Templates for booking milestone sessions with newborn clients

Capturing milestone moments like 6-month and first birthday sessions is a great way to strengthen relationships with your newborn clients and create additional revenue. Instead of waiting for clients to return, you can proactively offer these sessions to ensure they feel valued while building your business.

It’s a process that newborn photographer Kristina uses to keep her diary full of loyal repeat clients throughout the year.

This guide walks you through booking milestone sessions, with ready-to-use templates for automated follow-ups and steps to streamline the process using online scheduling calendars—saving you time and keeping clients engaged throughout their baby’s first year.

The process & templates

Around 5 months after a newborn session, send a simple email inviting the client to a “Sitter” session, timed to capture the 6-month milestone when many babies are sitting up. For the first birthday, send another outreach message about 10 months after the original session to schedule portraits ahead of the big day.

Our resources include email templates for both milestones, a workflow to automate sending them at the right times, and queries to identify clients in the outreach windows if you prefer manual follow-up.

Installing the templates

1. Download the setup file, here.
2. Unzip the file, if you haven’t done so already.
3. Open Light Blue.
4. Click on the “Records” menu at the top of the screen.
5. Click Import > Light Blue Templates.
6. Select the .XML setup file that you’d downloaded and click Done.
7. The templates will install in Light Blue.
8. Find the templates by opening Light Blue’s preferences window, and going to the Workflows preferences & Email Templates preferences.

Customising the templates

Change the wording within the messages by taking these steps:

1. Open the Preferences window.
2. Go to the Email preferences.
3. Find the email template that you want to tailor the messaging for. The two email templates we’ve provided are called “Newborn sitter session invitation” and “Newborn first birthday session invitation”
4. Make adjustments to the email as required – we’d recommend keeping the mail-merge tags that have been included within the templates.

Learn how to make your emails stand out using this guide.

Including the baby’s name within your messages

The email templates include a special mail-merge tag that will add the name of the baby into the messages. This relies on there being a contact record for the newborn baby linked to the original newborn session, with a role set to “Baby”.

If you haven’t got a linked contact with a role of “Baby” then you should either:

• add a contact with the role of “Baby” to all the newborn shoots you’re planning to follow-up with,
• or modify the email template to avoid using the mail-merge tag that’s mentioning the baby’s name.

Adding a scheduling request link into the email templates

If you’re already using Light Blue’s scheduling calendars to book sitter sessions and first birthday sessions, you could include a scheduling request within the outreach email templates. Scheduling requests allow you to use your scheduling calendars to book meetings or shoots with existing clients.

1. Open the Preferences window.
2. Go to the Email preferences.
3. Find the email template that you want to tailor the messaging for. The two email templates we’ve provided are called “Newborn sitter session invitation” and “Newborn first birthday session invitation”.
4. Click the cursor within the body of the email template, where you’d like the scheduling request link to appear.
5. Click on the “Insert Scheduling Request” button.
6. Choose the existing scheduling calendar that you wish your newborn clients to use to book their next session.
7. Ensure “Create New Shoot” is selected from the dropdown.
8. Customise the link text.
9. Click “Insert into email”.

When the email’s sent, the scheduling request link will automatically link the new shoot to the existing client and use their existing details.

Applying the workflow to existing bookings

Once you’re happy with the wording of the emails, and are ready to automate sending the outreach messages, you can add the workflow to all of your past newborn clients by following these steps:

1. Click on the Query button at the top of the main window.
2. Query for Shoots where:
   • the Shoot Type is newborns,
   • the Status is “Confirmed or Completed”,
   • the Start Date is “Today or before by up to” 300 days.
3. You’ll now have a set of newborn clients that you’ve worked with over the past 10 months.
4. Click on the “Records” menu at the top of the screen.
5. Choose Records > Add to Found Set > Workflow.
6. Choose the “Newborn Shoot Date (simple milestone follow-up workflow)” workflow. Don’t click “Add“Done“ yet.
7. Change the “Relative to” dropdown at the bottom of the window to “Shoot Start Date”.
8. Now click “Add”.

Light Blue will add the workflow to all of the found records, which will schedule the two follow-up emails. Any shoots that happened more than 150 days ago will skip scheduling the “Sitter session invitation” since that milestone’s already passed.

Adding steps to an existing workflow for future bookings

If you already use a workflow to manage tasks and messages around your newborn sessions, but would like to include these automated outreach messages in future bookings, then you can add the email templates to your existing newborn shoot date workflow.

1. Open the Shoot Types preferences.
2. Select your newborn shoot type.
3. Within the “Default Workflows” window, scroll to see the “Shoot date workflow”.
4. Click on the “Change workflows” button.
5. Choose “Go to workflows”.
6. That’ll reveal the workflow that you use for newborn shoot dates.
7. Click on the green plus to add a new step to your workflow.
8. Choose “Email”.
9. Choose the “Newborn sitter session invitation” template.
10. Set the offset to 150 days after the shoot date.
11. Click “Save and add another”.
12. Choose “Email”, again.
13. Choose the “Newborn first birthday session invitation” template.
14. Set the offset to 300 days after the shoot date.
15. Click Done

When you next book a newborn session, your default workflow will get added to the shoot as usual, but will now include the two outreach messages, too.