Your guide to a corporate holiday card promotion.

'Tis the time of year for corporate holiday card ordering and mailing planning. And how do you plan from beginning to end the process of this excellent opportunity? You use our simple guide. I say opportunity because, the holidays are a great way to personally "touch" your customer. The whole idea behind the greeting card is to personally wish another a wonderful holiday season. So, you're riding the happy, warm wave of holiday wishes. No better wave to ride with your logo and a personal message.

First, you need cards. Don't go buying the standard cards you can find in a card store. You need something quality and professional and printed just for you. You don't want to send a second rate anything with your logo on it. Choose something nice and tasteful.

You want to keep your warm message generic and unless you are a religious oriented company, make sure you keep religion out of it. This is out of respect for your customer's beliefs. And try to keep t keep humor out of it. You may think you're being clever and inadvertently insult a client. Santa in an outhouse sounds funny, but doesn't look all that professional to a customer. And doesn't help your business image.

The next thing you need is a list. Who should be on that list? You want to reach your current customers, prospective customers, and old customers. Give everyone warm wishes. And make sure that list is accurate and up-to-date. What you do not want to have happen is to waste a bunch of money on return to senders. So, have someone verify your list. Make sure your list contains business addresses and not home addresses. Unless you have a home based business, then it's perfectly acceptable. At that point, you would still address it to the business.

A personal touch to the inside. That's right. You need to physically sign your name. And anyone you would like to send the card from needs to physically sign it. Do not print the signatures, everyone will know it was printed. Also, the proper etiquette is to write a hand written personal message. Something short and sweet. Do not include your business card or brochure. There are other mailings for that.

A personal touch to the envelope. You're not quite done yet. The right way is always the most manually intense way! You should never meter your holiday cards. Always use a generic holiday stamp. And then, yes.... hand write the address. And make sure you have the person with the best handwriting do it. The ones that get delivered and look like a 3rd grader did them, are not that impressive. But worse would be to print labels. Do not print your labels.

A time to send. Absolutely there is a wrong time to send. the wrong time is too early and too late. You want to send them by December 15th. The exceptions are if your sending out of the country and if your customer's offices will be closed for the holiday. You want to make sure anything send internationally leave around the 5th of December. If you're sending to a company that is closing early, make sure they receive it a week before their offices close.

May your holiday greeting go well. If you are interested in purchasing quality printed cards, click here. We will design a beautiful and appropriate card for you.