Come to San Juan for the CCS Winter Seminar
by Morgan Hager
The countdown is on for the upcoming Candid Color Systems 2009 Winter Seminar. This four day event is being held February 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th at the beautiful Hilton Caribe Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mark these dates on your calendar now and make plans for you and your staff to attend. Candid is offering a $25 lab credit to all accounts that register to attend on or before January 7th!
These seminars are one of the best things that CCS offers to you as a customer. They are well worth the time and expense involved because they allow you to discover the best practices of our best customers with regard to products, offerings, work flow, digital photography and the latest and greatest current trends in the marketplace. The seminar will allow you beneficial networking time with Candid customers and employees and is well worth the expense of attending. Remember, the seminar is FREE for all CCS customers to attend!
The agenda has been updated with new, revised times! We have shortened the days to allow you more afternoon time for Puerto Rican adventures! Here is a preview of what you can expect to experience while in Puerto Rico! Tuesday the 17th, Candid will have optional training classes you may choose to take part in, including CCS Transfer, Quicpost, CORE Basics and New Customer Orientation. These classes will not start until 2:30 PM allowing you time to fly in on Tuesday morning. There will be a CCS Welcome Cocktail Reception that evening which is a great opportunity to meet and visit with CCS staff for new and “veteran” customers alike.
Candid will begin the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday sessions at 8:00 AM each day and these will run until approximately 2:30 PM giving you plenty of time to play in the Puerto Rican sun!
The Presentations and Breakout Sessions planned include topics such as:
• Sports
• Graduations
• Proms & School dances
• Photo Marketing
• Making Sales Calls
• Schools
• Campus
• Senior Class Groups
• CCS Software
• Websites
The ever popular “Table Topics” lunch will be on Wednesday and our annual CCS Annual Awards ceremony will take place as a luncheon on Thursday.
To see a full agenda with all the presentations and times, click here.
Candid has locked in great room rates for the Caribe Hilton. Make your hotel reservations today by calling Dortha or Larry at All About Travel at (800) 880-8517.
Room Rates: $209 for single + taxes & fees and $219 for double + taxes & fees. (The rooms must be booked through All About Travel to receive these rates.)
The deadline to book your hotel rooms with All About Travel is January 7th so act fast! If you would like to extend your stay, the room rate is available 3 days before and 4 days after the seminar dates (subject to availability). Book your rooms today to ensure that you receive this great rate, Candid only has 50 rooms blocked and they will go fast! The Hilton Caribe offers baby-sitting services for kids, children’s activites, children’s menus, cribs, high chairs and a Kidz Paradise. Check the hotel website for further information.
Look for the registration form very soon and we look forward to seeing you in sunny San Juan! For any questions or comments about the seminar, contact your Customer Development Representative at 1.800.336.4550.
Photo Sculpture Christmas Ornaments now available. by Charles Cummings
Candid Color Systems has released a new product just in time for Christmas. This product is a set of two Photo Sculpture Ornaments that are cut from a 3x5 size print and mounted on our acrylic statuette material.
The cost for the two ornaments is $6.50 printed on Kodak Lustre paper and $7.35 on Kodak Pearlized Paper. They are now available in Quicpics, Sports, Grad, Race, PPS and Schools.
Order yours today.
Customer Created Greeting Card Templates
Back by popular demand are the customer created greeting card templates! These are available on CandidNet under the section Custom Templates. Click images to enlarge the screenshots.
You will need to download the template of your choice and create the artwork in Photoshop on our templates.
After you have created the artwork, you can set up the package and add the product of Holiday Greeting Cards 2008. Then when the modifier part opens up you will choose custom product. Then, direct the software, whether it is QP2, QuicPost or CORE, to the artwork/card that you have created and FTP’d to an event number. Last, simply place your order as usual.
It’s as simple as that and remember, greeting cards aren’t just for Christmas time! These templates can be created and used for any occasion like Graduation, Wedding or Birth announcements, Birthdays, Promotions, Save The Dates, Happy New Year, Valentines Day etc… Provide these as a product year round to your customers!
If you have any questions about custom greeting cards or setting them up, contact Customer Development at 1.800.336.4550.
Advantage ZAP: Creating a Customer for Life
by Brian Speers
Here is a success story shared with CCS from Candice West, photo manager for ZAP Foto in Tuscaloosa, AL about another advantage that CCS customers have when it comes to retrieving old images from past events.
