Not surprisingly, the process of collecting orders and payments is all dependent on organization and detailed tracking. Take time to think through all the people and supplies you’ll need to make this process run smoothly. Some items will be obvious, like creating a sign-up list of people to collect orders at different venues and an order form that collects the student’s name, grade, homeroom and address as well as the yearbook quantity and total payment due. Most yearbook publishers provide you with money collection envelopes and sales flyers to greatly simplify this process.
Other items you’ll need may be less apparent. For instance, potential items to have at a yearbook sales table include:
- Table and chair(s)—for order takers to sit and work efficiently.
- Posters or banners—so it’s obvious that yearbooks are being sold.
- Student and staff list—to quickly locate and record who has submitted an order for a yearbook and how much has been paid. This information can be tracked manually or electronically depending on the sophistication of your money collection system.
- Money collection envelopes and/or cash box—to keep orders organized, together and secure.
- Sales receipt pads—to act as proof that a sales transaction has been enacted. If possible, use a sales receipt pad that enables duplicate carbon copies. That way, each party has a record of the purchase—this is especially important for cash purchases should there be a record-keeping discrepancy later on.
- Lots of pens—to record order information quickly and enable purchasers to borrow them if writing a check without a pen at their fingertips.
- Other office supplies—such as a stapler, extra staples, note pads, scissors, etc. since you never know what items will need to be followed-up on and you’d rather be over-prepared than under-prepared when you’re working with a crowd of purchasers.
- Copies of previous yearbooks—for people to peruse along with anything else that will engage curiosity and excitement about the upcoming yearbook!
Enlisting others to help you think through the entire order and payment collection process will really help you build a game plan with confidence. Perhaps you can start by talking with seasoned staffers about what methods worked well (or not-so-well) during last year’s process and build on their experience.
Great tips for the school yearbook club! Learn more about making the process of collecting orders and payments for school yearbook sales easier from the yearbook experts at YearbookLife. Contact us for more information at 888-680-0143.
Get Parents and Other Community Members Involved
1. Send postcards to parents letting them know that yearbooks are available to purchase for themselves or their child. Suggest purchasing two books, one for the student and one for parents to keep.
2. Ask local businesses to display yearbooks to promote community awareness.
3. Work with your local community newspaper and/or radio station to write up
announcements that let your community know this is a special time for your school.
Invite a reporter to visit your yearbook class or club and see how the yearbook
project is created.
Keep the Momentum Building!
1. Offer an incentive for early ordering of a yearbook—it could be a discounted price off the yearbook (which is always enticing) or a special gift such as a pen, magnet, button or pencil. A simple message stating “I ordered a yearbook” will let others know that they’re available.
2. Use brief morning announcements to promote yearbook sales, organize groups for
photos or give progress updates.
3. Create a monitoring device to show sales progress (i.e. a chart or graph) or have a countdown using signs or announcements to remind students of the last day to order a yearbook.
4. Send a “Last Chance Memo” to those who haven’t yet purchased a book.
5. Create and publicize a signing party for the last day of school.
Make the distribution of books very important. Gain permission to allow students who have ordered yearbooks to leave classes early. Serve refreshments, make it fun!
The goal is to get everyone excited about the yearbook to a point that they are willing to purchase immediately. Brainstorm with your staff to see what other ideas you can generate.
More tips on marketing and selling yearbooks:
1. Send “See You in the Book” notes to students whose pictures were taken (include page number and coverage subject) as a reminder that this is their book with their picture in it. It will let students know they will be in the yearbook and increase their interest in buying one.
2. Choose a marketing theme that conveys the essence of community and belonging that yearbooks represent. It can be used in all promotional materials and announcements such as “Making Our Mark”, “Together We Are One” or “On Our Way.” Your staff is sure to come up with other unique ideas!
3. Give invitations to students to buy their yearbook. Make them special and individualized.
4. Create and decorate a “Thank You” bulletin board for purchasers to autograph when they turn in their order.
5. Scan and post yearbook photos from previous years and include them on flyers asking the student body to guess who’s elementary or faculty image is pictured. All correct answers will earn a $5.00 coupon off the yearbook.
Promote the Sale of Yearbooks in Every Reasonable Venue
1. Post announcements and images on the school website announcing yearbook sales to the general public. Also consider announcing yearbook sales through a calling service if your school subscribes to this kind of service.
2. Develop a sales brochure and order form you can leave in the front office for campus visitors to review. Many times parents come on campus to visit the nurse’s office, the attendance office, or the front office. These three places are great locations for brochures so parents can learn about your yearbook sales campaign. (You may also want to contact the feeder middle schools and elementary schools to see if you can leave brochures on their campuses as well. Many times classmates may have a younger sibling attending one of those schools and the more exposure to parents, the better.)
