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Your business revolves around creating and maintaining relationships with investors. So it's essential that you take advantage of appropriate opportunities to touch these people. And what better time to do so than during the holiday season?
This newsletter will review the various options available to you when it comes to sending a holiday message. Once you've chosen the option that's right for your practice, if you need help, simply reach out to us. But please don't leave this until the last minute. Many of our clients only send large volumes of cards once a year and it can be a lot more time consuming than preparing a few birthday cards. And chances are your team has forgotten how they accomplished this task last year.
Option 1- Mailing Printed Cards Yourself
This is potentially the least expensive of your many options. It's also in some ways the nicest because you can write a personal message inside selected cards. Simply get a printing firm to print some good looking cards. And use Investment Gold to select the appropriate recipients and print clear labels for the envelopes. But keep in mind that writing messages, printing labels and stuffing & stamping lots of envelopes is time consuming so start early!
Option 2 - E-mailing Cards Yourself
These days it's possible to buy nice looking electronic greeting cards online. Simply purchase a card (actually an image) that you like and use Investment Gold to create an e-mail template, select the appropriate recipients and send each recipient a personalized and private copy of the card (those of you that use both Investment Gold and Outlook, please note that Outlook is incapable of sending personalized, private e-mails).
The primary benefits of this approach over the previous option are it's faster and eliminates manual labour. The biggest disadvantage is you can't add a personal message.
Option 3 - Mailing Printed Cards Via a Service Provider
There are many firms that will print and send out paper cards for you. These firms are optimized to make the tasks of printing, stuffing and stamping envelopes more efficient. So you can send a beautiful card with a minimum of effort. However, you will incur a bit more expense with this option. And these firms typically require some lead time to manage their work flow. Investment Gold's role in this scenario is to select the appropriate recipients and export their names and addresses into an Excel spreadsheet, the format most of these firms prefer.
Option 4 - E-mailing Cards Via a Service Provider
There are a number of large firms that will send out electronic cards for you. Some are specifically in the e-card business and others (like Constant Contact and Mail Chimp) are in the e-mail marketing campaign business. This is as easy on your end as using a firm to send out paper cards but also much faster in terms of delivery speed (so it becomes the final viable option if you leave this until the last minute). But it also has a few significant disadvantages. For one thing, in this digital age, most people get a lot of e-mail. One more message may not be appreciated or even noticed. And because these e-cards are sent via a service's e-mail client, your recipients can't simply reply to them to thank you for your card. On the plus side, if you are into analytics, this option can let you know how many of your recipients actually open their cards.
Investment Gold can play a particularly useful role in this option. In addition to selecting and exporting your client information, Investment Gold has deep integration with Constant Contact. So if you go that route, you will see entries in each client's History tab showing the card being sent and also being opened.
Some Final Thoughts
Every year, we hear from a few of our clients needing last minute help preparing their seasonal mailing. No doubt some people view the sending of seasonal greetings as a chore rather than a pleasure. And yes, in fairness, it does involve a bit of work because of the quantities involved. But if you spend 10 minutes writing a seasonal note in a client's holiday card, and another 10 minutes writing a thoughtful message in birthday cards for both husband and wife over the course of a year, that's a total time investment of 30 minutes. So ask yourself, which tiers of clients are worth this level of service? Now you have your answer. You don't have to write messages in every client's card. Perhaps this extra level of service is just for your Platinum and Gold clients. If you send cards to your Silver and even Bronze clients, you might just ask your assistant to write a simple greeting in those cards (e.g. Dear Sally and Martin). That just takes a few seconds per card.
If you're writing personal messages inside some of your cards, have you ever considered making them look a bit more seasonal by using a coloured ink? Try gold ink, it's popular for this purpose and does make for a significant improvement. And buy a second gold refill for your assistant, they can use it to write their simple greeting for your lower tier clients.
Still unsure which option to choose? Try putting yourself in your clients' shoes for a moment. Which do you prefer receiving? Is it a traditional paper card that can be displayed on a desk or fireplace? Or do you like a modern e-card, perhaps including some humorous animation? If your clients are hipsters or dotcommers, that might be their preference.
And finally, if for some reason you just don't have time to send seasonal cards this year, consider a perfectly appropriate alternative. Make a donation to a local charity. And then simply send a quick e-mail message to each of your clients letting them know that this year you've chosen to make a charitable donation rather than sending cards. That e-mail merge can be completed in less than an hour and you've touched all of your clients with a message that many will respect.
As always, please don't hesitate to contact our firm if you have any questions.
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