When it comes to a successful Christmas ecard campaign, the principles are extremely similar to a strong email marketing campaign.
You need to develop and maintain a list to send your ecards out to, such as clients, customers or a business network. You also need to strike the right tone – find the balance between jokes, religion, short messages or letter-length posts.
Of course, the holidays are a time for giving, so ecards are also the perfect time to show your company’s caring side. We’ll get to all of that in time as eCard Shack is here to help you make your corporate ecards a success this festive season.
Read on to find out our tips for how to make your corporate holiday ecards successful…
Build Your Mailing List
Before you get to design that all-important corporate ecard, you need to make sure that you have a clean and accurate mailing list.
Even if you have a subscriber list for clients and business prospects, you should never stop adding to it. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Make sure your list is always growing with a sign-up feature on your website. Either with requesting a document or call. Subscription forms should be on your homepage, blog page and anywhere else you can fit it in.
Read more: Why is communication important in a business?
You can, of course, build a mailing list the more traditional way – asking and connecting with people at an event or meeting. Even if you don’t close a sale or contract, getting someone to sign-up for your email can turn into a business opportunity in future.
Read more: How to Create a Successful Email Campaign
Here are some tips on how to build a mailing list:
- Include your sign-up form everywhere on your website without intruding on content
- Offer something, such as an ebook, white paper, advice guide or audit, in exchange for subscribing to your email list
- Don’t ask for information you don’t need so it’s quicker and easier to subscribe.
- Make your sign-up form obvious without interfering with user experience.
- When you send an email or newsletter, include social sharing and forwarding. This is a great way to build your list.
Segment Your Mailing List
Another important area to consider with your mailing is how you segment it, i.e. break it down into specific groups.
Read more: How To Make Business Emails More Interesting
You can tailor your corporate ecards to different types of recipients, such as long-term customers or clients, new business partners, network members and acquaintances. To do so, it helps to review how your list is compiled and what parameters it uses. This all helps pinpoint the unique profiles of your recipient based on their relationship with you.
Many businesses use demographics when targeting customers and segmenting lists – which isn’t a bad way to do things. However, many of your clients and customers can’t be broken down into traditional demographics, apart from location. Looking beyond demographics takes a personal touch and creativity, it’s about relationships.
Learn more about company communication with our eCards
Here are some tips for segmenting your mailing list:
- Buyer persona – Ideally, you should have buyer personas created for your customers or clients. These allow you to personalise mailing lists and ecard campaigns.
- Buying – look at how often and when customers or clients make purchases. Break these down into segments based on regular orders to fewer orders.
- Engagement – who do you engage with the most and have a relationship with? For Christmas and ecards, this is the most important segment.
- Interests – you could further segment your relationships section based on their interests and background. It’ll help with designing your ecard, such as whether they’re more religious.
Make it Personal
Sending an ecard offers a higher degree of flexibility than normal paper cards as you can tailor it to specific clients with signatures and photos.
Read more: How to communicate regularly with your clients
A positive relationship means a loyal customer. Clients respond more to the personal touch and reaching out for special occasions can have a huge impact. Many businesses have their busiest time at Christmas and will appreciate a personal message of support. This is a great way to build a relationship, so clients will think of you for additional services in the future.
Read More: 5 Advantages of Christmas Ecards for Businesses
This is an opportunity for you to really connect with your clients when you otherwise may not be able to. It all shows that you are invested in them, not only as a customer but as a person. For those that you have a long history and relationship with, you can be a bit looser with jokes and experiences you’ve shared.
Match Your Brand
When creating your ecard, you should choose a design and tone that reflects your business and brand.
Learn how eCard Shack can help with your business growth by communication
That’s not just a simple matter of adding your company logo to the card and sending it. We mean the type of image you select, the music you add on, and the message you put in the ecard itself. For instance, if you’re a marketing company, you can afford to be a bit more contemporary. If you’re a family business, a traditional look may be best.
We offer some useful hints and tips on our How to Design an ecard page.
Time for Giving
We all know that Christmas is a time for giving, and you can show this with your ecards – say you’re donating throughout December, for instance.
Read more: How to Make Your Content More Memorable
Don’t be shy about demonstrating your support for good causes and including a mention of them in your corporate ecards. It shows that you are a caring company and that you have taken the time to give a helping hand to good causes and others less fortunate.
Link to your Site
It’s always a good idea to put a link to your ecard on your website so everyone can receive your seasonal good wishes. Link it all into your social media as well and you could have new people coming to your site, seeing your greeting and perhaps going on to have a closer look at what you have to offer.
Final Tips
- Be personable – show your interest in the recipient
- Tailor each card to who you are sending it to by segmentation
- If you are including jokes, do so to relate to their humour
- If you want to include a religious passage, check if your recipient follows a faith or not
- Look ahead to the future, you want to continue your relationship with them
Learn more about corporate communication for the 21st century with eCard Shack and our blog.
Find out more about eCard Shack’s business ecards and Christmas ecard services.
