How Not To Lose The Personal Touch When Automating Your Business (Dubsado Tips + Education)

As a Dubsado expert and family + branding photographer, I definitely believe in the power of automating your business. Automating your business will save you time and energy. It creates more freedom – and less room for errors (or forgetting things!). But, I also completely understand the fear that many photographers have about losing the personal touch in their client experience when they go to automate their workflow. I’m here to tell you that there are tons of great and easy ways to add personal touches to your workflow, while still saving you that time and energy. 

Automations mean less human touch, right?

Not exactly… When people think of automation, they think of machines. It’s easy to be fearful that an automated workflow would simply remove that human element from your client experience. Maybe you’re afraid your potential clients will know it’s an automatic response. Nothing will feel customized or genuine. That fear leads to a lack of automation. That lack leads to tired and overworked photographers trying to keep up and remember what they did for each client. Honestly, that sounds miserable. 

The way CRMs are designed these days means that personalized automation is 100% possible! It’s definitely one of the reasons that I LOVE Dubsado. Dubsado makes it easy to create a workflow where I can still have a personalized experience for my clients. They never feel like it’s a robot helping them. They know it’s me, and I have the chance to customize what I need and want and let the rest do its thing. 

I know you’re asking yourself HOW that’s possible, right? 

First, Dubsado allows you to collect information in smart fields about your clients on your inquiry form. This helps you gather some of that personalized information from the start. Ask questions about who they are and why they’re coming to you. After they contact you, that data can be auto-populated into your forms and emails right away. That means you can actually have an automated responder to your inquiry form that puts their real name (not just “friend” or “hi there”) off the bat. 

If you want to make your inquiry response even more personalized, Dubsado allows you to create an approval step in your workflow. This means that before an email leaves Dubsado, YOU have to approve it. With a pause like this, you can drop in even more particulars to that family or client before sending. But, because the draft is automated, you don’t have to waste time writing or searching for what else you need to say. Can you see how easy it is already to ensure you have that personal touch from the start? This can be done throughout the workflow if there are other spots you want to add personalization to. Dubsado is already built to connect your smart fields and documents, so that helps with so many parts of the process! 

Integrations between Dubsado + Other Software

Dubsado also seamlessly integrates with Zapier, which allows you to set up additional reminders or experiences. Maybe you like to send birthday cards to your clients or reminders about a milestone session. If you collect their birthdate in a questionnaire, then you can create a reminder to pop up and say it’s time to mail that card. This is obviously a bonus in a workflow, but again – it’s something that can be almost fully automated and yet still provides personal touchpoints with your clients. Integrations like this one can be wonderful for follow-up sessions or reminders about yearly family photos. Little things that you want to do to enhance your client experience but just can’t because you can’t keep track alone… that’s why Dubsado exists!! 

Because of all of the great options in Dubsado, I feel confident about my workflows. I know I’ll never miss an inquiry or forget a step when working with clients. So many steps (including sending my contract and invoice) are done automatically. This means my clients can book a session with me – all without me even being at my computer. Nothing beats that! When I realized how much time and energy I saved by automating all of these steps, I was able to put my energy back where it mattered: actually photographing my clients, marketing, and my family. 

Interested in listening to my podcast episode about this topic? 

Check it out here!

If you’re ready to start automating your workflow but don’t know where to start, I offer Dubsado VIP Days for Family Photographers! We’ll review your workflow and determine how to automate the process.

Ready to get started? Check out my latest mini-course, the Dubsado Toolkit for Family photographers! 

Ready to check out Dubsado? Click on the blog banner below for 30% off!

Meet Your Friendly Nashville Family Photographer & Systems + Workflow Educator