Business and Corporate Christmas Cards

Posts Tagged ‘holiday business card’

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.