3. At freshman orientation, have student body leaders discuss the yearbook and describe its importance to incoming students.
4. Create a skit during an assembly or audio commercial during morning announcements about yearbook sales to get the student body excited about upcoming sales. Pass out forms at the end of the presentation.
5. Enlist the aid of key influential people on campus to help promote the yearbook. Have teachers bring their yearbook the week of sales so they can share their stories. Have coaches and sponsors inform their teams of the value of purchasing a yearbook and demonstrating the ultimate sign of school spirit.
After scheduling the best times to promote and sell the yearbook, you’ll need to come up with promotional pieces and/or a theme that attracts attention to the upcoming sale dates, times and locations. Many yearbook publishers provide items to help you. Of course, you can always create your own promotional pieces to supplement what you’ve been given. Be creative and come up with clever slogans and messages if you really want to personalize the sales campaign to your school. Naturally, the use of simple statements like “yearbooks on sale!” or “don’t miss the opportunity!” or “last chance!” are always effective and a fast and easy way to draw attention to the yearbook sale.
Other ideas for making the sales campaign fun and effective include:
1. Tap into the principal, teachers, coaches or others heavily involved in planning school events to find out what activities are already planned that you could work around and use as a forum to promote the sale of the year book and possibly even start taking advance orders. (i.e. are there some Open Houses, pep rallies, sports events, activity nights or other events that draw kids and their parents to the school and are a natural venue for promoting and selling a school yearbook?)
2. Identify the heavy traffic areas in your school where posters and banners could be hung to capture student’s attention about the yearbook. The school cafeteria, library, entrances (and even restrooms!) are used by everyone…don’t miss the chance to catch their
eye as they’re going about their day.
3. Don’t forget about school announcements, student and parent news letters and web sites! Work with your school administration and newsletter staff to determine how to take advantage of these opportunities to get the word out about when and where to buy a yearbook.
Gather Input and Buy-In from Students and Staff
There’s no better way to entice students and staff to buy a yearbook than making sure they’re included in the content and the development process. After all, making sure that the yearbook is representative of the people, events and happenings at your school is the whole value of the yearbook.
1. Develop polls and buyer surveys through English classes at all grade levels. Have these surveys ask for ways the yearbook can be improved and help you better understand their perception of value versus cost. You will be surprised how many people appreciate your effort and how much stronger your yearbook program and sales will be as a result.
2. Conduct a cover design contest and use the winner’s design for the cover or the title page if your school has already chosen a cover style. Miniaturize some of the finalists’ designs and use them as custom clip art throughout your book. This way, more students will receive recognition.
3. Include quotes from student interviews about selected topics. Include as many student
quotes as possible.
Stay tuned for more ideas.
The importance of marketing and selling yearbooks is often overlooked and yet it is just as significant as creating the book itself—if not more so. If you hit your sales goal, you can pay for your yearbook. If you surpass your sales goal, you can use the additional revenue to add more pages to your yearbook or add features like a supplement, current events and/or autograph pages. On the flip side, if you miss your sales goal, you will owe money or have to cut part of your program. Whatever the case, marketing and selling your yearbook is critical and this guide is intended to help you simplify the process and succeed!
As with any project, proper planning and organization will go a long way in helping you accomplish your goals. In this case, the first step is to assess your school’s past yearbook sales success and build on it. This means taking some time to ask and record answers to the following questions:
1. What worked well in last year’s sales process? Why?
2. What didn’t work so well in last year’s sales process and why?
3. If you are new to your school, ask the school secretary and the teachers how well the marketing and sales process worked. Great questions to ask could be: What did you like the most about the process? What one thing would you improve about the process?
4. Review all materials that are available from your publisher pertaining to marketing and selling your yearbook. Do you have everything you need? Posters, flyers, money collection envelopes, etc.? What else do you need in order to be prepared for your campaign?
5. If your school has a tradition of keeping the yearbook a secret, consider changing that tradition. The yearbook is one of a few items where a person is asked to pay in advance with the promise of receiving a high-quality product later—simple things like including the student body in the design of the book or taking peeks into the yearbook by sharing cover ideas are ways that can increase awareness and connection to the book which, in turn, drives a student or others to purchase one.
Learning from last year’s experience is an important first step in building a successful sales and marketing plan for this year’s book.
Now it’s time to brainstorm and plan your sales activities!
If you’re new to the yearbook sales process, it’s helpful to think about it in 4 key stages: (1) scheduling the timing of sales campaigns, (2) creating several sales activities that generate awareness and excitement about the yearbook being on sale, (3) collecting orders and payment and (4) distributing the books when they arrive.
