Lifetouch integration with Shutterfly heralds a change in school photo business model

Our friends at CaptureLife recently posted a blog about how Shutterfly has begun integrating Lifetouch school photos into its mobile app. This long-anticipated step is the beginning of a shift in the marketing and fulfillment of school and event photos. Through the long history of school photography, a school-portrait company’s main customer was the school district or school board themselves. Labs had little or no contact with the end customer, the parents.

That is now starting to change with the integration of digital technology into the school photo experience. Rather than simply getting a print package made from digital capture, studios and labs are going to start offering parents access digital-imaging services. As CaptureLife indicated:

In a clear signal of just how important Shutterfly views the school portrait market, Lifetouch customers already started to experience the future this fall.

Rather than the traditional method of delivering digital images to customers using a dead-end digital download site, parents now receive an email notification that, you guessed it, creates or connects a Shutterfly account. Here, pictures are saved in the cloud where you are now connected to Shutterfly’s vast online catalog of print products.