Yearbook Selection in PhotoDay simplifies the photo selection workflow for photographers, organizations, and customers alike. Keep reading or watch the video below to see how it works!
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Why Use Yearbook Selection?
With Yearbook Selection, you can easily set up, communicate, review, and export customer selections all within PhotoDay.
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.
Here are a few reasons why you should consider using Yearbook Selection:
Give customers the power to choose their own favorite poses.
Review, edit, and export the selections with ease.
PhotoDay sends clear, automated communications until your chosen deadline.
More galleries accessed = more photos viewed and more orders placed.
Learn more about how pairing Yearbook Selection with Organization Pages and Gallery Lookup will round out a time-saving, sales-boosting workflow all within PhotoDay.
How to Set Up Yearbook Selection
To get started with Yearbook Selection, open a private gallery job > go to the job’s Settings tab > and select Yearbook Selection.
Flip the toggle to enable, then set the number of selections required per subject (up to 2).
What you enter under “Label Yearbook Selection” is what will be displayed to customers, so rename the poses accordingly. For example, “Formal Pose” and “Informal Pose.” There is a 32-character limit.
The Deadline is the last day for customers to submit or edit their selections. The Deadline date cannot be adjusted once a job has been published.
Tip: For best results, don’t choose the same date for Yearbook Selection and Gallery Expiration. Each of these deadlines have their own automated reminder series and gallery expiration messaging may override Yearbook Selection deadline communications. Learn more.
Next is the optional customer instructions section. Here, you can add up to 240 characters of selection instructions. This text will be displayed in the gallery, giving customers specific guidelines for selecting their yearbook photo(s). Each line break will become a bullet point.
Tip: If you offer the Basic Retouching add-on, you can clarify here that if they add retouching to their selected image on a print or digital download product, the retouched version will be included in the yearbook.
Don’t forget to click Save when you’re done!
Email & Text Marketing Campaigns
PhotoDay makes communicating with customers a breeze when Yearbook Selection is enabled.
Post-Picture Day Series (Email & SMS)
When enabled for a job, the Yearbook Selection deadline is added to the Post-Picture Day Email Series and SMS Series.
If a customer completes their Yearbook Selection(s) but hasn’t placed an order, any remaining reminders will revert to the standard Post-Picture Day Series.
Yearbook Selection Deadline Series (Email & SMS)
When this feature is enabled, the Yearbook Selection Deadline Automatic Campaigns are added to the job by default. You can view these email and text messages in the following article:
If you would like to turn off Email Campaigns, go to Job > Marketing > Auto Campaign Settings. Please note that Automatic SMS Campaigns cannot be adjusted.
Selection Made Email
When a customer makes a selection in the gallery, PhotoDay will send a confirmation email to all customer emails associated with that subject (for example, email addresses included in that subject’s data and customer email addresses subscribed to that specific subject’s gallery).
How to Review & Select Photos
We’ll show you the customer experience soon, but first, let’s dive into how you, the studio, can make, review, and edit selections.
From your job’s Photos section, click the drop-down menu and select “Yearbook.“ This is where you can review and update customer selections.
If you have required 2 poses, you will see the option to toggle between your 2 poses.
You can additionally filter subjects on this page by the following:
All subjects with matched photos
Subjects with a yearbook selection
Subjects with a partial yearbook selection (Only available if # of yearbook selections is 2)
Subjects with no yearbook selection
Click on a subject to open a modal with all of their images. Here, you can select or update the subject's current photo selection.
Changing a yearbook selection here will override a customer’s original choice. Making or changing a customer’s yearbook selection before the deadline will send an automatic email to the customer letting them know their selection has been updated. However, after the deadline has passed, no communications will be sent.
For customers who did not make a selection, you can bulk assign a selection with one of the following options:
Featured - PhotoDay will use your selected Featured Photos for the selected pose
First Captured - PhotoDay will use the photo's exif data to determine the first photo captured for a specific subject.
Last Captured - PhotoDay will use the photo's exif data to determine the last photo captured for a specific subject.
First by File Name - PhotoDay will use the first photo of the subject based on the file name.
Last by File Name - PhotoDay will use the last photo of the subject based on the file name.
Contains Specific Word - Type a set of alpha/numeric characters you've used in the file name to specify each of your subject's selected photos
If you prefer your pose selections to only reflect choices that were made by the customers, it is not necessary to backfill their selections as you can select a secondary photo option directly on your export. All of the options listed above will be available as primary and secondary photo options in your export files.
Learn more about export options here.
When using the bulk actions for assigning Yearbook Selections, only individual photos (containing one face) will be considered and any group photos will be ignored.
If you have 2 required selections, you can bulk assign a different option for each pose. These bulk selections will not override any existing customer or studio pose selections.
If you need to make any manual selections or overrides for a subject's selected yearbook image(s), you can do so by clicking on a subject from the Yearbook selection page, clicking the Pose Selection icon, and then making updates to the associated pose(s):
Customer Insights
From Job > Insights > Customers, you can view the following information:
Yearbook Selection Deadline Date
Selected - The number of subjects who have made their yearbook selection.
% Selected - The percentage of subjects who have made their yearbook selection, based on the total number of subjects in the job.
Ordered & Not Selected - The number of subjects who have placed an order but have not made their yearbook selection.
Selected & Not Ordered - The number of subjects who have made a yearbook selection but have not placed an order.
Exports
A wonderfully practical feature of private galleries and their subject data is the ability to export your gallery's data in various formats. Learn more about exports.
When Yearbook Selection is enabled on a job, those selected photos will be your default Primary Photo when creating a Yearbook export. Remember, your custom labels will be displayed here.
You can also set a secondary photo option in case a subject doesn’t have a photo that fits the criteria of the primary photo option. The first captured photo of a subject can also be selected as additional backup if both the primary and secondary options are unavailable.
If you have 2 required poses, you will need to run a separate export for your second pose and change the Primary Photo selection to that second pose.
You can change which images you want to use as Primary Photos via the drop-down menu.
NOTE: So in the examples above, Featured photos were used in the Formal Pose export as the secondary option for subjects who did not make a selection (with first captured as a fallback), and the Informal Pose export used the Last Captured file for those without this yearbook selection. The best options for your exports will be dependent on your specific workflow and the structure of your images.
In the review stage of the Export, you will be notified of any issues, including subjects missing photos, and can adjust/assign an image to subjects at this step if needed.
Customer Experience
Now let’s explore Yearbook Selection from a customer’s point of view! When Yearbook Selection is enabled and active, customers visiting the gallery will see the following badge:
Upon entering the gallery, customers are presented with the option to make their yearbook selection(s), but they are not required to do so prior to shopping or placing an order.
Clicking the Yearbook Photo option will open a modal with info about their selection, your custom instructions, and the deadline.
Example of 1 required selection:
Example of 2 required selections:
When a selection is made, a confirmation email is sent to all customer email addresses who have subscribed to that specific subject’s gallery or included in their subject data.
Customers can change and resubmit their selections until the deadline has passed.
If a customer places an order without making their Yearbook Selection, we will prompt them to go back and do so on the order confirmation page:
Yearbook Selection is quick and easy for customers, but if you need help supporting them through the process, check out this customer-facing article with a helpful step-by-step video: Yearbook Selection Walkthrough.