How One Night Led to $15,000 in Social Photography Sales
By
Jack C.
on
December 12, 2022
|
9
minute read
Amy Lombardo, and her photography group recently sent several photographers to a military ball and at the time of writing this article, had over $15,000 in sales! To accomplish this, Amy used Now Candid’s Party Pics Now program & Tap A Face workflow with 4 photographers at the event. Several of these photographers worked photo stations with backdrops Amy provided (gray backgrounds with flags bordering the background) while other photographers roamed the party taking posed photos of the guests.
$15,000 is a lot of sales for one social event already, but it is especially impressive when you consider the fact that this was Amy’s first Now Candid event.
Amy Lombardo had this advice for those considering using Now Candid for their next event: “Keep it simple and trust the process. … When planning my first Now Candid event, I was advised to not overcomplicate things and to not get hung up on some of the more minor details. Following through with how the system is intended to work turned out very well for us!”
Thanks for trusting the process Amy! We wish you many successful events to come. To see Amy’s entire video testimonial, click the play button below.
This week’s updates are a fun mix of new products, new visual workflows, and small-but-important fixes that make day-to-day work smoother—especially across Candy Image Studio, retail packages, and PhotoRoster/PhotoTag downloads.
Client Outreach email history is easier to use and more reliable:
Added a “View” button in Client Outreach email history so you can open the sent email in a new tab (similar to how order receipts work).
Fixed an issue where email status didn’t always show for all emails in the status list.
More clarity when reviewing participant galleries:
The Participant Details page now shows invisible images, clearly marked in red with an “Invisible” label—so you can understand what’s hidden without guessing.
PhotoTag participant gallery downloads got safer:
Fixed PhotoTag participant gallery downloads overwriting images when multiple files shared the same frame.
Fixed the download count displayed on the download button being off.
🎨 Candy Image Studio: Create Without an Input + A New Node
Candy Image Studio has two notable upgrades this week:
🧠 No input image required (generate from scratch!) Candy Image Studio no longer requires an input image to get started. You can generate from scratch using the “From Scratch” node (at the very bottom), or by starting from custom text or a custom image—great for things like creating portrait backgrounds or creative assets.
🆕 New “Bobblehead” node A brand-new Bobblehead node is now available inside Candy Image Studio.
🏈 Jersey Jotter + Event Settings Cleanup
Jersey Jotter settings were removed from the Create/Edit Event popup. Since Jersey Jotter now has its own dedicated page, we pulled those settings out of the event popups to keep Create Event as minimal (and fast) as possible—and keep Edit Event aligned with Create.
New: “Auto Enhance” can be turned off in Create/Edit Event. Important clarity here:
Auto Enhance isn’t new — it has always been enabled by default.
What’s new is the ability to turn it off from the Create/Edit Event popup.
It’s labeled “Auto Enhance” (not “Retail Enhancement”) because it affects more than retail, including things like LiveLoop, Dashboard previews, Shareable Download Gallery, and more.
Note: this setting only impacts images uploaded after you change it. (So anything already uploaded keeps whatever enhancement state it had at upload time.)
🛍️ Retail: Package Backgrounds + Fixes
A few retail improvements landed to reduce confusing edge cases:
When selecting a PNG (without a faux background render) during the “Next Package Item Image Picker” step, the chosen background will now default to the first background in the background picker list (instead of the purple default).
Fixed an issue where the background selector step didn’t always appear for non-faux BGR images.
Fixed a crash related to having Wall Clings in packages.
Updated the Free Download description to: “Free simple, full-resolution download of your image.” (Previously it implied lower resolution.)
In Advanced Offer Settings, you can now enable Zoom Cropping, which automatically adds an additional image into the customer’s gallery that is zoom-cropped toward their face.
