Are Holiday Cards Effective?

Every year our company sends out and receives ‘holiday’ cards. If the ones we receive are not personally addressed to an individual, our receptionist opens them and hangs them in the front office. If it is a particularly unusual or ‘cute’ card she will bring it to others attention. Otherwise, it gets hung up and few people take the time to read them all to know who sent us cards. The non-personalized, ‘average’ cards are not doing their job for the sender.

When I started at NEM I discovered that prior to my arrival someone had designed a holiday card specifically for our company and products. It was really cute and depicted a Santa filling an unscrambler with large letters. The unscrambler stood the letters up on the conveyor to read ‘Happy Holidays’. Some of the letters were backwards, so the next machine on the line was an NEM secondary orienter that correctly oriented the backwards letters. Next in the line was an NEM capper that placed little Santa hats on each letter. The final machine was an NEM cap tightener. Everyone loved the card for its uniqueness and appropriateness for our company. When it was opened at a company, it was passed around for others to see. It achieved its purpose. In subsequent years we updated the cover and started adding personalized poetry inside. It’s important to update it every year to keep it unique and interesting. It’s also important to make sure every card is sent to an individual and not just to the company in general.

If you have an unusual or clever idea for holiday cards, share it with us.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at http://www.neminc.com/.