Business and Corporate Christmas Cards

Posts Tagged ‘corporate christmas card’

I am a great advocate of businesses sending out Holiday Christmas cards.

They’re a great way to thank your clients and customers for their business during the year, to remind them that you are still very interested in them, and to encourage them to think of you next year for their product or service needs.

However, as simple as the concept might sound, yoiu can get yourself and your company in trouble by sending the wrong card or greeting.

1. Watch the content of the card. You might think a naked Santa is the funniest thing ever, but I can guarantee that you’ll offend someone – if not everyone with this example. Save that card for Uncle Joe and his sense of humor.

2. Remember that most societies are becoming more diverse in their makeup, and that certainly includes religions and belief systems. You cannot assume that sending a card celebrating the birth of Jesus will please all your recipients. Better to find an attractive Holiday Greeting or Happy Holidays card to send.

3. If you find sending a generic greeting offensive, or feel the Christmas Season is a time only for a religious Christian card, you are better off sending only Happy New Year cards. A customer who does not share your belief system may well decide that you are insensitive to their beliefs and that they do not want to do business with you.

4. Don’t think that the only card to send must be glitzy and expensive. With just a little shopping around, especially on the internet, you can find something quite nice. Another advantage to doing your shopping online is that you’re likely to find an affordable design your recipients haven’t already seen from a bunch of other firms.

5. Don’t just get cards with pre-printed greetings with your company name and think that’s good enough. Unless your corporation is so big that you don’t have personal relationships with your customers, it is well worth the effort to personalize a greeting and signature, whether the boss does the actual sigining or an employee does it. Personalization goes a very long way.

6. Don’t use printed labels to address the cards. The return address can certainly be a label, but it’s much better to hand write the envelope, again whether it be the company management or a temp worker hired for just that chore.

7. Don’t wait until the middle of December to mail your business Christmas card. Not only do you run the risk of the card getting delivered after the holidays (what kind of attention to detail does that convey to your customer?), but you also will probably have your card delivered with a number of other cards. It’s better to mail early, while the receipt of a card is still somewhat special. There is the possible added benefit of having your card on display for a longer time.

So there are just a few suggestions of things to watch out for as you plan your business Christmas card chores.

Sending a business Christmas card can be one of the most inexpensive advertising methods you can utilize.

While you’re saying “thanks for your business this year,” you are also saying “remember our company and the good work we do.”

Certainly the business holiday card is a pleasant tradition and way to celebrate the season. It’s a nice thing to do, and it shows your clients that you’re thinking of them. They know, as well, that you are reminding them of you and your company in the hopes of retaining or increasing their business, for the most part.

But my experience is that I don’t mind that kind of gentle reminder/advertising. But, and here’s a big but, it should be personalized, at least a bit. It becomes less pleasant and more like traditional advertising when the card comes addressed with a label and when the card is simply stamped with a company name.

I like to receive personal greetings on the card – and the personal ones are the only ones that get displayed in my office. The impersonal cards go directly into the trash bin.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the printed cards. Some are quite beautiful and expensive. And I don’t think poorly of the business for sending it to me. It’s certainly better than no card at all. I’m not going to cross those companies off my vendor list, nor my own business Christmas card list, either.

But given equal circumstances, that I have to make a decision between two vendors who offer much the same product at much the same price, I can’t guarantee that I won’t subconsciously – or even consciously – choose the one who took the time to send a personal greeting.

I am not suggesting that you need to include a Corporate Holiday Newsletter. In fact, please don’t do that. I really don’t have time to read about all the exciting adventures and innovations and personal anecdotes of your business year.

A simple handwritten Dear Jane or even a Dear Company Name above the card greeting and a handwritten signature, either John Doe, John Doe, President, or even Company name are enough to impart the personal attention.

And you know what else? I don’t know your handwriting or signature, unless we’re pretty good friends, in which case you’d better be doing the writing. But, if you’re someone who sends me handwritten greetings at Christmas, I won’t remember what your writing looks like. So get someone in the office to do the personalizing, if that’s what it takes.

So, the bottom line is that Business Christmas Cards are a very good investment for you to make. And when you start looking at the cost, be sure to compare it to traditional advertising methods. You’ll see it is a very good investment indeed.

If you have a lot of business Christmas cards to send out, you may be tempted to use your computer’s label/merge program to print labels to affix to the envelopes.

Don’t do it! At least don’t do it to the companies and individuals that you want to impress. I don’t know a single person who gets a warm fuzzy feeling when they get a card with a label on it instead of a handwritten envelope.

If you have awful penmanship, or you can’t stand the thought of addressing a bunch of cards yourself, or there isn’t anyone in the office who can reasonably take on the task, consider hiring a temp worker. Part of the criteria you give to the agency can be that you only want someone with great penmanship. Don’t forget to add that you need someone who is meticulously accurate, since you don’t want to take the chance of ending up with a pile of incorrectly addressed or ruined envelopes.

Another option is to hire a calligrapher. Before you start protesting that you don’t know of any, let me be your guide. Simply type “calligrapher your city and state” into Google or your favorite search engine, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the return. A search for my hometown (Portland, Oregon) brought 89,400 listings. I found out that we have a calligraphy society, and I got lost for awhile exploring their interesting website. I now know where to find a calligrapher for any holiday occasion (my own handwriting is barely legible).

The personal address admonition also applies for the signature on the inside of the card, although a skillfully made and applied stamp can work. The whole point is that it looks as if the card got your personal attention.

As above, this is a decision made about who are the clients – and perhaps vendors – who are the most important to you. I’m not suggesting that if you have 1,000 companies on your list, that each should be personalized, although that would be the best outcome. However, I do understand that you might consider your time better spent on other aspects of your business, and that may be true for your particular situation.

I would like, though, for you to at least give some thought to making the time. This kind of personal attention to detail, while seemingly on something that’s as inconsequential as a holiday greeting card, can show your clients – and potential clients – that you are all about detail and personal service.

Now is the time to make these kinds of decisions, in the 60 days or so until Christmas, so that you can allocate resources. If you’re going to the trouble of sending your business or corporate Christmas cards, you’ll be better served by making it worth the time and money you’re already planning to spend.

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.