Details & rules:
✅ Works on Face Matching Events
✅ Works only on images with one face
✅ All default graduation offers/price levels now have Zoom Cropping enabled
Behind the scenes, it applies a ~30% zoom toward the face, with an additional ~30% pull from the center of the image toward the face (clamped to avoid cropping beyond image bounds)
This is a great “quiet upgrade” for grads and portrait-style moments where customers love a tighter crop—without you needing to manually create it.
🖼️ New Products: Titled Luxe Prints (Dashboard + Retail)
New: “Edit Titled Luxe Print” Page (per event) There’s a new event-level page available in the Dashboard sidebar only if one of the new titled products is included in the event’s offer. From there, you can:
Set default captions
Select left/right logos
Preview the 3D render
(Easter egg: rotate the render and you can spot your business name on the backprinting.)
Notes:
Default captions and logos are optional
Retail shoppers can change captions when ordering
Logo requirements: upload/import a 650×650 transparent PNG
Retail supports both 2D + 3D renders, including your custom logos
Order Details pages now display the selected logos, similar to how we show captions and colors
That’s the week! 💫
Between Zoom Cropping, Titled Luxe Prints, and Candy Image Studio’s new From Scratch flow (plus a pile of cleanup across retail + downloads), this update adds a lot of power without adding extra complexity.
We’re excited to introduce Client Outreach — a brand-new tool that lets you reach your customers directly with one-off texts and emails, completely separate from your normal event marketing.
Whether you’re following up after an event, promoting future bookings, or nudging people who missed check-in… this gives you a simple, flexible way to stay connected.
Let’s break it down 👇
📣 What is Client Outreach?
Client Outreach lets you:
📩 Send one-off emails and texts
👥 Build contact lists from:
Existing events
Uploaded spreadsheets
Or both combined
🎯 Filter contacts based on:
Contacts with matched images
Contacts without matched images
Or everyone
This is not automated campaign messaging — it’s intentional, targeted outreach when you need it.
👥 Build Your Audience, Your Way
When creating an outreach list, you’ve got flexibility:
Pull contacts from one event, multiple events, or none
Upload your own spreadsheet of contacts
Combine both sources into one list
And when using events, you can choose:
Only people with images
Only people without images
Or everyone
That opens the door to some really useful workflows (more on that below 👀).
💬 SMS Outreach (Simple & Familiar)
Sending texts is designed to feel easy and familiar.
🧾 Uses a QuicPics-style editor + preview
✍️ Write your message and send to your list
🔗 Include links (galleries, check-in, etc.)
💸 Pricing:
$0.01 per segment, per text
A segment is roughly:
~140 characters (standard text)
~65 characters (if using emojis)
Longer messages may use multiple segments (typically 2–4).
📧 Email Outreach (Powered by Candy 🤖)
This is where things get really fun.
Instead of building emails manually…
👉 You just describe what you want, and Candy builds the email for you.
✨ How it works:
Tell Candy things like:
What the email should say
What tone you want (fun, professional, urgent, etc.)
What your call-to-action button should say
Where that button should link
Candy will:
✍️ Write the email
🎨 Design the layout
🧠 Generate a subject line
🏷️ Pull in your business info automatically
No HTML. No formatting headaches. Just describe it.
🧠 Even Smarter with Events
Every outreach must be tied to an event (for billing/history), but that unlocks some extra power:
If your outreach is related to that event, Candy can pull in things like:
🔗 Check-in links
🖼️ Cover photos
🖼️ Gallery links
And more!
👉 You can still override this and use your own URLs — Candy will follow your instructions.
This week’s headline is a big one: Client Outreach is here. It’s a powerful new way to connect with your customers outside of event-based marketing—and it opens up a ton of new possibilities for growing your business.
We’ll keep this recap focused on what it does at a high level, and we’ll link out to a full deep-dive guide so you can see exactly how to use it.
📣 NEW: Client Outreach (SMS + Email)
Client Outreach is a brand-new messaging system that lets you send texts and emails outside of your event campaigns.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
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