McKaysPhoto's blog

How many of you are trying to get the clutter of paper off of your desk? What software do you use to stay organized? Are you ok with digital to-do lists? What exactly do you need to have hard copies of? Should you mail paper Thank You notes and Anniversary cards?

These are a few of the topics that your Educational Committee at Greener Photography is trying to answer.

Over a year ago, I finally joined the grown up world of Successware. McKay's Photography had been in business since 2002 and there wasn't a real system of financial tracking, client tracking, pricing and future planning. Now MP tracks all of these important business items and as a by product, has a much more paperless office.

Successware alows me to email clients directly from the software and save invoices & reports as PDFs, which I then email to clients. This alone has helped me reduce my impact of paper, printing, mailing, etc. I'm loving it, and my customers are too.

One of my favorite pieces of the software is their new client tracking. Instead of writing on a piece of paper when a potential customer calls or emails, I open Successware and add them as an 'Inquiry'. This allows me to enter in the date they first call, where the found my information and if they are interested in talking further. If we set up a meeting, they become a 'Prospect'. If they book, they become a 'Client" and I can enter their full information as well as schedule their session within the software.

This process allows me to track referrals and my ROI for any given marketing plan. I can see how many calls I receive based on marketing plans and compare that to meetings and bookings! This data has really helped reorganize my advertising dollars in big ways. For example, I can see that I only receive about 4-5 real inquiries from the Wedding Photo Journalist Association each year and maybe one per year books my services. So, my ROI is not very good with this esteemed organization! Now, I can rethink my membership dollars. Is it a disconnect with the images on my website? Is it worth the money for such little traffic to my website? Do I need to rework my bio on their website so I receive more click throughs?

So, not only do I have less and less little scribbles of notes all over my desk, but now I have real data that I can analyze. This is just one piece of the puzzle and it not only greens my business more and more, but also makes me a better business woman.

What software do you use? How does it help you book more qualified leads? Is it changing your workflow for the better?

Let's continue this discussion on the Greener Photography forum....

Video conferencing (iChat, Skype, Go to Meeting, DimDim) is a technology that has been around for SO long and is totally under utilized! Just as emails are being replaced by texting, we are loosing so much face to face time and not taking advantage of existing opportunities. For our families, clients, business partners and friends.

I have been really pushing video chatting this past year with my potenital and current clients for several reasons:

* Saves me from having to constantly clean my house

* Saves the client a drive over in a snow storm, getting a babysitter, etc.

* Work with clients who do not live in my city, in a more personal way

* A lot gets lost in back and forth emails

The biggest reason I began pushing Video Chat as an option was that I kept realizing that Brides come to town for a weekend and are cramming as many vendor meetings into the weekend as possible (weddings). They are late to their meeting with me, then have to rush out the door to their next meeting. The entire weekend is a blur and it is very difficult to really make a mark on them and stand out from the crowd. Much like a bridal show.

In this highly competitive wedding market, I thought that if I could get them to video chat before these whirl wind weekends, then when they are here we can focus on getting the contract signed and they are pretty much a done deal. Or worst case scenario, they can meet with another photographer that better fits their needs! Not wasting my time or theirs.

Well, for me, this has been a HUGE success! So far, I have booked EVERY one of the people that took me up on the offer.... right then and there! Luckily for each of them, I received a slew of inquiries for their dates right afterwards as well. Two thirds of my booked weddings for 2011 were over the phone/video chat. Last year, maybe one was booked without meeting first.

Why is this a Greener Photography topic? A lot of reasons. One of the potential wedding clients that I talked into video chatting told me that they were actually going to be driving in for the weekend JUST to meet with me. Now, even though that flatters my ego and makes me feel like a rock star Photographer, it is such a waste....

* I saved them 6 hours of driving EACH way

* I saved them their weekend (and mine!)

* They saved several tanks of gas, food, etc.

Is this just for potential wedding clients? NO! I've used this for Portrait client sales as well. We can screen share and do the sales presentation that would be done in studio... on the computer. When I travel, I always line up Portrait Sessions wherever I go, yet the trouble is capturing sales afterwards. Now, with video conferencing, I can screen share over video chatting and we talk handsfree as if we are next to each other and I can still visually show my client what I would show in person. The client can even take control of my computer (if I let them) and make changes to their album, greeting cards, whatever.... right there on my computer.

