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Weekly Recap: Scheduled Client Outreach, Smarter Virtual Groups & New Candy Image Styles 📅✨

Weekly Recap: Scheduled Client Outreach, Smarter Virtual Groups & New Candy Image Styles 📅✨
Hey photo friends! 👋

Candy here with another weekly recap! This week’s biggest addition is a major upgrade to Client Outreach: you can now schedule texts and emails to send later. We’ve also added smarter Virtual Group tools, new Candy Image Studio looks, and a few useful retail and Dashboard fixes.

Let’s jump in!

📅 Client Outreach Can Now Be Scheduled

You can now schedule Client Outreach messages to send at a future date and time instead of having to send everything immediately.

Schedule texts or emails up to 60 days in advance

📋 New Scheduled page to see upcoming sends

Cancel a scheduled outreach before it goes out

💰 See estimated sends and cost before the scheduled time

🔔 Get notified when it sends

  • Dashboard Inbox notification
  • Mobile Dashboard push notification

This makes Client Outreach much more useful for planned reminders, follow-ups, announcements, and other messages you already know you’ll want to send later.

👥 Import from multiple Events at once

When building a Client Outreach list from Event contacts, you can now select multiple Events in a single import instead of adding them one at a time.

🏈 Virtual Group Builder Gets Smarter

Virtual Group Builder picked up several new controls this week:

🔢 New Auto Order By Jerseys button

  • Automatically reorder subjects based on their jersey numbers.
  • This is powered by Jersey Jotter, but Jersey Jotter does not need to be enabled on the Event for you to use it.

🧠 Improved Auto Headsize

  • Automatic subject sizing should now produce better results.

👤 Less disruptive participant additions

  • Adding one participant now places them at the bottom-right of the bottom row instead of automatically rearranging the entire group.

🌈 New Saturation slider

  • Adjust an individual subject’s saturation from the Subject Inspector.

🌑 Drop Shadow can now be disabled

  • There’s a new toggle if you prefer the group without subject shadows. Drop Shadow behavior also works more naturally with Cutout Fade.

🌫️ Simplified Cutout Fade

  • Cutout Fade and Cutout Fade Intensity have been combined into a single control with improved defaults and results.

↕️ More vertical positioning freedom

  • Subjects can now be moved significantly farther downward when needed.

🎛️ New Effects category

  • Some related controls have been reorganized to make the Builder easier to navigate.

🎨 New Candy Image Studio Looks

Two new low-cost styles are available:

🌸 Mayfair — 4¢

  • A polished filter-inspired look with its own distinct color treatment.

🌈 Lively

  • Similar in spirit to Clarendon, but with a different look and feel. Give it a try!

🛠️ Candy Image Studio fixes

✨ Fixed some nodes not working through Quick Candy Image Studio on Manage Images

🖼️ Fixed the Retouch node failing on especially large image files

🖥️ Dashboard Improvements

📣 Event Marketing History links are more visible

  • Three important links on the page are now displayed as cards, matching the approach used elsewhere in the Dashboard.

🏷️ Remove PhotoTags in bulk

  • Select multiple participants on the Participant List page and use the new Remove PhotoTags button to clear their PhotoTags at once.

📱 Mobile Dashboard

No app update required:

  • ⬅️ Previous Page
  • ➡️ Next Page

Both options are now available from the logo button / Quick Actions menu at the top of the Mobile Dashboard.

🛍️ Retail & Quic Fixes

📦 Group package visibility fixed

  • Packages containing group products will no longer incorrectly appear when an Event has no group images.

🤖 Auto Edited QuicPics/QuicPortraits images fixed

  • Fixed an issue where Event-level Auto Edits with Hide Originals enabled were not being texted once the edited image was ready.

That’s the week!

Scheduled Client Outreach opens up a lot more ways to plan customer communication ahead of time, while the new Virtual Group tools should make sports layouts quicker and easier to fine-tune.

