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Holiday Season Deadlines and Tips (2024)

Get ready for the holiday season with this guide to key order deadlines and practical tips to maximize your holiday sales. From setting up seasonal price profiles to reactivating past offers, you'll find everything you need to make the most of this festive period while ensuring timely deliveries for your customers.

1. Holiday Lab Deadlines

Here you will find an overview of the order deadlines for photo products that are due to arrive before December 24th (as specified by the labs).

Please note: 

  • Deadlines may change slightly at short notice. You can find the latest information on the Labs & Products page in your account.
  • All deadlines are based on unmixed, single-variety orders (e.g. an order deadline for "canvases" only applies to purely canvas orders).
  • For mixed orders, the deadline is the longest delivery time plus one day.
  • If applicable, postal delivery timeframes may be extended due to high volume.
  • Dates for batch shipping and direct shipping sometimes differ, please keep this in mind.
US Lab DeadlinesCanada Lab DeadlinesUK Lab Deadlines

ACI: December 6 

APS: December 9

Alkit: December 9

Ark-La-Tex: December 12

Bay: December 6

BWC: December 9

Color Inc: December 9

CPQ: December 15

D&M Imaging: December 11

Digital Pro Lab: December 11

Diversified Lab: December 13

Filmet: December 9

Full Color: December 9

H&H: December 6

Marathon: December 10

Marco: December 5

McKenna: December 9

Millers: December 6

NEO Pro: December 9

Professional Color Service: December 9

Richmond: December 9

Total Image - Capitol Filmworks: December 9

UPI: December 9

Photolab Yves Thomas: December 9

Spectra Visuel: December 9

Technicare: December 12


Digitalab
Batch: TBD
Direct: TBD

The School Photography Lab
Batch: 15th December
Direct: 17th December

SIMLAB
Batch: 10th December
Direct: 10th December

DS Colour Labs
Batch: 16th December
Direct: 12th December

2. Price and Communication Profiles for the Holidays

Using special Communication- and Price Profiles for the pre-Christmas period is a great way to get customers back in your shop!

  1. Price Profile: Adapt your Price Profile offerings for the season to include more gift-related items and seasonal items listed in the print lab product inventory.
  2. In addition to our Christmas email templates, there are also Communication Profiles that you can use for your photo orders. Use these as-is, or tailor them to your needs. 

  Pro Tip: Timing

Use these profiles on orders that go on sale 7-14 days before your lab deadline. 
Note:  The coupon deadline should ideally be December 3rd 2024.
Please note that these are general guidelines. Review the order deadlines of your lab to make sure you set appropriate dates.

3. Reactivate Offers for the Holidays

Have you taken a lot of photos this year? Then you can make use of them again at the end of the year! With the newsletter function, you can boost repeat orders and new orders around the holidays by re-activating previous photo jobs. Take a look at the older price profile and create a deal too good to pass up a second time!
Please note: For additional sales at Christmas, your orders should have been archived some time ago, preferably in spring or summer. If too little time has passed since you offered the photos at your usual prices, your customers may not appreciate the drop in price so soon.

  1. Holiday Products
    If you want to re-promote past orders at Christmas, adjust your product offer or price profile beforehand. We recommend a small range of high-quality products (And don't forget an ornament or two!) — after all, there may be some first-time buyers among your addressees. Above all, create new packages so that your customers get added value compared to your first offer.
    Why? If your customers find exactly the same offer in your online shop as they did with their first purchase, they could quickly get the impression that you are not serious about archiving your jobs. This can have a negative impact on your future sales — especially with follow-up orders. Therefore, make it clear that this is a one-off promotion for a special occasion by addressing the customer accordingly in the email and offering an exclusive product.
  2. Use Vouchers
    Get the most out of the season and use vouchers to create additional sales incentives. We recommend giving a 15% discount on the entire shopping basket and setting the expiry date to three days after the voucher has been sent. You can choose something cute and seasonal for the voucher code.
    For more information about creating vouchers, click here.
4. Un-archive Jobs

To make an archived Photo Job available for sale again:

  1. On the Photo Job Main Settings page, remove the tick from Archiving, or set a new date in the future. If the date is not changed, the system will automatically revert the job back to "Archived" status.
  2. Deactivate your Communication Profiles for the Photo Job, or set new ones, such as the Christmas profiles. Otherwise, your customers will receive the old notifications again.
  3. To start the secondary sale, set the status of your job back to "Selling".
5. Send a Newsletter

You'll want to send out a newsletter to your customers to notify them of your sale and incentives:

When creating your newsletter, you will find some optimized email templates for sending to your customers (Search for "holiday" or "Christmas" within the template list to find them). Make sure to adjust the sections in yellow with the appropriate information, and make any other adjustments as you see fit.

Some things to keep in mind:

  • Subject Lines: We have already provided optimized subject lines, however you can always change these. Make sure your subject line is clear, specific, stands out, and is between 50-60 characters (Longer subject lines will get cut off by different email clients).
  • Design: Your customers are likely to receive many promotional emails throughout the holiday season, so try to keep your design appealing and not too sales-y. We've created some holiday-themed graphics you can download and use here. To personalize your emails, you can use placeholders that are directly replaced by the corresponding data of your customers when sending the emails. One of the most important placeholders is [[Customer.photos]], which will insert thumbnails directly into the email.
  • Timing: In order to reach the early and late shoppers equally, we recommend sending three emails to your customers.
    1. Email 1: Dispatch on Sunday, November 24
      This first newsletter addresses the so-called "Advent shoppers", who mainly buy high-quality gifts. You should clearly communicate the order deadlines here, but not try to build up too much sales pressure.
    2. Email 2: Dispatch on Sunday, December 1
      With the second email, you will mainly reach late buyers who place particular value on punctual delivery by Christmas Eve. Therefore, be particularly precise when specifying the order deadlines and tailor the main message accordingly.
    3. Email 3: Dispatch on Sunday, December 15 (Downloads Only)
      With the third and last email, you can no longer offer print products, but you can still promote the last-minute purchase of photo downloads. To do this, adjust your price profile again and offer only downloads. This way, your customers still have the opportunity to buy your beautiful photos as a Christmas present, but they have to print them themselves at a local provider.

Most recipients read their emails in the morning or in the evening. Keep this in mind when sending your newsletter. You can set the exact sending time in your account.

5. GDPR Notice (UK Customers Only)

Disclaimer
The following information is provided for non-binding information purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice. This information cannot and is not intended to replace individual and binding legal advice that addresses your specific situation. In this respect, all information provided is without guarantee of correctness and completeness.

GDPR requires consent for receiving emails. An opt-out option is no longer sufficient. Your customers must have given their consent knowingly and with free will.

What needs to be considered?

  • You need separate consent about the desired receipt of a newsletter.
  • It is your responsibility to document this and make it comprehensible.
  • The consent itself must be easy to understand, reflect the purpose, and have been given as a voluntary act.
    OR
  • You have stipulated in your general terms and conditions that you may send emails with advertising content.
    Note: 
    Only buyers who have accepted your terms and conditions may be contacted.

Have you possibly already obtained the consent with GotPhoto?

  • For all orders created after 25 May 2018, GotPhoto has obtained the consent of your customers for you. Only then can you use your Communication Profiles.
  • If this is the case, your customers have agreed to receive important information for their order. This also applies to a Holiday campaign in which the images are available again.

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