3 Ways to Get Parents & Students Excited About the Yearbook

The end of the school year is approaching. Many of us are looking forward to the long days of summer. At YearbookLife, we’re enjoying our favorite time of the year too: yearbook printing season! 

That means only one thing: It’s almost time for your yearbooks to be delivered. We’re excited already, are you?  

If your parents and students aren’t yet excited about the yearbook, they soon will be! 

3 Ways to Get Parents & Students Excited About the Yearbook

When it comes to marketing your yearbook, you may have focused your efforts on the student body. While this is a good yearbook marketing technique, it’s important to remember that you actually have a much bigger audience.

In many cases, it’s likely to be the students’ parents who will be purchasing the yearbook. With this in mind, it’s important to get parents as excited about the yearbook as the students are! This can help boost your yearbook sales. But it’s also a great way for parents and students alike to eagerly await the ability to reflect on a year full of memories. 

1.) Email

It’s easy to speak to the student body about the yearbooks when you are face to face with them every day. But what about parents? Technology gives you a great opportunity to connect with them. 

Email marketing is an effective way of reaching a far wider audience. You may find that your school has an available email list for parents. But how can you build up their excitement for the yearbook? Why not try: 

• Sneak peeks – Ramp up excitement by sharing sneak peeks of your yearbook. Recently completed a spread on a big school event? Send out an email with a sneak peek. It will leave parents and students wanting more!
• Behind the scenes – There’s a lot of work that goes into a yearbook. Help share the journey by providing some behind the scenes insights. 
• Ask for content – We’ve previously looked at how you can crowdsource for yearbook content. Getting parents involved with this can give you a whole host of additional content to really give your yearbook that unique touch. 

2.) Social Media

While email is a great way to get informative content in front of an audience, it’s not the only way. Most of us have smartphones these days, and enjoy spending time on social media. 

This provides you with another opportunity to ramp up excitement about your yearbook. Just like with emails, try sharing some additional content on social media. You can learn more about increasing school yearbook engagement with social media here. 

Make sure your calendar includes the small and large deadlines. You want your final yearbook deadline front and center of mind. Try writing it at the top of your calendar, so everyone is reminded as the date gets closer. 

 3.) Student Excitement

If your students are excited about the yearbook, they’re going to speak to their parents about it! Help build up excitement among the student body by: 

• Sending reminders about yearbook deadlines.
• Being clear about the yearbook release date.
• Encouraging yearbook sales as early as possible.

You can also help to boost further excitement by sending the student body home with flyers about the yearbook. Aim to do this about once a month, and make sure that it’s included in the student’s take home folder. This ensures that parents are reading the necessary information about your yearbook!

At YearbookLife, We’re Here to Help

At YearbookLife, we offer marketing assistance to all our customers, including free email marketing, social media templates, and take home flyers. If you’re looking for some additional yearbook marketing support, our experienced customer care team is on hand to help you market your yearbook and increase your yearbook sales. To request a quote today, please click here.

5 Tips to Meet Your Yearbook Deadlines

Spring is here! Flowers are starting to bloom, the birds are singing. You know what else happens in spring? Yearbook deadlines. In order to make sure that your yearbooks are delivered on time, it’s important to make your yearbook deadline. 

It can be a hectic time of the year. Late evenings and weekends spent working to ensure that yearbook deadlines are met. But it doesn’t need to be this way. 

When planned correctly, your yearbook deadline should be seen as an accomplishment, rather than a dreaded date hanging over you. That’s why we’ve put together these 5 tips to help meet your yearbook deadlines.  

5 Tips to Meet Your Yearbook Deadlines

Meeting yearbook deadlines can be a daunting task for yearbook advisers. However, deadlines can be easily managed with a bit of organization. These tips can help make the process much smoother for you. 

1.  Set Micro-Deadlines

You can get ahead on your yearbook creation by setting micro-deadlines throughout the year. For example, certain school events will happen earlier on in the year. Once the event has passed, don’t wait until the spring to collate your yearbook pages detailing it! Get it prepped, proofed and ready to go. 

2.  Create a Team Calendar

Take your micro-deadlines one step further by setting up a calendar that your yearbook team can review. Visible deadlines can help keep everyone more accountable and build a great sense of teamwork. 

Make sure your calendar includes the small and large deadlines. You want your final yearbook deadline front and center of mind. Try writing it at the top of your calendar, so everyone is reminded as the date gets closer. 

