Following up on yesterdays post, people often ask what kinds of cards I personally send. So here’s an example of a campaign of cards that I recently sent out to market a consulting company.
There’s a set of six cards which will be send out at the rate of once a month. The cards will be sent to all my previous clients as well as to a number of potential clients. Each card will have a quote on the front with a letter on the inside explaining the kind of consulting that the company does on the inside.
Although each card has a different quote and a different message, there is a constant image on the front that groups the cards together. This image is a watermark of the company logo and it provides consistency from one card to the next.
When I send a card, I use a service called Send Out Cards. I originally got interested in this service just to market my existing businesses and I was so impressed that I decided to become a distributor for them.
Why do I use Send Out Cards?
It’s cheaper than buying a card from the store. I pay about a dollar a card plus postage and I’m hard pressed to find a decent card in the store for less than three dollars.
It’s faster as I can do everything from my computer, wherever I happen to be.
It’s less work - I don’t have to print the card, stuff the envelope, find a stamp or drop it in the mail. Send Out Cards does all that for me.
The cards are written in my own handwriting, using my own signature which makes them really personal
It’s really to make a custom card using my own photos or to include my own photos on the inside. The vast majority of the cards I do are created from photos that I’ve taken.
For those times that I don’t choose to make a custom card, they have a selection of over 12,000 stock cards - a much larger selection than I’d find at the store.
When do I send a personal greeting card? I send all my Christmas cards this way as well as birthday and anniversary cards. Send Out Cards tracks birthdays and anniversaries and reminds me when it’s time to send one of those.
Yesterday was mothers day. Did I use Send Out Cards to send mothers day cards to my mother and to my wife? Absolutely, I did. Highly personalized cards with photos and written in my own handwriting.
When do I send business greeting cards? Following up after meeting people at networking events. Prospecting cards to attract new business.
The video clip here is from “America’s Best Product”, a show that profiles great companies.
Did I mention that you can also send gifts with the greeting cards? Things like chocolates or cookies or even books. I don’t send these nearly as often as I send cards but whenever I have, I’ve had a tremendous response from the recipient.
I have a weakness for the white chocolate cookies in particular - they’re absolutely delicious.
How is this relevant to greeting cards? I’ve used Comic Life to create some really neat images for the front of a card. I’ve done cards that are comic strips on the front with something else on the inside and they work really well.
For example, I sent a card to my wife last valentines day that had a story in it. The story was all told in comic book format and was done with Comic Life. The final product was really nice and it was amazingly simple to create the comic using their product.
When you’re making cards with your own photos, you’ll often want to edit the photos first. Professional graphic designers often use Photoshop although this can be an expensive route if you are just experimenting. If you aren’t doing this professionally then I recommend the Gimp.
The Gimp is an open source program which means that you can download and use it for free. This is what I use for all of my own photo editing. There are many online tutorials to help you get started with the Gimp. If you would prefer to start with a book, I recommend The Artists Guide to Gimp Effects.
Just a quick reminder that Mothers Day is almost here. If you’re going to be mailing a greeting card then you need to get it in the mail right away to ensure it arrives in time. If you’ll be hand delivering one, you still have a bit of time.
The following chart shows the breakdown of cards according the the Greeting Card Association. Frankly, I was surprised to see that birthday cards are as popular as Christmas cards and that there were so few mother’s day cards.
When you send a card to someone, you want them to keep that card around as a reminder. If you sent the card in order to get some business, it’s far more effective if the card ends up on your prospects desk or pinned to the corkboard. If the card is in the garbage, it’s not serving it’s purpose as a reminder of you.
There are lots of ideas that you could use with a card to make your prospect want to keep it around. It might be humorous or it might have a picture of something that your prospect is very interested in. For example, I recently met a contact who is very interested in a certain kind of bicycle and we had a discussion about that. When I sent him a followup card, I put a picture of that kind of bicycle on the front.
The best cards for “stickiness” are those that have a picture of the prospect themselves on it. Or even better, a picture of their kids. Nobody throws away a card that has a picture of their kids on it. Now, in a business setting, it’s not always appropriate to use a kids pictures but it’s almost always appropriate to have a picture of your prospect. For this reason, I carry my camera with me wherever I go and I try to get pictures of all the people for whom I want to send a card.
If you then put a speech bubble or a caption on the card to make it amusing then you will make the card even stickier than before.
According to the Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer costs 6-7 times more than retaining an existing one. They also state that a 5% increase in customer retention yields profit increases of 25%-100%
The conclusion is fairly obvious - it’s worth the time and effort to retain existing customers.
Greeting cards are an easy and inexpensive way to remain in touch with your existing clients. The most common reason for losing customers is that they forget about you. A card every couple of months just to keep in touch will keep you at “top of mind” with all your customers and will pay for itself over and over again.
Here’s an interesting video on the steps a letter passes through once it’s dropped in the US Postal Service. The first 30 seconds or so are specific to Send Out Cards but then it’s all about the Postal Service.
Following up on yesterdays post, people often ask what kinds of cards I personally send. So here’s an example of a campaign of cards that I recently sent out to market a consulting company.
