Product Roundup: A Little Client Gifting Goes a Long Way

Ever wonder if giving gifts to your clients should be part of your business model? Here, we present ten product options and real-life examples of how each item was used to help photographers maintain and grow relationships with both current and potential clients.

Photo © Elizabeth Messina

PERSONALIZED CALENDARS
Wedding and portrait photographer Elizabeth Messina has “always been a gift-giver” in her personal life, so it was only natural, she says, to make it part of her business model. Currently her favorite gifting product for clients (and friends) is Artifact Uprising’s calendar. Messina selects 12 of her favorite images and uploads them to the AU site to order. “These are not only practical gifts,” Messina explains, “but also a personalized piece of art.” The calendars come with a handcrafted clipboard made from reclaimed beetle pine wood, while a magnetic back allows your clients to hang the calendar on the fridge, keeping your work top of mind. You can start the calendar year at any month and use a different image for each month. Image size is 5 x 7 inches and the calendars are printed on 120-pound Mohawk Superfine Eggshell paper. Refill pages are also available for the following year’s calendar.
Prices: $29 (with clipboard); $10 (refill pages)

Photo © Carli Kiene/Inkedfingers

POSTCARD PACKS
Between texting, email and social media, our “snail mail” mailboxes are often void of personal correspondence. But wedding, portrait and lifestyle photographers John and Carli Kiene (of inkedfingers) love to surprise their clients with a hand-written thank-you note. “When Artifact Uprising first started offering postcard packs (of 20 cards), we would print an entire pack with the client’s shoot and gift that,” Carli says, “however we’ve learned that not everyone is a mail-sender, so now we send them a single postcard.” Often, the photographers print two copies of the postcard, sending one as a thank you and putting another in with the client’s DVD and a note saying “sample card.” AU’s postcards are 4.5 x 6.25 inches on 130-pound cover stock of recycled paper. Up to 20 different images (one for each card) can be ordered using one of AU’s designs, or you can create your own.
Price: $30

Photo © Schaap Studios

MINI ACCORDION ALBUMS
Wedding photographer Tammy Swales loves gifting a mini-accordion album from Miller’s Lab to her wedding clients—“We tell a sweet little wedding story in ten frames,” she says. The purse-sized mini-accordions are small enough for the bride to carry around and share with family and friends (or stick to the fridge with its magnetic back). “Because the album gets carried around daily, our work gets in front of people on an immediate and intimate basis,” says Swales, who believes the mini-accordions are a much better sharing option than scrolling through Facebook images. She finds that the sharing of the mini-accordions brings “lots of immediate feedback from the couple’s circle of family and friends,” and has helped her business grow. Miller’s offers several sizes, paper, cover options and add-ons for the mini-accordions, so check out the site for details.
Price: from $6

Photo © Schaap Studios

WOOD BOX KEEPSAKES
“Our business depends on customer service and relationships,” explains wedding and portrait photographer Lora Swinson. “In an extremely over-saturated market, we treat each of our clients as if they were our best friends.” As a counter-balance to the trend of photographer-client virtual communication (from consultation to the delivery of images via online download), Swinson tries “very hard to implement personal interaction with clients,” she adds. Swinson and her husband/business partner like to present their top-tier clients with a Custom Wood Box from Miller’s Labs with ten mounted prints as a gift for the holidays. “Most of our clients come to us multiple times each year, so we keep gifts to the end of the year to not impact any normal sessions or sales,” she says. When holiday season rolls around, Swinson delivers those gifts in person, maintaining the personal touch that’s in keeping with their business philosophy. “Giving them a tangible gift that they did not expect, and taking time out of our day to deliver those gifts, shows them how much we value their business.”
Price: $60 (other options/pricing available)

CUSTOM MAGAZINES
Print on demand has changed the world of publishing, bringing custom magazine production (and a new marketing tool) to small businesses. Tammy Swales created Happy Magazine as “a vehicle to show my work in a different way; not just through social media and a blog.” Secondly, she adds, “I have amazing clients—and I thought their stories were so interesting that I wanted to share them with more people.” Although Swales admits she had “no idea” of what she was attempting when she started Happy, locally she “had a viral blockbuster,” she says. “The clients who were featured in Happy shared the magazine with their networks and so on.” The first issue had 12,000 digital reads, due mostly to word of mouth rather than social media. With that success under her belt, Swales and her team immediately began preparing for the next issue. Each issue, Swales explains, “has a different subtopic and we design each one to be an evergreen volume—so they have a long shelf life. It’s helped my business tremendously, and we are currently planning issue three, featuring entrepreneurs in our community. It’s become something that people are looking forward to, and I’m proud of how it’s benefiting my team and my business.” While the magazine is available online, interested readers can purchase hard copies that are printed by magcloud.com—a print-on-demand service using HP Indigo printers. A variety of sizes and designs are available, offering a wide range of options for businesses that want to create a custom publication.
Price (printing): from $0.16 per page