3.  Checklists

Checklists are a great way to keep everyone on track. Build out a checklist for everyone to see. You may want to build it by page, or by section. Whichever you feel is more suitable. Plus, by creating a checklist, you get the added satisfaction of marking items complete as you make progress! 

4.  Proofing Deadline

This can go hand in hand with your micro-deadlines. Set proofing deadlines for your yearbook content as you go along. It will help you save time later! 

For example, proofing school portraits. When you get these files from your school photographer, build in a deadline for these to be proofed. 

5.  Build in a Buffer

Giving yourself a bit of a time buffer prior to your yearbook deadline can be a great idea. Consider how long your yearbook is going to be. Say, for example, you need to finish 30 pages over the next 3 weeks. That’s 10 pages per week. Step it up a notch and aim for 15. This puts you slightly ahead, so if you finish in advance, great!

Similarly, when it comes to your yearbook class, set an earlier deadline. Because let’s face it, even with the best planning in the world, delays can happen! Building in a time buffer of a couple of weeks can help take some pressure off. 

Get a FREE Yearbook Quote from YearbookLife today!

At YearbookLife, we make yearbooks easy. Our easy-to-use yearbook design software and technical support assistance help simplify the yearbook process for you. Plus, our experienced customer care team are on hand to help you market your yearbook and increase your yearbook sales. If you’d like to request a quote today, please click here.

Yearbook Fundraising Ideas

Fundraising is an important part of any yearbook committee’s job. Funds are needed for more than just to cover the cost of the yearbook itself. Additional expenses can include workshops, equipment, software, or even a team pizza night! 

The basic costs of your yearbook should be covered by yearbook sales, as well as ad revenue. By basic costs, we’re talking about the costs to print your yearbook. And let’s be honest, these costs rise every year. Your yearbook fundraising needs to be able to keep up.

Finding new and fun ways to raise funds for your yearbook may seem like a challenge. Perhaps you’ve already explored the more traditional fundraising ideas, like a bake sale. This year, you’re looking for something a little different! 

At YearbookLife, we’ve been helping school’s create unique, memorable yearbooks for over 20 years. Throughout that time, we’ve learned some tips and tricks to help with your yearbook fundraising. Give it a try yourself with these school yearbook fundraising ideas.

Yearbook Fundraising Ideas

Some of the best yearbook fundraising ideas involve thinking outside the box. We’ve browsed success stories, and learned from our own experience. Try out some of these yearbook fundraising ideas for your school. 

1. Sell Empty Space – We’ve all run into the problem. A blank page in your yearbook, that you don’t know what to fill with. Often, we default to throwing some candid photos in there just to fill it. Instead of thinking of a blank page as wasted space, consider it an opportunity. Give students an option to buy the candid space to highlight the photos that they want to feature. Charge per photo or per person in each picture. Suddenly, a wasted page has become a nice way to raise additional yearbook funds. 

2. Use Your Assets – *Snap snap*. Taking pictures and yearbooks go hand in hand. But there are a lot of photos that don’t make the final cut! Instead of letting them sit in a folder hidden away on the cloud, give people an option to purchase these. Put together CDs or USBs with some outtakes, and give people the option to buy them! 

Other traditional yearbook fundraising ideas include: 

3. Food Catalogs – Who doesn’t love a tasty snack? Sometimes a bit of sugar is the welcome boost that we all need in the middle of the afternoon. Use this as an opportunity to raise additional yearbook funds. Some things that you could consider selling include: Gourmet popcorn fundraisers, Candy fundraisers & Bake sale fundraisers.

4. Take Advantage of Existing Facilities – Does your school have a canteen that serves refreshments during sporting events? Speak to your school administration, and see if using this canteen for a bit of time either before or after school would be an option. One yearbook advisor in Illinois tried this approach, using the school canteen for 30 minutes each day before class. Selling coffee, muffins and other drinks they were able to raise $5,000 in profit in one year!

These 4 school yearbook fundraising ideas can be a fun and unique way to raise extra money for your yearbook. If you’re looking for some help with marketing and selling your yearbook, check out the YearbookLife Marketing Supplies Store. 

Get a FREE Yearbook Quote from YearbookLife today!

At YearbookLife, we make yearbooks easy. Our easy-to-use yearbook design software and technical support assistance help simplify the yearbook process for you. Plus, our experienced customer care team are on hand to help you market your yearbook and increase your yearbook sales. If you’d like to request a quote today, please click here.

