Business Greeting Card Tips

Business greeting cards are a highly effective business marketing tool. They're a way to entice customers to come to your business or use your services. They allow you to develop business relationships with your clients by keeping in touch with them, and they allow you to build a loyal customer base.

If you're a start-up business, you don't need to hire an expensive professional printer to create the greeting cards for you. All you need is a good quality printer, blank greeting cards from quality paper, and good inkjet cartridges that'll provide vivid colors and crisp text. And you need some know-how to make sure you're maximizing the marketing potential of the cards.

The Planning Process

You're not going to be able to use business greeting cards if you don't plan ahead and get crucial information like the surface mailing addresses of your clients. Make sure you keep the list up-to-date. It's important to have correct names and addresses of your contacts so you don't embarrass yourself and look unprofessional by sending the card to the wrong address.

Mailing paper cards is also more expensive than paperless cards so you need to budget for postage costs, cartridge expenses (Tip: Save money by buying remanufactured inkjet cartridges or inkjet refills.) and the cost of the cards themselves. You may also want to purchase stock photography if you're making the cards yourself so take this into account as well.

Set up a plan when you'll be mailing out the cards. A business greeting card is only going to be effective if it's sent on time. It never hurts to send a card a little early.

Etiquette

In the business world you'll be dealing with a variety of different people from a variety of different backgrounds. Your card will be ineffective if you offend someone, no matter how inadvertently. You need to be politically correct and sensitive to everyone's traditions. Seasonal cards need to be generic. For example, not everyone celebrates Hanukah or Christmas.

The advantage to being a small business owner and creating your own cards is that you can personalize cards to each client. So if you have clients that celebrate Hanukah, you can create a card especially for those clients. This added personal touch will not go unnoticed and will likely be appreciated.

Make sure you use titles. We live in an increasingly informal world so it's easy to be tempted to address envelopes simply with the recipient's first and last name. Use Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss where appropriate.

Handwrite the address on each envelope. As a small business owner you're not going to have thousands upon thousands of contacts so this is still a realistic option. Computer-generated labels can be used for many things including addressing envelopes for business correspondence, but they shouldn't be used for business greeting cards. They take that personal effect away and can backfire as a marketing tool by making the cards look like an impersonal mass mailing and ultimately offending the client. You may save money this way, but you could lose a customer or client in the process.

If handwriting the address isn't an option for you because of time constraints, hire someone else to do this job for you. As a small business owner you may want to ask your receptionist, if you have one, to do this job. If you don't have a receptionist, there are many freelance or virtual assistants who you can hire on a per-job basis to complete tasks like this for you.

Sign the cards personally. For especially important or valued clients you should even consider adding a short handwritten message. If you're a small enough business with employees, consider getting all the employees to sign the card as well.