EduMusings

Many B2B and B2E marketers stress out at this time of year over holiday greetings to customers.  Do you try to be funny? Sentimental? Promotional?  If you try to get too funny, you may miss the mark, and (at best) not make people laugh or (at worst) offend people.  Try to get too sentimental and you could seem insincere.  Try to be too promotional, and you risk turning people off completely.

So I was conflicted this year…first and foremost about the content of our holiday greeting.  Second, about the delivery method.  Do we go for a clever online holiday greeting to customers or do we kick it old school and go with a simple print option?  There were pros and cons to both.

Now, I could go on and on listing pros and cons for each, but you get the basic idea.

So which did we choose? 

This year we opted for the old-fashioned print card.  Why?  Because it allowed for every member of our team to personally sign each card.  The logistical effort alone, getting our entire staff to sign hundreds of cards, made me second guess this decision.  However, today I had a brief conversation with a customer that had just received her card and she assured me that the effort was well worth it.

She could tell it took time to get everyone together and she appreciated the sentiment.  In fact, she said and I quote, “This is one of the reasons why you guys are the Apple to [insert competitor name]’s PC.” Being a MAC guy, I took it as a compliment (and I think it was intended as one).

The concept was pretty simple…two puzzle pieces fitting together on the front of the card, text inside the card reads “Thank you for connecting with us.” 

Was it clever? Depends on who you ask. Was it funny? No. Do we expect to win any awards for it? No.

But the card did deliver a simple message that we wanted to get across to our customers. We value the connection. Period.

Or, to paraquote Jerry Maguire, “You complete us.”

Now, this isn’t to say that I’m not a fan of fun online holiday greetings. My alma mater, the University of Maryland, had a great holiday video this year, as Karine Joly pointed out recently. 

But I guess the point of this post is to say that - even in a day and age dominated by Web 2.0 glitz and glam - sometimes simplicity is beautiful and people still appreciate a personal (online or offline) touch. I was reminded of that this morning during my phone call.

So thanks to all of you that have connected with us this past year.  We look forward to more to come in the New Year…maybe even a snazzy online card next holiday season. And, to show you that we’re not above poking a little fun at ourselves…we present to you the IntELFiworks team.