GRADUATION CARDS
High school senior photography has become big business for many photographers in recent years. Even if they don’t specialize in senior portraits, photographers are likely to have at least a few soon-to-be-graduated teens in their client roster. Wedding and portrait photographer Laura Endres Hicks likes to give her seniors 25 postcards from Mpix (a division of Miller’s Professonal Imaging) that she’s designed herself. She doesn’t include graduation or open house information on the cards because the senior sessions are finished long before the actual graduation; rather, she wants the cards to focus on the subjects themselves, and she wanbts to surprise teens and their parents when they come to pick up their order; both love receiving the gift and appreciate the quality of the cards, and Hicks’ custom designs. These photo cards are perfect for seniors to exchange with friends and classmates during their final year in high school. (If you don’t want to design your own, Mpix has a number of predesigned options.)
Price: $25 (for a set of 25 4.5 x 5-inch cards)

Both photos © Justin & Mary

SILVER-PLATED PHOTO FRAMES
Presenting the bride and groom with an image or images during the wedding makes the occasion even more memorable and speaks volumes about you as a photographer. Justin and Mary Marantz are known for gifting a framed 8 x 10-inch image that they print during the reception to the newlyweds. The duo times it so that the bride and groom open the gift toward the end of the night. Says Mary: “They take off the bow, open the lid, take the frame out of the velvet case, and they freak out when they realize it’s actually a picture of them from that day. They love it!”

The Marantzes add that the bride and groom usually place the frame on their gift/guest book table to show it off, snap a photo of it with their smartphone, and post a message on social media with the hashtag Justin & Mary #bestphotographersever. “It makes such a great impression for any of their friends who are getting married,” says Mary, especially “when everyone is dying to see pictures right then and there.” The silver-plated frames the Marantzes use from Restoration Hardware are available in several sizes from 4 x 6 inches to 8 x 10 inches.
Price: $19-35

CUSTOM SLIDESHOWS
Photodex ProShow Gold slideshows software plays another important role in Laura Endres Hicks’ business. The software offers many options (from transitions, adding music, video clips and more) for creating a lovely but sophisticated video gift. Hicks usually presents the slideshow at the end of an ordering session as a surprise gift for long-time clients. “It doesn’t matter how much they order,” she explains, “it’s a relationship gift; my personal business model is built on relationships and maintaining them.” Hicks will pick about 20 to 30 of her favorite images (40 to 50 for weddings) and create what she views as “an artistic view of the session—not just a recap.” The slideshow “can be shared among family and friends; it keeps going and going.” Hicks says an hour of her time is a small investment for that kind of exposure, branding and marketing.
Price: $70

DAY-OF ALBUMS
Vanessa Joy takes her album creation one step further than most by giving the newlyweds an album of photos during the reception. Joy’s album of choice is the 4 x 6-inch Ventura from Renaissance Albums, since prints of that size are easy to output. Additionally, the Ventura uses self-adhesive pages, so the albums are easily assembled on site. Joy reports that couples are shocked, surprised and thrilled to receive a mini wedding album that night. She adds, “I get to wow my clients, over-deliver on what I’ve promised them, and then give them a way to show off my work to all of their friends and family during and immediately after the wedding,” says Joy. “It’s great for marketing as well as bettering my clients’ experiences.”
Prices: from $7 (2 x 3 inches) to $25 (4 x 6)

BRANDED STICKERS
Gifting an album or other photographic product to your clients may be an integral part of your business, but branding should play an equally important role. Clients know you and your work—that’s why they selected you to shoot their wedding or portraits—but you need to put your name in front of their family and friends as well. That’s why Vanessa Joy brands the Renaissance albums she gifts her clients with her logo using stickers from Black River Imaging. “It’s great for making sure that when my clients show off the mini album, my logo is there giving good brand recognition as well as advertising,” Joy explains. Black River Imaging’s stickers are available in a variety of shapes, sizes and sets from 20 to 60 stickers. Printed on standard sticker paper with a crack-and-peel backing, the stickers come standard with four-color printing with an upgrade option for six-color printing. Stickers are an easy and affordable way to get recognition and referrals.
Price: from $5.15

Related Links:

4 Custom Client Gift Ideas

Top Finishing Touches: That Extra Something For Your Clients

Seal the Deal: Catering to a Potential Client’s Five Senses