The fall and holiday season is a very popular time to have mini sessions for clients. You can give previous clients a chance to get quick updated photos and give new clients a chance to book at a special rate. While they can be a great marketing tool, they are a LOT of work! Here is our list of 7 ways to have successful mini sessions.

1. Have an assistant – This is the number one way that you are going to save yourself a lot of stress. By having a second person there with you, they can help greet clients if they arrive early, talk to them while they’re waiting, and be second pair of eyes during the shoot. They don’t necessarily have to be another photographer! You can have a sister, friend, mom, spouse, etc there to assist.
2. Add buffer time in your schedule- If you are doing a lot of mini sessions in one day, you’ll want to add a little bit of time in between each client just in case they are running late or you run over. This will also give you a chance to grab a drink or snack and even run to the restroom if need be.
3. Schedule a back up day – If you are doing your sessions outside, make sure you have a rain date just in case the weather doesn’t cooperate with you on the day of. This will give your clients a sense of relief that you’re preplanning for any scenario.
4. Pre-communication – Set yourself up for success by communicating with your clients as much as possible ahead of time. Make sure they are aware of what comes with their mini session price, how long it will be until they see the photos, ideas on what to wear, exactly how the session will run, etc. By sending over this information as a PDF prior to the day, this will help head off any confusion or questions on the day of the session.
5. Up Selling- Send your clients a pricing list before the session and inform them of the upgrades that they can get in addition to their mini sessions purchase. By educating your clients ahead of time you have the opportunity to get them thinking about what else they may want to purchase before the session even happens.
6. Price Yourself Wisely – On the other hand, while upselling is a great opportunity to make more money, you shouldn’t count just on that. Price yourself so that your time that you put into the session and afterwards is in line with your hourly rate and worth it to you. If you aren’t sure how to price yourself, check out this recent blog post about pricing.
7. Email Marketing – If you are wanting to build a list of people to market these session to, try creating a signup for via an email marketing service like Mailchimp or Madmimi. You can create a list of clients directly from those signups, and create targeted emails to send them about upcoming mini session dates.

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