Keep creating magic,

Candy 🍬

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Scanner Identification Now Available in Our Microsoft Store App
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We have a new update now available for the Now Candid Microsoft Store App! This update has several quality of life changes and logging improvements, but the main change is that Scanner Identification has finally been implemented!

 

Scanner Identification is a system that positively IDs images to your customers using, as the name implies, a scanner to scan a customer’s QR card.

 

When setting up your event you can generate these QR cards (more on that later) that your customers can scan with their phone to input their contact information. From there, the info & QR code are linked. Any time a QR code is scanned by the photographer that starts a session, and all subsequent photos taken will be matched to that contact info until another QR code is scanned.

 

At this time, Scanner Identification will only be usable with Sports Pics Now and Portraits Now. During event creation, when one of those two programs have been selected, you’ll choose either the “Tap A Face & Selfie Registration” option, or the “Scanner Identification” option. Once Scanner Identification has been selected and the event created, you’ll be able to input how many QR cards you need and a PDF will be generated with that many cards.

 

You’ll want to print out the PDF on perforated paper such as this 4 up card paper found on Amazon to more easily distribute cards without manually cutting all the paper.

 

The Scanner Identification workflow does require an LTE tablet! It’s required both as a device to connect your scanner to and as a way to upload your images live at the event so that guests can have links to buy their images moments after their session ends! Since facial recognition is not being used, galleries will be sent even more quickly and with 100% of the images taken during the session.

 

If you happen to have a very poor internet connection at your event, bringing the tablet and camera to a location with a strong internet connection after the event will send up all the images at that time! Paired to the data you scanned with it at the time of taking the image.

How Bruce H. Used GradPics Now to Increase Sales
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Bruce Heflin utilized Now Candid’s Grad Pics Now, with Selfie Check-In at a recent graduation, so far racking up roughly $2600 in total sales in less than two weeks.

Heflin had covered this Nursing College’s graduation in previous years, generating roughly $200 in sales each year. The sales had been so dismal the administrator would provide gas money to keep Bruce coming back. This year was a different story, Heflin has managed to increase his sales by roughly 1200% with the help of Grad Pics Now’s Selfie Check-In Workflow & automated marketing campaigns.

Here's How He Did It:

1. Used Selfie Check-In to collect correct & current contact data

2. Sent automated marketing messages during the event

3. Bruce had about $200 in sales by the time he reached home an hour or so after the event (he didn't have to go back to the office!)

4. He used a mix of GPN Price Levels 1 & 3

5. He had a total profit margin of roughly 75% across the College’s ceremonies after accounting for the 85% margin for digital downloads.

6. We’re excited to see people discovering the effectiveness of Now Candid’s systems in action when executed properly with quality photography!

We recently caught up with Bruce to get a better idea of how he started incorporating Now Candid's tools into his existing photography business. Watch the video below to hear from Bruce.

Drive Sales Using Party Pics Now
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“We had a very successful Father/Daughter dance. The assistant principal was shocked at how organized and fast the pictures were this year. She also said that she didn't think dads would buy photos online. I told her that with my system, they will (this was our first year covering this event). Last year, dads had to pay with a paper order form, and many of them left the dance without taking photos because the line was so long. This year, we used Now Candid’s Party Pics Now, with Tap-A-Face. And when dads entered a phone number, we asked them to put mom's cell phone number in.” - Eric Miller

(screenshot of the event report taken before $2,100 was reached)
  • In one week, this event has done over $2,100 in sales and has ~$13.65 in sales per father’s face tapped.
  • Father/Daughter pairs were shot with a sparkling golden backdrop for most photos.
  • Price Level 11 (the most expensive PPN price level) was used for this event. Accounting for the 85% margin digital downloads and Price Level 11's 80% margin on physical products: Miller’s total profit margin was 82% of all sales and shipping.
  • No additional fees, charges, or unexpected costs makes for easy and instant accounting, and funds were deposited to his account within the week

Overall, this event was a homerun for MillerFoto and a great example of how effective Now Candid’s systems can be when you shoot quality photography and book quality events.

Thanks for sharing, Eric!

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