So, when trying to be a cut above the rest, think out side the box! Sometimes bringing an old technology into the limelight can pay off. When I mentioned in email that we could video chat to one potential wedding couple, their response was "I guess this is why we pay you the big bucks! What an awesome idea!" My response was, "Why yes it is!"

For more information on getting started with video chatting technology, keep an eye out for webcasts and information on the Greener Photography Forum! The Greener Photography Education Committee is hard at work developing easy to use programs for our members. If you will be attending WPPI, please visit the Greener Photography / Rice Studio Supply booth for more information.

~Heather McKay

Greener Photography Education Chairperson & Leadership Circle Member

McKay's Photography

McKay’s Photography is STOKED to be the winner of a contest from Pexagon Tech! McKay’s Photography won 30 wooden USB flash drives, with logo, for creatively using the green-ish product. Heather has weened off of printed CDs/DVDs for delivery of the digital files and now hands over longer lasting Jump Drives with the Wedding Images (upon purchase). What an honor to be the winner of this SUPER useful award! The contest was simply for creative uses of their products!

A few neat things about these is that they are laser engraved, so there is no die setup charge. The wooden ones are neat-o because the logo looks burned in. They even have some bamboo cases for packaging and little cotton pouches. You may recall that McKay’s Photography had offered some before, however the company Heather was using sold defective drives. Not one of the purchased drives actually worked! So the timing on this contest couldn’t have been better for McKay’s Photography and Pexagon Tech!

On the customer’s end, these drives are much more convenient since they can:

• Reorganize the files however they would like (divide into folders, etc)
• Directly plug into a USB-able TV for a slide show
• Share the images across multiple computers for easy backup
• Portable
• Longer lasting than a DVD that is easily scratched

McKay’s Photography has continued the quest to decrease the carbon footprint in the wedding photography industry with some cool new product lines! As many of you know, I have been a life long self-described “dirty hippy”, well actually only my friend Tony calls me that, but there is some truth to the name. Since attending the Rochester Institute of Technology in the ’90s, I have been very interested in sustainable practices as just plain common sense. This was a HUGE drive toward my vegetarianism and for years and years I have been invested in keeping my waste to a minimum. While there is always room for improvement, especially in a consumer society, I do my very best. No where has this been more apparent than with my Wedding Photography business.

The new Green trend makes me happy if only because there are more and more green options everywhere I look. From my super awesome brown canvas frame and album bags (Wegmans plastic bags in the winter were just tacky anyway)… to my new line of framing and albums, there have been a lot of changes in my studio this year. I am the first Photographer in Rochester to switch from DVDs to Jump Drives (USB drives) for the High Resolution image files! I’ve been scouring conference trade shows for these, and EVERYONE still promotes DVDs! It has been a frustrating journey, but I found some pretty brown ones to put my logo on!

Another awesome change was to Sustainable Framing! Not only is my framer less than 2 miles from my house, but I FTP the images to them and they print and frame whatever I need! I secretly call it the “stay in my jammies” special, because my buddy, Pat, does all the work! He found me a special line of frames that are reclaimed from: wood shavings, chips, sawdust, wasted trim, pallets, construction materials etc. The frames are a solid material with a smooth, fine texture! A bonus is that Pat is awesome at picking out mats and frames and I am terrible at it…. I just tell him to do whatever he wants and he always makes me happy that I delegated to the expert.

Next up is my GORGEOUS and BEAUTIFUL  and LUXURIOUS new eco-friendly album! Can you tell I’m a little excited about it????? I’ve been wanting to order a sample from this company since I first began looking into albums. I’ve been too cheap to do it and also too afraid to pick the images to go into it. I needed images worthy of the album, and realistically I knew that I didn’t have the clientele that spring for such an album. Worse still was that I knew that past clients would want it as much as I did! I was OK teasing me, but not them. Well, now is the time to offer this one of a kind, handmade, eco-friendly album with Japanese book cloth covers and a custom presentation box to store it in. All of my other albums are delivered in a cardboard box. OK, a fancy cardboard box, but still. So, I will also offer the handmade clam shell box as an upgrade to my regular albums as well.

Well, this post is way too long and I still have a LOT more to say, so I’m ending it here with a few images….