Is Sending a Personalized Greeting Card Out of Style - It Doesn't Have To Be!
There was a time when sending a personalized greeting card was the only kind that we sent to people. Remember back when you would buy a card at the store, then write a short note (or a lengthy letter) to let the person you were sending it to know what was going on with your family, your job, and your personal life? Nowadays, it seems like not much of anything is personalized. I remember being taught that if I were writing to my grandma (and most CERTAINLY if I was writing to my great-grandma!) that it should always be addressed to them using “Mrs.” followed by her husband’s first name and then their married name. Then there were the letters that came to my brother, which were always addressed to him by name, but his name was always preceded by “Master” until he turned 18 (which of course led to many fun-filled arguments on whether that title were appropriate for such an annoying brat!)
Once computers came along, personalized greeting cards started becoming just a bit less personal. At first, we started typing the letters that we included inside the cards. Then, as computers became more of a standard household item, online greeting cards became more and more popular. My son and I started sending cards that way for a while and thought it was such a great idea. (Of course, that’s was before our email boxes were being bombarded on a daily basis by junk mail and spam.) We finally figured out that the cards we had taken time to pick out and add a message to, were either being filtered by spam blockers, or getting lost in the shuffle of our friends’ junk mail. At that point, we simply stopped sending cards, personalized or not.
When we gave up sending cards to friends and family, we began losing touch with people. We no longer knew how school was going for the kids. We didn’t know that phone numbers changed or that people had moved. We lost touch with some people we cared a lot about. When I gave up sending cards to customers and clients, our business began to slow down. We had to start spending more time attracting new customers, because we stopped taking care of the existing ones. I started telling myself that we were just too busy, that we had too much I had to take care of in our own lives, that there just weren’t enough hours in the day, or that I’d catch up with them as soon as I could find the time…sound familiar? Well guess what. Friends don’t grow on trees, family members eventually move or die, and customers will do business with people who make them feel like they matter. The question then becomes, does it matter to you that you’ll be facing a lot of regrets...or that you’ll be working double the hours simply because you’re having to keep generating new business...or that you have no way to get referrals because new clients don’t know whether they like you well enough to refer someone to you yet. It's easy to answer that question once you figure out the power of a simple personalized greeting card. Will You Wait Until It’s Too Late?
Too many times, we wait…we keep saying nice things about our friends and co-workers to OTHER people, and then don’t get around to saying it to the actual person until it’s too late. I don’t believe I’m going to enjoy having lots of nice things said about me at my funeral nearly as much as I would enjoy hearing them now! (And I’m fairly confident that most people would agree!) Today’s Personalized Greeting Card Recently, we ran across a program that would allow us to send a personalized greeting card, for any occasion, for about one dollar. And we're not talking about eCards. These are printable greeting cards. We choose a design online, type in a message, and click Send. The company prints, stuffs, stamps, and sends the actual card the following morning! We decided to test out the system around April. Initially, we used it just to send personalized greeting cards to friends and family. Then we began using it in our business. We found out it’s very easy to use, convenient, and inexpensive. Our notes are shorter when we send them now, because the one thing we aren’t able to include are those personal handwritten notes we used to. But because of the convenience and savings, we’re sending out personalized greeting cards more often, so we really don't require as many pages of notes to catch everyone up AND, the system let us create our own handwriting font, so even though we type out the letters, it prints as if we wrote it out by hand. And the best part of all…people LOVE hearing from us so much more often! So, if you’re like us and you’re looking for a way to get back to keeping in touch with people in your life without having to give up something else in your life, be sure to check out Greeting Cards For A Cure ™ to see what they can offer you, your family, and your employees. They offer a Free Gift Account so you can see if you like the system, and if you decide to use them, they give 10% of all their profits to Breast Cancer Research and Support Organizations. See what it feels like to send a personalized greeting card like you used to...and see how you make someone feel by spending 60 seconds or less doing it! © 2005 Xtreme Attitude, LLC – All Rights Reserved |
I know a lot of folks from my grandma’s generation are still writing letters the old-fashioned way, and they’re still sending very personalized greeting cards to their families and friends. Of course, my guess is that it has more to do with their lack of computer knowledge than their desire to continue writing out letters by hand. (And as someone who at one time could barely program my VCR and microwave, I completely understand!).