You might think that yearbook season is over and December is a horrid time to sell those school yearbooks you have left. By now you should have done enough yearbook sales in your school that every student who is going to buy one, has already bought one. However, if you are like most schools, this means you probably still have 20-30% of your students who still don’t have a school yearbook.
December is a great time to convince those students to purchase the yearbook, and keep wonderful memories of the year with them. This is also the time of the year when you have the opportunity to try to get your sales back up and raise some much needed funds.
One tool you can implement is to sell the yearbook as a holiday gift. For most people the yearbook is the only gift they have kept for years; the most long-lasting holiday gift that parents can give to their kids. If you think what is the gift that your parents gave you in high school do you still own? Your answer will probably be the same: “the yearbook”.
This is the right time to sell yearbooks to Mom and Dad who are always looking for the perfect gift for their kids.
Is the first week of December, so you have to act fast to achieve your goal of sales. Here are some steps you need to follow before Friday of this week to meet your numbers and give the opportunity to yearbookless students to get one valuable gift that they will keep for the rest of their life.
- Make a list of every student who has not bought a yearbook as of today. Hopefully, this list already exists, and it is a short one.
- Get phone numbers for the parents of these students.
- Create (or find) a gift certificate for a yearbook.
- Write a short script that you can give each staff member offering the parents the students are calling a yearbook to give to their child as a holiday gift.
- Give each staff member 10 parent phone numbers to call.
- Send out gift certificates to those parents who placed an order and from whom you received payment.
Your yearbook is the biggest business on your campus. Shouldn’t be marketing your yearbook one of the most important activities for your staff members? It requires much responsibility and gives staff members a taste of how a business runs in the real world. Even after putting in the effort, marketing the yearbook may be disappointing if students aren’t buying or it requires too much time.
If you are facing the challenge of trying to market your book so that as many students as possible would have a concrete record of their memories to look back on, you should check some ideas that have been developed for other advisers, and have been proven to be successful over the years.
These are some creative marketing techniques that will encourage students to purchase a yearbook.
- Display posters in school with photos from yearbook! Use bright colors so they are noticeable. Hang your posters in interesting places at school such as restrooms, lockers, library, gym and office; place them also outside school at banks, post office(s), grocery stores, the mall, fast food hangouts and especially in the store windows of yearbook advertisers.
- Ask students to submit photos for possible inclusion in the yearbook. They will be more likely to buy a book if their photo might be featured
- Offer a payment plan. You will be able to sell books to students who could otherwise not afford one.
- If your school sends home a mailer during holydays (or at any other time), ask to include a flier for yearbook sales. If appropriate, send home fliers in multiple languages.
- Ads in the school newspaper, or in football or basketball program. Also, Channel One Ads — Top 10 reasons to buy a yearbook. Use school radio or TV promotions. News releases in local newspapers, on radio or TV.
- Place advertising stickers on items in the school snack machine. Use “crack & peel” paper
- Balloons during passing periods and after school.
- Banners on the front or main entrance to the school
- Increase price after initial campaign to encourage early subscriptions. Follow-up postcards to remind parents that it’s not too late to order yearbooks
- Create a sense of urgency to buy a yearbook. Have a one-week sales events. During these events, advertise through posters, T-shirts for yearbook staff members, fliers on car windows or in lockers. You could even use chalk to draw advertisements on the concrete. Be as enthusiastic about the book as you can.
- Organize a giveaway for your sales campaign. For example, you might draw one name of a student who purchased a book in a given week to receive a free iPod Touch or two tickets to the school dance.
- Have your students use the Internet to increase sales. If they have a MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter account, have them post bulletins about the yearbook.
- Place a link on your school website to a place where books can be purchased online.
- Have students man a table at Back to School Night selling books. Have samples of books from previous years on display. Anytime parents are on campus, you should take advantage of the sales opportunity.
- If your school has a database of parent email addresses, send out reminder emails prior to sales events. You could also use an auto dialing system to send a phone message home.
- In November, send every student who has not yet purchased a book a reminder. Include reasons why they should purchase a book. You might even include how many times they are already pictured in the book. You could even include the page numbers they appear on.
A well developed marketing program will give all students in your school the opportunity to buy a book and have those special moments to look back on years down the road. Obviously, your program could use the added revenue from increased sales, and all the effort and hard work will be rewarded.
Yearbook staff members are the essence of the project. Without a yearbook team, it would be impossible to create a school yearbook. Keep the yearbook staff motivated and feeling good about their work would be the key to produce an environment that will lead to a productive and efficient team, and also to obtain the best outcome.
Different people are motivated by different enticements. For yearbook, some staff members like prizes; most like food, or fun activities. With some, peer pressure and being invested in the yearbook project are enough. Consider some of these inducements, both lighthearted and serious, to get your staff to perform when the pressure of a deadline is not enough.
Here are some of the many ways to motivate yearbook staff:
- Your yearbook staff will work best with everyone pulling in the same direction. Motivate and promote student bonding with team-building activities. Plan a fun and inexpensive activity outside of school, such as dinner, beach day, golfing or a movie.
- Remember food. Have treats to celebrate staff birthdays, holidays, getting drivers’ licenses, deadlines, getting a part in the school play or anything else they want to celebrate.
- Keep your staff motivated and feeling good about their work. You must positively reinforce their work. Rather than criticizing the negative aspects of a page, it is crucial to commend their efforts first and later, in private, enthusiastically and nicely give them tips on how they could improve. Also, using pieces of a student’s page as a positive example to the rest of the class can encourage that student to continue to create quality pages.
