OVERVIEW
Client Booking provides:
The ability to open up your calendar, with Two-way Calendar sync, for clients to self-book for repeating booking event sessions as well
Greater visibility into sessions booked, and sessions available
The ability to reserve individual sessions for those VIP clients - and email them with a unique booking link to get them booked
The flexibility to reschedule clients - and message them - as needed
The tools to email clients to advertise the event as well as communicate with all those who are booked
This article will help you set up Repeating Booking Events across weeks and months, on an ongoing basis using a single package.
Single Events are ideal for mini sessions, or when you are looking to enable leads to self-book you within a narrower range of dates. To read more about single events, go to this article.
Action notes:
To maximize efficiency and ease of schedule management, we recommend you connect Two-Way Calendar sync following this article.
If you have any existing, active booking events in your account, they will be flagged as “Client Booking 1.0.” To keep that booking event active for new clients to sign up, you will need to select “Migrate event” to ensure the event is still active.
If you have any previous, past booking events in your account, they will be flagged as “Client Booking 1.0.” If you wish to repurpose those events (add dates, duplicate, etc.) you will need to select “Migrate event" to ensure the event is still active. Additionally, if you display your booking events on your Picsello public profile, you will need to go into "Edit Marketing Details" to toggle to "displayed".
STEP-BY-STEP: REPEATING EVENT
Step 1:
Access Booking Events via the sidebar navigation or the tab at the top of your dashboard.
Step 2:
Select “Add booking event”
You will then choose a Repeating Event:
Step 3:
You will start by naming your event and selecting “Add a date”.
Step 4:
Add your event date, along with start and stop time for your full window of availability for that date. Use the dropdown to select the session length, ranging from 5 minutes to 12 hours. Including a session gap is optional but can prove helpful if you want to make sure you have some buffer if a client is running late, you need to allow some travel time, etc. Session gaps can range from 5 minutes to 1 hour.
Start by entering the “Event Date” you wish to kick off the booking event.
Add the “Event Start” and “Event End” time you are available each day.
Set the “Session Length” for each slot and if you would like to include a “Session gap” between slots
Select “Repeat dates”
You can choose for the dates to repeat weekly, monthly, or yearly. Select the days of the week for them to repeat.
You can choose for the dates to stop repeating on a specific date or after a specified number of occurrences.
You will see the total number of sessions for each day calculated in the bottom left.
Select “Save” and you will see an overview of all the dates
Step 5:
Once you are back on the overview page, you will be able to toggle between the List or Calendar view of the booking event.
List view allows you to see each date, the number of sessions available, the number of sessions booked, if any slots are unavailable, and if you have chosen to “hide” any slots.
View details on a specific date and you will see all the slots for that specific day including the client that has booked the slot, if any are “Unavailable” due to another shoot on your Picsello calendar or a conflict from your external calendar when you have enabled Two-Way Calendar sync.
Once you have filled out that information, you will automatically see the total number of session blocks you will have.
You can choose to block slots to create a break for yourself or to drive the urgency for clients to book (e.g. “space is running out”)
You can also continue to add break blocks after selecting “Save”.
Step 6:
Now you can proceed with selecting a package. Your options are to add an existing package, modify one or create a new package as needed.
Review the questionnaire and contract that are being pulled with the package. You will also be able to change or create new versions of each if needed.
Step 7:
Now you are ready to select the image and description with which you can market the booking event to prospective clients.
The marketing details you add here will be part of the self-booking portal clients will access to select their preferred date and time, before they proceed to the proposal where they will sign off on their contract, fill out the questionnaire and make their deposit/payment.
Some things to consider:
The information you include should entice prospective clients to book a session with you. Use language that helps to explain what sets booking with you apart from other photographers. Set expectations on what they will experience, how these are for a limited time, booking fast, etc.
Be sure to use formatting to help with the overall layout of the content
Include an image that can help visually “sell” what you are planning for the session. Consider one from a past booking event you have done for another client (assuming you have the rights to do so) that uses a similar set-up, location, etc.
Choose whether you would like the event displayed on your Picsello Public Profile. If disabled, only those who have the link will be able to book. This could be helpful if you are looking to market this event to a VIP list of clients or open up booking to them first. When complete, select “Save”.
Step 8:
With your booking event complete, we recommend you select the “Client preview” button so you can review all content before sending it to prospective clients. Review the package details, questionnaire, contract and take another look at the marketing details.
Note, once a client has booked a session, you are unable to make changes to the date, package, questionnaire, and contract so be sure you have reviewed and triple-checked all content before emailing, posting to social media, etc.
IMAGE
Step 9:
Once you have successfully confirmed all of the booking event information, you’re ready to start sharing with prospective clients.
You can do that via Actions, “Create a marketing email” or by “Copy Link”.
Copy the link to the booking event if you would like to create a Social Media Post, text message to your clients, or if you want to feature your booking events on your website, you can read more about that in this article, How to Create a Page on Your Website That Showcases Multiple Mini-Sessions.
Create a marketing email:
Selecting that from actions, you will see a default email template we have drafted for you to use, edit, or replace.
The subject line will auto-populate with the name of the booking event and the name of your photography business
Be sure to maintain the “View Booking Proposal” link so clients have access to the booking event
Any potential clients you send this to must exist in your Picsello account as either a lead or client.
Add client emails should be added in the ‘Bcc line
Finally, please note, that this email template is not part of the email automations. Therefore, if you rewrite to create your template, you should save that as a Google doc for future access.
CONCLUSION
So once you have your booking event shared with prospective clients, you will want to understand how best to manage the event and client bookings coming through. To learn more you can go to Managing Your Client Booking Events article.
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