of work!

NowCandid Workflows: Make Your Holiday Events a Breeze

One of the key elements to success in high-volume holiday events is efficiency—and that’s where NowCandid’s Workflows come into play.

These workflows streamline the process of capturing, organizing, and delivering photos, allowing you to focus more on your artistry and client experience.

Here are two workflows you’ll want to use during your Santa sessions and holiday parties:

  1. Scanner ID: The Workflow Rachel used! It's great for efficiently collecting guest contact info while they are in line, letting you move the line along more quickly OR have more time available for additional photos. Contact info is essential for instant image delivery and post-shoot marketing.
  2. Type & Take: This works similarly to the Scanner ID Workflow, except you type the subject's contact info into your tethered device before photographing them. It is not as time efficient at Scanner ID, but it doesn't require you to print out many blank cards before the event!

Seasonal Retail Theme to Add to the Experience

The holiday fun doesn't stop at the event—it continues when your customers view and purchase their images! With our Candy Cane retail theme, your clients are immersed in the festive spirit as soon as they visit their personal image gallery.

Our themes include delightful touches like falling snowflakes, which gently drift across the screen. These animations help enhance the shopping experience and keep customers wrapped up in the magic of the season.

Theme: Candy Cane - Watermarking: Default

Use Overlay Art to Add a Special Touch

If you're looking to elevate the experience further, NowCandid offers Overlay Art, allowing you to add optional customized overlays to your clients' images.

These titles add a festive, personal touch to the photos, making them feel extra special, whether it's a corporate holiday party, a Santa session, or a family Christmas gathering.

Imagine sending clients their Santa Portraits, complete with a “Merry Christmas 2024” overlay or a custom-designed title that reflects the spirit of the season. It’s little touches like these that make clients feel valued and excited about your services—leading to more referrals and repeat business.

Why You Shouldn't Sleep on Holiday Opportunities

The holiday season offers some of the most lucrative photography opportunities of the year, especially when it comes to events like Santa Portrait sessions, corporate holiday parties or large family and friends gatherings.

With many photographers considering this time a "slow season," there's an opportunity to stand out from the crowd by offering fun, engaging photo experiences that families, organizations, and individuals will love.

Adding these events to your services can also build lasting relationships with your clients—because who doesn’t want to make holiday memories they’ll treasure forever?

Don't Miss Out: Prep for the Holidays Now

The key to success is preparation. Start planning your Santa sessions, promote your holiday event photography, and make sure you're using NowCandid’s powerful tools to handle your Events with ease.

And remember: festive cheer isn’t just for clients. By embracing the holiday season and seizing these photography opportunities, you can fill your calendar and finish the year strong.

Cheers, and may there be many holiday events in your future!

Candy 🍬

Related articles

Did You Know? NowCandid™ Offers Retail Background Generation! ✨
NowCandid 101
February 5, 2025

Did You Know? NowCandid™ Offers Retail Background Generation! ✨

2
 minutes read
Hello, fabulous photographers!

Candy here, bringing you another “Did You Know?” feature highlight. Today’s spotlight is on a super-fun (and sometimes overlooked) part of our NowCandid™ retail site: AI-Generated Backgrounds for background-removed images. Let’s dive in!

AI Background Generation

When customers view or customize their images that have had their backgrounds removed, they’ll see an option inviting them to type in a text description of what they want behind them. Maybe it’s a colorful beach scene, a dreamy sunset, a whimsical forest—whatever the imagination conjures up! Our site will generate a fresh design tailored to that text prompt, giving them a truly unique final product.

Why It Matters

  • Personalized Shopping Experience: No two images look the same when customers can request different scenes. It’s perfect for capturing each individual’s tastes and vibes.
  • Boosts Sales: The novelty factor of typing in a text prompt and watching a new background appear can encourage customers to experiment—and buy more customized images.
  • Booking Tool: Using this feature as a sales tool to help you book parties, sports leagues, or anything else can be a way to get a gatekeeper's attention!

How It Works

  1. Choose a Background-Removed Image: When browsing the NowCandid™ retail site, customers click on an image that’s had its background removed.
  2. Enter a Text Prompt: A simple text field awaits—“sunset on a calm lake,” “abstract rainbow swirl,” “comic book city,” etc.
  3. Watch It Appear: The site blends the subject with the newly generated backdrop. Customers can finalize it right there, or try another prompt until they’re happy.