3 Ways Your Yearbook Class Makes Students “Career-Ready”

Students may sometimes wonder, “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” Well, that’s not the case with yearbook class. Yearbook class helps students to learn a variety of skills that will likely be useful to them in the future, especially when pursuing their careers. This includes how to communicate more effectively, handle problems, grow as a leader, manage your time, and meet important deadlines. These are important skills to have as students continue their schooling, and they become even more critical as they enter post-secondary schools and/or the workforce.

Here are a few ways that yearbook class gets students career-ready:

1.  Helps Students Learn Crucial Life Skills

Students working on the yearbook develop planning, organization, and teamwork skills which they will use through school, college, and their careers. Time management, prioritizing, reliability, and the responsibility of following through on tasks when others depend on you are some of the other crucial life skills that students learn when working on the school yearbook. Students participating in the development of the yearbook also learn to be accountable to others for completion of their assigned responsibilities.

All of these skills are important in order to keep the school yearbook project on track and meet all the deadlines provided by the yearbook publisher. 

2.  Teaches Students Valuable Business Skills

Yearbook class is similar to a business, in that you’re creating and selling a product. This provides an opportunity to learn valuable business skills such as budgeting, promotion, advertising, marketing, customer service and market research. 

3.  Helps Students Gain Various Technical Skills

Working on the school yearbook and using yearbook design software, photo-editing programs, and project management software helps students learn various technical skills such as working with computers, photography, journalism, and graphic design. This makes students more valuable candidates for employers, and also may play a vital role in helping them decide what they want to do when they finish their schooling.

Looking for a Yearbook Publisher? Have a Question? Contact Us Today!

YearbookLife delivers extraordinary service and yearbook products at an affordable price. To learn more or to request a quote online today, click here. If you would like to speak with a YearbookLife representative, contact us today.

How to Keep Your Yearbook Class Motivated Through the Holidays

With Christmas and New Years approaching, students are probably preparing for winter break, and in anticipation of this time off, it may be difficult to keep your yearbook staff on task in order to meet those December and January deadlines. On top of that, after the long break, it’s common for students to come back to school and need help refocusing. So what can you do? Don’t fight the holidays, embrace them!

To keep the yearbook class motivated through the holidays, yearbook advisers often try to mix in some fun with the work that still needs to get done. This can help keep the spirit alive in your classroom while meeting your yearbook deadlines. It can be as simple as throwing on some music while you do your “yearbook” work, adding some festive decor to the room, or celebrating your accomplishments with a staff party.

Here are a few tips and ideas on how to keep your yearbook class motivated through the holidays:

• Set reasonable expectations! Although work still needs to get done, remember that the holidays are a time for family and friends. Let everyone know ahead of time what is expected of them during the break and how you’ll “hit the ground running” upon return. It’s important for them to understand what the goals are, but don’t overburden them during the break.
• Share with other people what the yearbook class is up to. Use daily announcements, the school newspaper, social media, or emails to parents. This can be a great way to increase awareness as well as interest in the school yearbook. This is a great time to encourage yearbook and ad sales while people are in a “giving” mood.
• Host a “School Yearbook Photo Contest.” Announce it ahead of time and during the break to the school students and staff. You can set up a Dropbox, email, Facebook group, or Instagram where students / parents can submit their pictures from winter break. This will help with your yearbook coverage through the holidays and a nice “How I Spent my Winter Vacation” section for the yearbook! 
• Throw a “Holiday” party. Bring treats for everyone to enjoy! 
• Will some students be away during the break? Schedule a couple of Zoom chats, so everyone can check in and catch up. Or if they’re staying local, arrange a coffee meet-up!
• Have a gift or an ornament exchange. Maybe a Secret Santa exchange with a small dollar limit for those ‘always broke’ students.
• Play a game during your downtime (i.e. “Never have I Ever”, a trivia game, or a scavenger hunt). 
• Take your yearbook class to an escape room or other group activity. Great for team building. And super fun!
• Then, get back to finishing an amazing school yearbook!

Need Yearbook Help? Have a Question? Contact Us Today!

YearbookLife delivers extraordinary service and yearbook products at an affordable price. To learn more or to request a quote online today, click here. If you would like to speak with a YearbookLife representative, contact us today.