Scheduling the Timing of Your Yearbook Sales Campaigns
During this stage, the goal is to identify ideal sales times that attract attention about the yearbook being on sale. Take some time to enlist students, staff and others interested in the yearbook to brainstorm ideas on what will work best for your school. Use a school calendar to compare your thoughts against school activities to determine the best times to have sales campaigns. Typically, you’ll want to allow a total of 3-4 weeks to conduct a sales campaign by the time you promote, sell and wrap up the campaign activities. Many staffs conduct 3 campaigns a year to ensure everyone knows they have the opportunity to purchase a yearbook. Of course, you’ll want to also have all the
material needed in advance. Here is a game-plan many schools use. Feel free to expand, refine and adjust it based on your needs—it’s just intended to get you started.
3 WEEKS BEFORE yearbook sale date(s) — create and organize the announcements, posters and other materials needed to promote yearbook sales. Make sure you take advantage of any promotional materials provided by your yearbook publisher.
2 WEEKS BEFORE yearbook sale date(s) — hang up posters and begin, “Creating Excitement and Awareness” about the yearbook
1 WEEK BEFORE yearbook sale — continue promoting yearbook sales happening the next week – send letters home and post info on school marquee. Have announcements begin!!!
SALES WEEK – Have fun executing the sales activities you had planned and taking orders!!!
1 WEEK AFTER SALES – Ensure all funds have been collected and accounted for. Enter buyer’s names and payment amounts into a tracking system or spreadsheet software so you know who has purchased the book and can use that list later on when distributing books when they arrive. Also, make a deposit with a bookkeeper or bank (if you haven’t done so already) to ensure that the yearbook funds are secured.
CAMPAIGN # 1 will occur week of: ___/___/___ to ___/___/___
Sales Price of Yearbook will be $_____
ALLOW A MINIMUM OF ONE MONTH TO PASS
CAMPAIGN # 2 will occur week of: ___/___/___ to ___/___/___
Sales Price of Yearbook will be $_____
ALLOW A MINIMUM OF ONE MONTH TO PASS
CAMPAIGN # 3 will occur week of: ___/___/___ to ___/___/___
Sales Price of Yearbook will be $_____
Consider the following tips:
• Gradually increase the cost of the yearbook for each sales campaign.
• Create special packages for buyers that include options like name stamping or an ad space along with the price of a yearbook.
• Consider adding options to all your offerings – this can increase sales!!!
• Develop a system to track and report sales as well as balances due by buyers.
• Consider offering a payment plan for students who cannot afford to pay for a yearbook at one time. Make sure you stress a non-refundable deposit.
• Consider offering families with multiple children at your school a discount for a second or third yearbook.
• Tie in gift certificates/gift cards during the holidays. Offer people the option to “sponsor” or donate funds so a book can be purchased for a student that cannot afford one… perhaps have a drawing for a lucky winner or winners?
• Consider using sales letters in both English and other languages to ensure that everyone knows and understands that a yearbook will be on sale.
• Make sure to offer Parent or Senior Ads during some of the sale campaigns.
• Use your school website as a sales tool by posting prices and deadlines for sales.
To begin your planning process, outline the specifications for your yearbook. This will provide you with an accurate quote of the estimated cost and allow your yearbook publisher to communicate timeframes for any customization or special order requests.
Specifications to consider:
Number of copies: You can increase or decrease your final quantity when you submit your production form with your book. (Note: quantity changes may change the price of your yearbook. To be conservative, plan for 50% of the student body population.)
Number of pages: You must work in increments of 4 pages (final count divisible by 4), unless you are ordering a Smyth boo . Smyth sewn books must be ordered in increments of 16 pages. If graphics/text do not fill all pages or count is pages will be added to the back of the book.
Type of cover. Soft or hard cover; stock (pre-designed) or a custom design; special treatments; etc.
Type of pages: Full color or black and white (full color is your BEST BUY!); paper weight; special uncoated autograph pages; etc.
Delivery Date: When you want your yearbook to arrive at your school (make sure to note holidays and school breaks.
Proofs: If you desire a printed proof, it may increase cost and add delivery time.
Options: Additional customization and personalization options.
As you decide your yearbook specs, reference what has been done in the past. If you can get a copy of last year’s yearbook and the invoice, you can review specs and decide what you liked or would like to change. If it’s your first year, contact your publisher tp walk you through what other schools are doing or to get advice on what might work best for your school.
Hint: Use a copy of last year’s yearbook to determine if the number of pages were adequate in capturing your school year and representing the student population
More information on this topic is coming weekly.
