Jackson Blanton Photographers Prepares for their Busiest Day of the Year Using Email Marketing

Background

Jackson Blanton Photographers was established in 1963, and since then has been working with schools, families and executives in Maryland and Virginia. They specialize in high school senior portraits and sporting events. Jackson Blanton Photographers are a division of Blanton & Company, Inc., who have donated over $36 million to schools via various fundraising activities.

Problem

Data management was a huge issue for Jackson Blanton Photographers, as they take portraits for an average of 250,000 school children every year. At each student’s photo shoot they collect the email address and mailing address, and have to keep track of the contact details all 250,000 annual customers.

Since every high school graduate’s parents want to capture the hand shake when they walk across the stage on graduation day, it’s important to get information about their photo into their hands the day after they graduate. And since many of them will likely change their email and mailing addresses, timing is of the essence.

Originally, Jackson Blanton Photographers communicated with students through both postcards and emails. The first challenge here was they were using a postcard company with a minimum order requirement. In addition, the postcards had to be ordered relatively far in advance, and involved a manual process for the labels and postage. They were also sending emails to each student through a personal email service in small batches at a time.

Discovery

Jackson was introduced to VerticalResponse by a colleague in his last business. He remembered hearing about the service when his personal emails to students started to get blocked because of the large quantities he was sending. The business simply could not manage their entire email database on their own, as they were in demand!

Solution

After making the decision to go with VerticalResponse, Jackson Blanton Photographers began uploading the student’s mailing information immediately. After the individual digital images are posted online for sale, students receive an email marketing message which contains special offers and a call-to-action asking them to order prints online.

"Since we now have a template in VerticalResponse, it takes about 10 minutes to send an email offer to our prospective customers. We just put in an image, change the words and we are done," said David Jackson, co-owner of Jackson Blanton Photographers.

Results

Jackson Blanton Photographers have saved a lot of time using VerticalResponse. When they have free time, they create and launch emails and direct mail postcards. They then schedule their campaigns in advance so that each email arrives the day after graduation. This is one of Jackson Blanton Photographer’s busiest times of year.

On average 50% of the students that receive Jackson Blanton Photographer’s postcard take action and order prints. "It’s worth every penny using VerticalResponse’s email and direct mail postcard services!" said Jackson.