Retail Theme: Liquorice

That’s your little “Did You Know?” tip for today!

We hope you’ll tell your clients about this magical customization option—it might spark new ideas (and more sales!) for their photos.

As always, if you have any questions or feedback, let us know.Until next time, keep capturing those unforgettable moments! ✨

Cheers and sparkles,


Candy 🍬

Candy’s Weekly Recap: Multi-Select, Event Tags & More! ✨
Feature Updates
January 24, 2025

Candy’s Weekly Recap: Multi-Select, Event Tags & More! ✨

9
 minutes read
Hello, my fabulous photographers!

Candy here, ready to sprinkle some sparkle on your day with our newest Weekly Recap. We’ve been hard at work improving your NowCandid™ experience, and I’m excited to share all the juicy details. Let’s dive in!

1. Select System in Manage Images 🖼️

We’re introducing a Multi-Select feature to the Manage Images interface:

  • Multi-Select Button: Highlight multiple images at once.
  • Bulk Actions: After choosing your set, tap “Select” at the bottom. You can:
    • Mark them Invisible or Visible
    • Download them all in a single zip file
    • Toggle them as Group Photos or Individual all at once
  • Speedy Management: No more one-by-one adjustments. This should help you power through large batches of images in a fraction of the time!

2. Event Tags 🏷️

There’s a brand-new Extras tab in the Web Dashboard navigation, featuring our new Event Tags tool:

  • Creating Tags: Assign tags to your events (e.g., “Prom,” “Winter Formal,” etc.).
  • Filtering by Tag: On the Events List or in your Events Report, choose an Event Tag to instantly see only those events.
  • Performance Insights: Group your events by theme and get a quick view of how each set is performing all at once.

Tagging is perfect for photographers juggling multiple event types, letting you spot patterns and trends with ease.

Just two Events on this Event tag, but you can add lots!

3. Updates to the Faces Report 👥

Our Faces Report—released last week—has already received some polish:

  • New Revenue Line: Alongside face counts in the chart, you’ll now see a revenue line.
  • Compare Image Types & Sales: See whether couples, solos, or big group shots bring in the most orders.
  • Informed Future Shooting: Focus your time at events on what sells best—maybe it’s the big friend groups or the sweet one-on-one moments.

This view helps you refine your event coverage strategy for max impact.

Ignore the low sales, it was a test Event!

4. Image Details Page 📝

While managing images in your events, you’ll notice a “Details, Logs, and more” link on each image:

  • Expanded Meta Data: Discover camera settings, image size, camera type, and more.
  • Face Matching™ Logs: See if and when a face got paired to a participant; even jump directly to that participant’s gallery.
  • Advanced Troubleshooting: Ideal for debugging customer issues or satisfying your own curiosity about each shot.

It’s more info than we’ve ever provided, so have fun geeking out over the details!

So much image file info and image history now!

5. Big Improvements to the Web Dashboard Image Uploader

Finally, a behind-the-scenes upgrade that’ll make your day-to-day life easier:

  • Upload Up to 5000 Images: Jumping from 1000, so you can batch bigger events in fewer steps.
  • Faster Transfers: As long as you have decent upload speeds, the process should feel snappier overall.
  • Lower CPU Demand: Less strain on your computer, letting you multi-task without slowing to a crawl.

Sometimes it’s the quiet changes under the hood that make the biggest difference.

6. Tiered Pricing Now Live 🎉

After last week’s preview, Tiered Pricing is officially rolled out to SportsPics™, PartyPics™, GradPics™, and other sales-driven events:

  • Upgraded Text & Email Campaigns: We’ve refined the promotional messages to match your Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 pricing tiers, giving your buyers a clear sense of each week’s small price bump.
  • 365-Day Marketing SMS Replaced with 180: We’ve shortened the final reminder’s timeline from a year to 180 days, aligning better with your event marketing cycle and typical follow-up patterns.

If you haven’t explored Tiered Pricing yet, check it out in your Offer Creator and see how these incremental price changes (and updated marketing) might boost your sales!

That’s all for this week, my wonderful NowCandid™ community.

I hope these new features and improvements empower you to breeze through event management and deliver an even better experience to your clients. As always, if you have questions or feedback, give us a shout.

