Late Christmas Cards

How late is too late to send a Christmas greeting card you may ask???  Do you think your friends and relatives are going to refuse the mail because it is late?  No, everyone loves getting a real piece of mail no matter when it arrives!  A late greeting card will just make people smile and know they are in the company of real friends who aren't worried that they will be judged!!!

Traditionally, I keep a fun gingerbread bowl on the kitchen table to store our holiday greeting cards that arrive throughout the holiday.  I see most of my visiting children take some quiet time to read every card from that bowl.  So, our later arriving cards don't get read by our visiting family but we enjoy them even so.  I hear that there are lots of people who regularly send their holiday greeting cards late.  Some say they do it so their card gets more notice but truly, most of us are just running late. 

Goodness, we just experienced a year when there was an extra week in between Thanksgiving and Christmas and yet, I don't know a single person who felt that they had more time.  Christmas just snuck up on everyone this year it seemed!

SendOutCards has some great solutions for late holiday greeting card senders.  If you don't want to send a late Christmas greeting card, we have a fabulous assortment of New Years greeting cards or Calendar greeting cards. Check out my December post about Campaign Cards: TIP #6 for more information on New Years or Calendar greeting cards.

Today, my daughter-in-law, Aubrey, showed me this card that made me laugh.  You have got to take a look at it.  You can find it in the Humorous sub-category under the Christmas category.  Or, it is easier to just use the SEARCH BOX at the top of the Card Catalog and type in: january.  Do not capitalize the word January as the search tool does not like capital letters!  You will need to view it from your SendOutCards account to really read it easily.  

Enjoy and Happy Late Card Sending!

Holiday Greeting Card Tips-Send a Sample Card

SendOutCards Campaigns

 Using the SendOutCards Campaign feature for sending Holiday Greeting Cards

Send yourself a hard copy

 

TIP #6-When I am going to send a card to over 100 people, I send myself a hard copy sample card of a large campaign in case I don’t notice a mistake (from my computer screen).  I can be pretty picky so you may not have the same need to see it first.  If you call SOC, or use the online chat feature, after you send yourself that sample card, they will refund that cost to your account.

Of course, if you are sending a holiday card right about now, there isn't the luxury of time to send yourself a sample card first.  If you really want to follow this advice, think about switching your holiday card to a New Year's greeting card or a Calendar Greeting Card is you have a business.  We have many, many great new cards in both of those categories.

Check out the New Year's greeting cards in the category: Holidays and sub-category: New Years.  There are even sub-categories in that section so click on the one you want. Businesses in the heath or finance industry are particularly well suited to sending a New Year's card and mentioning achieving goals for the new year.

A business can send a year-at-a-glance 2013 Calendar Greeting Card that will sit on your customer's desk all year long and the card only costs 62 cents!!!  That is a lot of months of keeping your name fresh in their mind every time they pick up that card . . . and for such a little cost.  Check out our new calendar cards in the category:  Special Collections and sub category: Calendar Cards.  We also have Calendar Elements if you would like to create a custom calendar card and add personal photos or images for only 1 more point.

The possibilities are endless!

I know the card catalog well.  Call me at 503-524-1111 if you want some suggestions. 

Holiday Greeting Card Tips-Adding Contacts

SendOutCards Campaigns

Using the SendOutCards Campaign feature for Holiday Greeting Card sending.

Adding people to your Contact Manager

TIP #5- At this time of year, hopefully you have already added your family, friends, customers and business associates to your Contact Manager.  If not, and if you have your contacts in any sort of Excel-type fie, you may add them to your SendOutCards account all at once with the Importing Contacts feature. Otherwise, plant yourself in front of a fun holiday movie and add your contacts one by one.  That is what I did before I realized there was an Import Contacts feature!

Check out the HOW TO IMPORT CONTACTS tutorial on your HELP drop down menu plus, Customer Service will help with technical issues if you experience any.  At this time of year, choose the CALL BACK option with Customer Service or use the Online Chat feature in the bottom left hand corner of your screen.

Once you have all your contacts into your system, you WILL feel jolly, jolly. jolly joy since it will then be SO easy to send a simple heartfelt card all year long!

Holiday Greeting Card Tips-Personalizing

SendOutCards Campaigns

Using the SendOutCards Campaign feature for sending Holiday Greeting Cards

Insert Name Feature for fun personalization

TIP #4-Remember to have fun with photos, text boxes, thought bubbles and personalizing your card on both the front and inside with the insert name features.   When you use the INSERT NAME feature, do not cut and paste it.  You MUST click on the INSERT NAME feature on the EDIT-PERSONALIZE IT page for it to work as a live mail merge feature.  

I used the FIRST NAME-INSERT NAME feature on this card.  When printed, whatever I have in the first name cell in my Contact Manager, will be auto-filled onto the front of my card.  Watch the tutorial about using Campaigns from your HELP drop down menu on your Main Menu Page red line for more explanations.  Call me at 503-524-1111 if you still have questions.

Holiday Greeting Card Tips-Signatures

SendOutCards Campaigns

Using the Campaign Feature in SendOutCards for Holiday Greeting Cards

Signatures and Personal Font

TIP #3-If you purchased the $25.00 handwriting/ 4 signature font option, it takes about 10 days to 2 weeks for it to get into your system.  For those of you who may have procrastinated mailing in that font page, a remedy to still using a signature is to scan an image of the signature that you use on your holiday cards and adding it as an image (photo) to your system.  Write it in a fun holiday color since you will not be able to change the color in an image of course, like you may change font colors.  When using a scanned image as your signature, remember the background of that part of the card should be white.  One of the fun features of purchasing a $5.00 signature, is that your background may be any color and there is much more flexibility.  Call me at 503-524-111 for further explanation.

Holiday Greeting Card Tips

SendOutCards Campaigns

A campaign is a card or set of cards that you wish to send over and over again or to a group of people in your Contact Manager. Watch the informative Tutorial on Campaigns in the HELP section and call me if you have more questions. Here are some tips and tricks:

1-Because there will be some days that the company will print almost three quarters of a million  cards in December, SendOutCards pulls cards from your account more than one time a day (we cannot depend on the midnight Mountain Standard Time deadline).  If you are planning to do some individual editing to some cards in a large campaign, post date the send campaign option on the last page of your campaign so you have time to do that. When you edit a card, you MUST click the continue button until you click SEND CARD button again so SOC knows you are serious about that change.  You will NOT be charged again.

2-When I create a detailed card, I ALWAYS hit the Print Preview button to make sure my computer screen is showing how SendOutCards will print it.  If there is a difference between the two displays, always believe Print Preview and be careful of your margins.