Gallery delivery email: what to write

Almost every photographer gets stuck on this at their first delivery: what do you write in the email with the gallery link? The instinct is to explain everything, and that’s the mistake. A good delivery email is short and warm, and gives five facts. This page lists those five, gives you a template to paste and adjust, and explains the long paragraph you can skip.

Five facts and one warm sentence

A delivery email only needs to give your client five things.

• The link. The gallery itself, on your studio’s own address. It’s the reason for the email, so make it easy to spot, not buried under three paragraphs.
• What’s inside. A quick line so they know what they’re opening: the wedding or the newborn session, and roughly how many photos. It tells them what to expect before they tap.
• Whether downloads are on. If they can save their photos, say so in a sentence. If you’re holding downloads back until something is settled, say that instead.
• The PIN, if you set one. If the gallery has an access code, put the code in the email. Without one, nobody can guess the link, so there’s nothing else to send.
• Who to ask if anything looks wrong. You. Add one line telling them to reply to this email if something’s off. They’ll rarely need it, but it’s there.

Put one warm opening sentence in front of those, because this is a good day for your client, and you’re done. Anything beyond those five facts is padding.

The paragraph you can skip

Most gallery tools’ delivery emails include a paragraph you won’t need here. It’s some version of “please download your photos within 30 days, after which the gallery will expire.” Those tools need the warning because their galleries archive themselves after a set time. The warning hurries the client before the software deletes their photos.

Tellisto galleries don’t expire on their own. They don’t time out when nobody visits, and nothing archives in the background. A gallery stays live for as long as you keep it. There’s no deadline to warn anyone about, and no reason to make a happy email sound like a parking notice. If a client wants to keep their photos long term, that’s what the Client Vault is for. It’s their choice to make later, not a deadline you enforce in the delivery email. So delete that paragraph, and your email is shorter and friendlier.

A template you can adapt

Here’s a version you can paste and adjust. Placeholders are in square brackets. Rewrite it in your own voice and keep the structure.

Subject: Your photos are ready, [Grace and Tom]

Hi [Grace],

Your [wedding] gallery is ready, and I couldn’t be happier with how it came together. Here it is:

[gallery link]

There are [around 400] photos in there, sorted into [getting ready, the ceremony and the reception]. You can download any of them, the whole lot, or just your favourites, whenever suits you.

[If you set a PIN: The access code is [123456].]

Have a look through, and if anything doesn’t seem right, just reply to this email and I’ll sort it.

[Your name]

That covers it: a warm opener, the link, what’s inside, downloads, the code if there is one, and a line telling them to come to you.

What to leave out

Knowing what not to write is harder. A few things feel helpful but aren’t:

• How to download. The gallery is easy to use on a phone. A client taps the photos they want and saves them, without you explaining each step. If you want the detail for yourself, how clients view, favourite and download covers it, but it doesn’t belong in the email.
• A long note on print sizes. Which resolution, which crop, which lab. Almost nobody reads it in a delivery email, and the clients who need it will ask.
• Anything that reads like a manual. Numbered steps, “please note that”, warnings about browsers. The gallery already looks like your studio built it, and an email full of instructions works against that. Let the photos speak for themselves.

If a client does get stuck, one reply from you fixes it faster than a paragraph nobody read. That’s what the “reply if anything’s wrong” line is for.

If it sits unopened

Sometimes you send the gallery and hear nothing. Before you assume the worst, open the gallery’s page. It shows whether the client has viewed or downloaded it, so you can tell whether they’re just busy or never got it. If they never got it, resend the same link and ask them to check spam.

You don’t have to remember to check, either. When a gallery you’ve delivered goes unopened, Tellisto sends you one short reminder so you can follow up yourself. You get no more than one of these emails a week across all your jobs. The emails Tellisto sends for you explains how those reminders work. Either way, the follow-up is a friendly two-line “did this reach you?”, not a chase. Most of the time it did.