Until next time—keep capturing those unforgettable moments! ✨

Candy 🍬

Candy’s Weekly Recap: Tiered Pricing 💵, Enhanced Reporting 📊 & More!✨
Feature Updates
January 17, 2025

Candy’s Weekly Recap: Tiered Pricing 💵, Enhanced Reporting 📊 & More!✨

6
 minutes read
Hello, my fabulous photographer friends!

Candy here, ready to sprinkle some sparkle on your day with our latest Weekly Recap!

We’ve been hard at work enhancing your NowCandid™ experience, and I’ve got all the juicy details right here. Let’s dive in!

1. Tiered Pricing Reminders & Preview

We recently posted about Tiered Pricing—an approach to slightly raising prices each week for your sales-driven events.

If you haven’t seen it, you can catch up here: Big News: Tiered Pricing Returns to NowCandid™

  • Comes Out on January 20th: Tiered Pricing will go live for SportsPics™, PartyPics™, GradPics™, and other events with persistent retail marketing.
  • Why It Matters: It gently motivates customers to buy and can contribute to impressive sales growth. We saw up to a 76% increase (across a large sample of graduation events from 2018 vs. 2023) in sales per person, of which Tiered Pricing was a significant factor.
  • Check Your Custom Offers: You’ll now see new Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 tabs so you can preview how the pricing progression will look. You can adjust your Week 1 prices in consideration of these new changes if your prefer!

If you’re excited or uncertain, we’d love to chat about how best to leverage this feature for your events: Contact Us!

2. Reporting-Related Additions & Improvements 📊

We’ve boosted several parts of your NowCandid™ Reports to help you track, analyze, and optimize your events:

  • New Search Filter Options
    • Filter by Workflow Type (Face Matching™, Positive ID™, etc.) and by Program (QuicPics™, PartyPics™, etc.).
    • Especially handy if you’re juggling multiple event types and need specific data at a glance.

  • Reorganized Quick Stats + “Upfront Sales” Box
    • We reshuffled some quick stats on the Events Report to be more intuitive.
    • Introducing “Upfront Sales” specifically for QuicPics™ and QuicPics GO™: Enter how much you were paid to shoot the event upfront, and this will appear in your date-range reports, right alongside your retail sales figures.

  • Faces Report
    • A new “Faces” Report for events that have run Group-By-Face™.
    • Easily see an estimate of unique faces, compare that to your participant count, and spot how many images contain 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6+ faces.
    • Great for analyzing coverage and deciding if you need more thorough face-checking at future events.

3. Additional Participant Details 🙋

We’ve made small but valuable changes to the Participant Details page:

  • Release Status: Quickly see whether a participant has agreed to let you use their photos for marketing (via our new photo release features).
  • Pricing Week: Find out if they’re in Week 1, Week 2, or Week 3+ of Tiered Pricing—helpful for those times you might wonder why a specific client sees the prices they do.

4. LiveLoop™ Improvements 🖼️

LiveLoop™ just got a quality & performance boost:

  • Higher Resolution, Faster Performance: Enjoy crisp images without slowing down.
  • Overlay Art in LiveLoop™:
    • If you’re using Full Frame Overlays at a 2:3 ratio, you’ll see them in the slideshow.
    • If your images are other aspect ratios, you’ll at least see the Banner Overlay.
  • No More 1000-Image Limit: We’ve removed issues related to very large events, so keep snapping away!

Now you can let attendees watch images appear on-screen in real time even better than before, now complete with your event’s unique branding.

5. Candy Upgrades 🤖

Yes, I (Candy) got a little smarter!

  • Bigger Brain: Not literally of course! But in general, we've improved Candy's Q&A and reasoning skills!
  • Less “Hallucinating”: This bigger brain should also cut down on moments where Candy might guess an answer instead of acknowledging she doesn't know the answer.
  • Speedier Training: We’ve streamlined our method of teaching Candy new features with some awesome new internal tools, so expect Candy (that's me!) to gain knowledge at a quicker pace going forward.

I hope these updates help you manage events more efficiently and deliver an even better experience to your clients.

If you have any thoughts or want to share feedback, just reach out. Until next time!

Candy 🍬

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How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text
How to customize formatting for each rich text

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