Let them know what you can do

More than 30% of in-store labs will add equipment this year that allows them to make photos from digital files. If you're making (or have already made) that decision you'll discover that customers don't buy it if they don't know you sell it

The easiest customer to get is the one that you've already got. Bob Banasik of Best Photo in Connecticut figures that about 30% of his customers already have a digital camera, with more acquiring one every month.

He puts these inserts in his photofinishing bags. Each insert is printed on regular 4x6 photo paper. Bob's pricing structure gives the consumer a huge incentive to have every image on a card printed - 49 cents instead of .98. You can click on the image to see a larger photo

Have you ever fogged a roll of print paper? Design some coupons like, this, with black edges, and that might be a great way to use up some of that edge-fogged material. That idea came from Alan Showalter in one of the McCurry Associates Newsletters.

Jim Schwarzbach of Jim's Photo Lab in El Paso makes the best, most personalized inserts I've ever seen. He used the digital template making software in his DLS system to generate a whole series of templates like this one. It takes only a few seconds to drop a customer's photo into the template and add one print to each order, a print that is a powerful selling tool. The example shows your editor's new granddaughter. click on the image to see a larger photo

This insert is one of several used at Chris' Camera Center in Aiken, South Carolina. Some of our messages are for digital services, some are for other service. click on the image to see a larger photo

Those who know me know that I'm cheap. The reason this series of inserts is 4 inches square is simple. We take our passport photos with a digital camera and print them on a Fuji Pictrostat 4000, which uses a full 8"x10" sheet of paper. I keep stock pages made up with a blank spot for the passport photos, paste 4 2x2 images on the prepared sheet, and let my passport customers subsidize my business cards and inserts. click on the image to see a larger photo

By far the best use of inserts I've seen is that of Bruce Patrick in Orange, California. His insert itself is nothing special. It's the distribution. He hands out batches to everybody in his market area that sells digital cameras. He's getting his competitors to sell his services! click on the image to see a larger photo

If you print messages like this on paper which is not back-printed, you can slap a self-adhesive address label and a self-adhesive stamp on the back and use them as postcard messages.

More marketing ideas for digital processing