“A member of one of our "favorite" sororities came by the other day for reorder week. Her boyfriend's entire collection of ZAPs (aka, Party Pics) was stolen and she wanted to replace them for a Christmas present. We only keep our reorder proofs for a year, but with CORE, I was able to pull up every party with his fraternity in the name. This included the parties his house sponsored as well as any swaps they were invited to. I printed her a list of the parties and order numbers and gave her the box where we back up all of our parties to CD. She spent two afternoons digging through pictures, but finally recreated a nice collection of about 50 pictures. We uploaded them all to one generic, Fall 2005-Fall 2008 title, and I got those ordered in time for her to have a really thoughtful Christmas present”.
The significance of this tale is that 10 years ago—when film was still king—it would have been virtually impossible to execute what Candice was able to do for this customer. This is an excellent example of creating an image management system for events that works; following through on systems that have been put into place; and taking advantage of applications within the CORE software that benefit the customer as well as the photo business itself.
But beyond that, it points up the benefits inherent in all the new technology that we’ve come to take for granted since the dawn of digital photography. Keep in mind that, as you serve your customers, solutions are sometimes right at your fingertips. It just takes the willingness to expand your thinking and putting the customer first. Way to go, Candice!
This is the perfect time of year to start planning how you are going to book for the 2009 Prom season. After the New Year, prom committees are going to start convening in order to plan their proms that will take place in April or May. It is best to try to meet with these committees as soon as possible in order to get your foot in the door.
Setting up a meeting to go in front of the committee is the first step to booking the prom. It is important to have a face to face presentation in order to “wow” them with your photography skills and products. Find out who the director, supervisor or class sponsor is and make an appointment to meet with them and all the prom decision makers.
Once you have this appointment booked, start planning your presentation including numerous quality samples to differentiate you from the competition. For example, take samples of Party Pics®, collages, Level Two™ prom, titled prints, statuettes, mugs, key chains and posed formal shots. In addition, if you want to offer the Jump Studio, Candid can provide a video of a Jump Studio demonstration that can be shown at the meeting. Keep in mind that the prom committee is going to consist of high school students and adults so try to make your presentation fun and appealing to each age group.
When dealing with prom committees, it is very important to remember to BE FLEXIBLE! Sometimes the prom committee will ask you to design the backdrop. This may be the only way to book the prom. If you will be designing the backdrop try to come up with a unique design so that you can distinguish yourself from the rest of your competitors. Most proms have a theme; therefore your backdrops should go along with this theme.
The prom committee may ask for a rebate or a percentage of the sales. There are tons of different options that you can offer them to entice them to use your company. Offering to throw them a pizza party or to do their invitations are a couple of options that they may like. Remember you are trying to appeal to high school students. If they want a percentage of the sales remind them that the more you sell, the more the school will make. This will encourage them to market for you which is sometimes the best option.
If you have any questions about booking proms or if you need samples printed, contact Customer Development at 1.800.336.4550.
Makin’ an email list and checking the bounces twice!
by Denise Mangiante
With grad season in full swing, it’s especially important to clear up any undelivered emails in CORE. CORE offers many email management reports, but the report by domain is great to catch user mistakes. As you can see in the email report below, aol.com is keyed 3 different ways. You can easily correct all of the miskeys for the entire domain by clicking the fix link on the right side of the page. Once you correct the domain, it will try to resend all addresses for the campaign. This report is found on the events tab under email campaigns and reports. Simply filter the email report by domain to see this report. Click to enlarge.
Other common email mistakes often happen with college .edu email addresses. If you don’t speak with the School IT department before the grad, you could run into several bounce back issues. To avoid these issues, here is a step-by-step guide to communicating with School IT Departments.
• Ask to be added to their email white list
• Ask if there are any conditions you should know
• For example: the school only allows text or X number of emails per hour.
• White list information:
• Sending Domain: [photographer’s domain, like “gradphotographer.com”]
• Sending IP: [137.236.172.80] (for grad program)
• CCS will provide other IP addresses soon
If they indicate they plan to block your mail, you need an internal advocate. Your school contact is a great place to start.
If you need help with setting up email campaigns or your bounceback settings, please contact support.
Lab Service Times for 12/7/2008 - 12/13/2008 by Bo Lewis
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