- Create staff songs, select team mottos, find a publication mascot and design staff T-shirts.
- Make the students proud of being part of the yearbook staff. Share with other people what the students are doing. Use daily announcements, the school newspaper, news releases to the local papers, and letters or emails to parents.
Promote yearbook sales, with a showcase display. Use several yearbooks from last year, showing the cover and interesting spreads. Display books from five years ago, 10 years ago, and even the school’s first yearbook. If it is sale time, include a sign reminding students to buy a yearbook.
Finally, make sure your yearbook staff fully understands that, the yearbook staff isn’t all about work. Creating your school yearbook should be fun!
How do you create and design a great school yearbook? You add words, character and a splash of contrast. YearbookLife gives you the following tips to help create and design a great school yearbook.
Most of the time students don’t like to read, but for some reason they love to read yearbooks. Many elementary schools do not like to use articles in their yearbooks because of the lack of writing power available to them. The advisor usually doesn’t have time to write pieces for the yearbook, and the students are too young to make a substantial written contribution.
However, yearbook advisors should rethink this option. Students read their yearbooks all year long. It makes complete sense to add some sort of small written piece to each page. You can manage this task easily by giving a brief description of what makes each class unique or different from the others. You don’t need to write a lot for each page to accomplish this goal. Request that each teacher submit a three to five sentence description about what makes his or her class great. You can have them email it to you, and then you can copy and paste the text where applicable.
To give each page some character, you can also select a special student or teacher from each class to showcase in your yearbook. Pick a person who may have a special skill or talent like playing the bagpipes or juggling. You may even want to add a joke or two to each club section such as music, sports and academics to spice up the yearbook. You can even use jumbo size text so there is less blank spaces in your yearbook.
You can add student artwork or poetry inside the yearbook or on the cover. You can make your book unique by adding elements of family life. You can have students bring in pictures of trips and vacations. You can include photos of social functions and outings away from school. These are just other ideas for personalizing your school yearbook.
Another way to add personality to your yearbook is to incorporate creative yearbook themes. Get yearbook theme ideas from school locations, school-wide goals or school milestones.
Contrast works wonders for a yearbook, especially for books that don’t use much color. Contrast allows pages to pop without investing in expensive software and color pages. You may consider using black backgrounds with white letters. Use stripes, circles and shapes to bring attention to text. Yearbooks that do use color can contrast light and dark colors. Consider adding borders and arrows to make photos and text stand out.
It is not hard to make yearbooks fun, but it takes a little effort, creativity and brainstorming to make them engaging. The next time you sit down to plan your school’s yearbook, look at the elements around you. The missing element for that great yearbook may be right in front of your face.
YearbookLife offers many different yearbook resources to help you create and design a great school yearbook. Contact us and find out how YearbookLife can help you and your yearbook staff.
YearbookLife is having a Best Yearbook Contest, which is available exclusively to current YearbookLife customers. YearbookLife is inviting all our schools to participate by submitting their 2010-2011 elementary, middle school and high school yearbooks to our Best Yearbook Contest.
YearbookLife is challenging your yearbook staff to design and create the “Best” school yearbook. The school yearbook will be judged on the following 4 criteria: originality of the yearbook cover design, yearbook creativity, yearbook theme consistency, and yearbook image quality.
So put your “Creative Cap” on. If you think your school has the “Best” yearbook, you can enter our contest for the chance to win some cash prizes for your school. ONLY Current Customers ELIGIBLE.
Prizes will include:
- Grand Prize – $1000 cash prize
- First Prize – $500 cash prize
- Second Prize – $250 cash prize
The Best Yearbook Contest runs from October 25, 2010 through March 25, 2010. YearbookLife will only be accepting school yearbooks submitted on or before March 25, 2011. Winners will be announced by June 1, 2011. For complete contest guidlines visit https://www.yearbooklife.com/best-yearbook-contest.
Please see the official rules for a complete list of rules and requirements.
As your yearbook staff comes together and starts to brainstorm about school yearbook ideas. There are a few things everyone should know about developing and creating a school yearbook.
Here are some yearbook terms that all yearbook staffers should know brought to you by YearbookLife:
Coverage: What you plan to cover in your yearbook such as events, topics, people, etc.
Yearbook Theme: The verbal and visual idea that ties this year’s book together
End sheet: The paper between the cover and the title page and also where your theme elements should appear after the cover
Title Page: The 1st page of your yearbook, where all the important information goes
Section Divider: The title pages for every section of your yearbook which is where your yearbook theme elements should be visible
Table of Contents: Most often found on end sheets or opening spreads, tells where to find the divider for each of your sections
Index: A list of names and organizations and what pages to find them on
Folio: The part of your spread that contains the page number, section, topic, and any accompanying graphics
Sidebar: Extra coverage on a spread, usually fun stuff like Q & A’s, polls, charts, quick quotes, etc.
Signature: Every 16 pages of your yearbook is a signature. It’s how the pages are actually printed before they are folded, sewn, and cut.
Flat: One side of a signature
Spread: 2 pages side-by-side in your yearbook
Gutter: The space in a 2-page spread where the pages are folded and things can get lost
White Space: The space on a spread where the background can be seen where there are no photos, copy, or graphics. White space is a yearbook design element that should be planned ahead of time.
Deadline: It is when your pages are due in order for the yearbooks to be printed on time.
We hope that this will help get everyone on your yearbook staff on the same page. Now it is time to start creating your school yearbook. Contact YearbookLife today if you need a quality yearbook publishing and printing company.
