Oh yeah, I went there. You didn’t want to think about that did you? But it’s time to reach out to your OWN clients to let them know they’re appreciated. And that means figuring out what a holiday card looks like for you. Hopefully I can make that easier for you.
Print vs. digital
Let’s talk about print vs. digital cards.
Printed holiday greetings
Print cards are exactly what you think they are: Standard-sized cards printed on cardstock, often folded over, signed, put in an envelope and mailed. They might be hand signed or the signature and greeting might already be printed on the card.
Last year, Grace at Studio 2 Ceramics wanted a print card to send to their clients, vendors and partners. Having recently taken some fantastic staff photos for their marketing materials we decided to highlight the staff in their holiday greeting.
Created as an A-7 size (5×7), this card was printed at a local print shop and the staff at Studio 2 handled the signing, addressing and mailing themselves. After creating a custom design for Grace, I worked with her to find a printer and get the files (and specifications) to the print vendor.
A printed holiday greeting design can be more than a standard, folded greeting card. Print holiday greetings could also be:
- An over-sized postcard
- A card with a coupon tear-off
- A holiday newsletter, folded and mailed in an envelope
- A single-panel card that is horizontal or vertical
- Something unexpected like a bookmark, flyer, booklet, calendar, coaster, canvas bag… the options are endless though these can push your budget
Digital holiday greetings
Trish at Guyton Thuente, P.A. came to me hoping to reduce their costs by sending their clients a digital holiday greeting. Because the team uses Microsoft Outlook, they were looking for a way to email their clients a holiday greeting. Working with Trish, I created artwork and a layout that could be inserted directly into Outlook by each team member to send to their individual contacts. This version included artwork and live text.
A digital greeting like this could also be used in other email programs like Gmail. (It’s important that artwork isn’t the only part of a digital card, though. You want to always have live text to make sure the content is accessible to all recipients.)
With artwork like this Trish was able to easily use the image on the firm’s Facebook page to share their holiday greetings out further.
Digital greetings come in a variety of formats including:
- Templates for email campaigns through systems like Mailchimp
- Artwork for social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter
- Digital ads and artwork that can be used across the web or on your own website, including a popup*
- Fancy digital holiday videos or animations*
Holiday greetings: Not just for December
This is a busy time of year. I read that there are almost 20 religious holidays in December alone. Add to that the secular events, end-of-year paperwork and tasks, and you’re looking at a really, really busy time of year. Maybe right now you simply don’t have the capacity to think about a card.
You can still send your clients a “holiday” greeting and sign of appreciation. However, that could easily look like a new year’s greeting sent after the first week of January. Especially here in Minnesota, with short days of sunlight and the deep cold of a Midwestern winter, things can get a little dreary in January and February. What a perfect time to send a note of thanks and well wishes to your clients!
I’d love to work with you on your own holiday greeting! Drop me a note and let’s get your message to your clients!
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
*This format may require working with a vendor or developer.
