Studio Management Software for Photographers: Light Blue + ShootProof

Imagine: you’re the creative director of a boutique photography studio in the UK. Your team makes timeless photographs of families, from couples to newborns to beloved pets. Spring has just arrived, and you’re shaking off the winter doldrums. You’re itching for an inspiring project to walk through your door, for a breathtaking client to ring you up. So you lean over your well-worn maple desktop and ask your beautiful customer relationship manager, “Which of our clients have birthdays this month? Let’s invite them in to make some magic…”

If this scene sounds familiar, you might be Julia Boggio, creative director of the family-owned Boggio Studios in the heart of London. But Julia’s customer relationship manager isn’t a beautiful colleague one desk over. Her CRM is Light Blue, a studio management application with features developed to support even the busiest photography boutiques.

“We use Light Blue because there is quite simply no other CRM system for a busy studio,” raves Julia.

Your “Girl Friday” – but she’s not a girl, and she works ‘round the clock.

It’s Light Blue’s scalability that sets it apart. From small, in-home sole proprietorships to bustling, city-center studios, individual photographers and multi-talent studios alike can benefit from the in-depth marketing features Light Blue offers.

“Light Blue is great for doing searches to create marketing contact lists, like upcoming birthdays,” Julia explains. “If you sat down and thought about five searches you could do on your existing data to create new call lists, I bet you could squeeze a few bookings out of that.”

Feeling motivated yet?

Birthdays, anniversaries, families with college-bound students, couples with a houseful of darling dogs… No matter what your target demographic, Light Blue connects – and reconnects – you with people who want exactly what you have to offer. Growing a successful photography business takes time, and Light Blue ensures efficiency.

“We spend a lot of our energy collecting leads and following up on potential shoots. Without Light Blue, it would be very difficult to do this in a way that maximizes all the effort we’ve put into events and marketing.”

If you’ve ever stared at a spreadsheet full of e-mail addresses and wondered what on earth to do with it, you might be ready to meet Light Blue.

Down the rabbit hole we go… (The good kind. The kind with a party at the end.)

“Light Blue is essential to the smooth running of our studio,” says Julia. “It manages all of our client information and tracks our orders for us. In addition, it gives us easy ways to communicate with clients, like easy access to our inquiry templates.”

Need to know inquiring clients’ favorite color? Light Blue will ask the question for you. Want details about a client’s home environment for a shoot? Light Blue has your back. Need someone to dust your baseboards? Well, okay, Light Blue isn’t quite there yet. But we have faith.

Light Blue is so fully-featured, in fact, that Boggio Studios is still uncovering new ways to incorporate Light Blue into studio life.

Julia lists her favorites: “Calendars, sales, client tracking. And Light Blue offers so many functions that we should be using that we just haven’t even begun to integrate yet, like task lists and the full financial functions available.”

Big Sales with Minimal Effort

One of those financial functions is best understood through Light Blue’s integration with ShootProof.

Julia tells us, “Keeping track of ShootProof orders can be time-consuming if you don’t use the Light Blue integration, especially if you have a lot of sales coming through.”

And by “a lot of sales,” Julia means a LOT of sales. Her studio welcomes hundreds of clients each year for custom photography, and each one of those sessions results in an entirely separate workload of print-making and product ordering. We’ve already imagined Julia’s graceful London studio. Now imagine it stacked with thousands upon thousands of order forms, invoices, and spreadsheets.

Not exactly the prettiest picture.

But Light Blue’s seamless connectivity with ShootProof keeps paperwork off Julia’s desk, and pound signs in all the right columns.

“Anything that makes tracking the financials of a company easier is worth its weight in gold in my book.”

The Sunny Side of the Photo Life

If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Light Blue is the shiny gold ring that keeps the diamond on your finger. Check out the sunshiny loveliness that is Boggio Studio’s portfolio, and you’ll see how ShootProof and Light Blue are helping to make this photography boutique a household name.

Using Light Blue but haven’t dabbled with ShootProof yet? Your first 30 days are absolutely free.

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