Are You Wasting Time And Money On Your Christmas Campaign?

Does this sound familiar?... it is the end of October, Halloween has just come and gone, the TV and shops start displaying the signs of Christmas and people in the street start tutting and saying things like- "it is only October and they are already advertising… next year they will be advertising Christmas trees in July". You however, start thinking about the Christmas card you need to send all your clients.

First, you need to find a designer or buy some generic cards (you can’t possibly use last year’s card), then pay the printers (hope they get the size right this year), order the closest round number to the number of clients you have so this time you wont be left with 1270 unused Christmas cards to send to the paper recycling bin. Three weeks after you started your Christmas card journey, your cards are delivered and you take an exciting first look at what your beautiful card looks like and are grateful that this year there wasn’t a typo that meant a re-print or a white sticker. Then one (or four) of your staff (depending on how many clients you have) take a day off doing what they normally do to start printing address labels sticking them onto envelopes stuffing the cards inside (there are too many clients for you to write anything personal in them) then if you didn’t get the already stamped, slightly more expensive envelopes you spend a few more days sticking stamps or using the franking machine and thanking god for self-sealing envelopes. And then and only then you start worrying about the postal back log, and when you should send the cards overseas and when should you send them inland and please please please don’t let there be another postal strike this year.

A week after your paper card arrives at it's destination, it is silently flapping un-noticed next to the other 76 Christmas cards displayed in the now empty offices of your client, or gathering dust at the third row from the front on the mantle piece.

There is a cure! And not only is it quicker and cheaper, more impactful for your business, entertaining for your clients, beneficial to charities and better for the environment.

Across the hall from you John spends an hour in front of his computer screen logged on to http://www.wishawish.com and looks through some of the most entertaining and new Christmas Ecard animations out there. After 45 minutes of what seems like work avoidance because it is so much fun, he chooses a design, uploads his logo onto the website and pays a one off-fee. Five days later his corporately-customised Ecard is ready and with a single click eight days before Christmas (or even one day if he remembered at the last minute…) he sends 2634 Ecards to America, Australia, South Africa and Croydon.

Seeing as its Christmas he decides to give all the money saved to a charity (and includes a note on his Ecard letting his clients know which charity benefits).

The day John’s Ecard reaches his clients some desks in some offices have groups of people looking over each other shoulders to see the fun animated Ecard. One says to the other… "Forward it to me." It gets attached to an Email and while he is at it, he sends it to three more friends, one of which likes it so much she forwards it to her friends and a week after the Ecard arrived at its original destination a significant number of other people have seen it. Some of them like it so much they click the link on the Ecard that takes them directly and effortlessly to the website where they can find out more.

In the New Year (only because his wife said no work during the holidays) John logs on and looks at his free online report at http://www.wishawish.com to find out exactly how many people saw his card and how many clicked-through to see his site. He makes his quick and accurate ROI calculation and makes an informed decision about next year.

And far away in the forest some trees otherwise known as "the equivalent of 2634 Christmas cards" live to see another day.