Business and Corporate Christmas Cards

If you’re going to take the time, trouble, and cost to send business or corporate Christmas cards, make sure your efforts and expenditure are helpful to your business.

One way to do that is to include in your planning the time to include a personal signature to the card. And, if you can manage it, a personally written “Dear Richard” or “Dear Mr. President of the Company” salutation.

I’m not saying you have to do this yourself, unless the card is going to someone who knows your handwriting and signature well. You can certainly allocate the chore to someone in your office, or you can hire a temporary employee to do it.

I know there’s been a trend among businesses to order up nice cards with the greeting and signature preprinted. You might be thinking that you don’t need to worry about doing this for your casual, once in a while customers and vendors, but I’d like you to reexamine your thinking.

A personal greeting actually does mean a great deal to most of us, even if we don’t realize the difference it makes. Think back to the last holiday when you received greeting cards. Isn’t there a little happy spot when you get a card, especially from someone you know is a busy person, and they’ve actually taken the time to write something personal – even just a personal salutation and a signature that looks like it was generated by a human being rather than a machine.

An important thing your business Christmas card says about you and your company to your clients and vendors is that you care about them and their business. After all, for most of us that’s the reason for taking this kind of time and spending the money on cards and postage. You have this great opportunity that comes each year to  impress upon these folks that you appreciate their business. By seeing to the small things, by taking the time to make the message really personal, you’ve multiplied the effect exponentially.