Effective marketing speaks to the market. That principal is valid with all marketing but never more so than in greeting card marketing. Greeting cards are effective and powerful to the extent they are personal. Cards about your business, cards that event hint at sales or advertising lose most if not all their effectiveness.
If you are going to use greeting cards as a marketing tool, continuously look for ways to make the cards you send personal. On very rare occaisions cards can mention your business, but even then it should be related personally to the recipient – for example, thanking a customer for a major purchase or contract. The majority if not all of the cards you send to clients, customers, and prospects should be focused on relationship building – the relationship between people, not between a person and a business.
Don’t let yourself fall prey to a common mistake of using the power of greeting cards to send clever messages about your business. If the message is about you personally and your business, for example your excitement about a new office, thats’s fine, but the focus must be on the people involved.
As you use greeting cards as a relationship buiding tool in your business marketing you’ll gain experience and stories about how the cards made your customers feel and those experiences will guide you going forward.
As long as you don’t confuse greeting card marketing with advertising or even traditional public relations, you’re on the right track. Just remember, with greeting card marketing, keep it about the people, not about the business.
