This summer, the PhotoDay Team has been busy rolling out brand-new, highly-requested features to ensure you have everything you need for the fall season, specifically for your school photography jobs.
In this blog, you’ll learn about the newest additions to your school photo toolbox: Gallery Lookup, Organization Pages, and Yearbook Selection. We’ll explore how these powerful features will benefit your school photography business for years to come!
Paving the way with innovative solutions
From the beginning, PhotoDay has been committed to the success of our users and the growth of the volume photography industry. That’s why we created a complete workflow and marketplace solution for photographers just like you—and the thousands of photographers already saving precious time and money with PhotoDay.
Some of our groundbreaking landmark features include PhotoDay Capture, FaceFind, private galleries, a responsive customer shopping experience, AdvancePay, smart text marketing, and more. We’re incredibly proud of how these features and tools continue improving the lives of photographers using PhotoDay.
But if you should know one thing about us, it’s that we never stop developing new features and solutions! We’ve researched, listened to our users, refined, and built fresh solutions for finding individual private galleries, sharing multiple galleries, and selecting yearbook photos. So, let’s dive in.
Gallery Lookup
When using PhotoDay’s private galleries, a studio’s most significant pain point is: “What if the school won’t share parent email addresses?” We created Gallery Lookup to solve this obstacle without sacrificing privacy.
Gallery Lookup allows customers to find their private galleries without an access code. Simply put, you can now create, market, and publish private gallery jobs much more quickly. All your customers need is a link to the Organization Page or the Job URL.
Missing email addresses
Private galleries in PhotoDay are safe and secure, but some subject data is required for them to work smoothly. So what happens if the school doesn’t want to provide parent email addresses? Now, you can give the school, parents, and subjects a single Organization Page link.
With Gallery Lookup enabled you can rest easy knowing every parent can find their child’s gallery—even if they never received a unique access code beforehand.
Reduce customer service emails
Say goodbye to “I can’t find my access code!” emails. With Gallery Lookup, you and the school can simply share the Organization Page link or Job URL so customers can use Gallery Lookup to find their photos without an access code.
Ideal for schools and beyond!
While perfect for school picture days, Gallery Lookup is also great for sports, dance, and more. Since you control the search field names, you can allow customers to look up by student ID, team name, grade, jersey number, and more.
How it works:
- Configure. Choose the fields customers will use to search for their private gallery.
- Share. Share the Organization Page link* or Job URL with the organization/customers.
- Search. Customers enter their info > PhotoDay matches it with your imported subject data > they enter the correct gallery.
Learn more and get started with Gallery Lookup.
*Speaking of Organization Pages…keep reading to see how these two features are the ultimate combo.
Organization Pages
Organization Pages allow you to set up and share a single link to all your galleries related to an organization. You’ll never have to worry about tracking down multiple access codes for your organizations again!
An organization in PhotoDay = the party for which you’re taking photos (e.g., school, league, dance studio, individual client, etc.). While this feature is an excellent way to share private galleries for school picture days, it’s also a great tool for group and public galleries and other markets—sports, dance, events, etc.
Easy access for organizations and parents
Organizations can use their page internally (admins rejoice!), but they can also share it with parents. This greatly simplifies the customer experience, so no one has to keep track of multiple access codes for different picture days within a single organization.
Streamlined settings for your studio
PhotoDay makes it easy to customize your Organization Page settings by default and for each individual job, streamlining the job creation process. Plus, this link can remain the same year after year, and galleries can be added to and removed from the Organization Page as needed.
Create your first Organization Page:
- Enable it for an Organization and customize your link.
- Choose from a range of visibility and security options to fine-tune your settings.
- Share the Organization Page link with your organization contact and/or customers!
Learn more and get started with Organization Pages.
Yearbook Selection
PhotoDay’s new Yearbook Selection feature simplifies the photo selection workflow for photographers, organizations, and customers alike. With it, you can easily set up, communicate, review, and export customer selections all within PhotoDay.
Let’s dive into how this feature will benefit your studio!
Give customers the power to choose
You’ll never have to collect photo selections with cumbersome paper forms or outside software solutions again. Instead of driving customers outside of the gallery or asking them to complete more steps, you can keep parents in their gallery every step of the way.
Not only will parents and students love having the power to choose their favorite poses, but it’s one less task for your photography studio to handle. Sounds like a win-win to us.
Review and export with ease
While customers do get to select their favorite photos, you’re still in complete control of the final selections via the PhotoDay Studio Panel.
Plus, we know photo selections are only helpful if shared with the organization, so we made it a seamless step in your workflow. Simply use the Yearbook Selections as primary photos for your Yearbook - PSPA exports, then share with the school like normal!
Effortless, automated communication
Everyone accessing their gallery will be greeted with the Yearbook Selection option, but we also created an intuitive, fully automated text and email series to ensure that everyone remembers to choose their yearbook photos before the deadline.
These gentle, effective reminders keep your customers informed and engaged—not only with the selection process but also with the gallery.
More gallery views = more sales
With online selling, driving customers to view their galleries is essential. Simply put, more galleries accessed means more photos viewed and more orders placed.
While “View your photos” is a compelling call to action, an additional “Last chance to select a yearbook photo!” is the perfect amount of urgency to nudge them into action.
Ready to get started? Here’s how it works:
- Enable Yearbook Selection for a private gallery job.
- PhotoDay guides customers through the simple selection process in their gallery.
- Automated email and text reminders are sent until your chosen deadline.
- Review, edit, and export the selections right from your PhotoDay Studio Panel.
Learn more and get started with Yearbook Selection.
An unmatched combination
Each of these new releases can be workflow-changing on their own, but when you implement them all with private galleries, PhotoDay Capture, Exports, and the rest of PhotoDay’s features, it becomes a truly unmatched combination.
Still trying to convince yourself that these features will greatly enhance your school photo workflow? Watch this webinar with Lisa Mallis (PhotoDay SVP & Co-Founder) and Mario Muñoz (LVL Up Imaging Co-Founder) to see everything in action.
Will you give PhotoDay a try?
Let PhotoDay take care of your workflows, marketing, e-commerce, post-processing, sales tax remittance, and much more—so you can focus on doing what you love most. 📸
Whether you’re ready to dive in with all of your jobs or just want to test things out, create a free account to get started. Our customer success team is here to help with live chat, 1:1 demo calls, and an endless supply of guides and resources.
