Don’t send Christmas cards

Are you surprised by the title of this week’s post?

Many people in my networking training courses are suprised when I tell them that it might be a good idea NOT sending Christmas cards.

“You tell us that it is important to stay in touch with our network and then you say that we should not send Christmas cards. Aren’t Christmas Cards one of the best ways to stay in touch with people?” is one of the most frequently asked responses.

Of course it is important to stay in touch and if you want to do this by sending Christmas cards, that’s fine with me.

BUT … there are a few disadvantages:

1) people receive Christmas cards from many people. So your card is but one out of many and is probably unnoticed.

2) the text on most Christmas cards is limited to “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”. So they are not very personal. And this is very understandable because when we send Christmas cards we send it most of the time to a lot of people. Personalising them might consume lot of our time. And for many businesses December is already such a busy month.

The result is that in most cases your card goes unnoticed.

Does this mean you should not send any cards to people?

No, because in these electronic times postcards (or letters) are one of the best ways to keep in touch with people.
But send them on a moment that no one else does this and personalise them.

Examples:
– Thank-you-cards with a sincere, personalised and detailed text
– Birthday cards
– Anniversary cards
– Anniversary of a company cards
– A card for another holiday than Christmas
– A card for the anniversary of your company
– A card on the day of the saint of your profession
– A card for a reason or a special day that you made up
– …

Any reason is good to send a card to keep in touch with your network. But make sure that it doesn’t get by unnoticed.

Have a great networking year !

Jan