Holiday Cards by Email or Not at All

The card that turns into a flyer

In December, inboxes fill with holiday greetings from businesses. Many open with a snowy picture and season's greetings, then a discount code, then a button saying shop now.

Readers notice the turn within a line or two. A greeting that becomes a pitch spends the goodwill it pretended to offer, and it lands among the very sale emails it was trying not to resemble.

A genuine card is a different thing: a few sentences from a person, with nothing to buy.

If a business cannot send that, sending nothing at all is usually the better choice.

Signs of a disguised sale

• A discount code tucked under the greeting.
• Shop now buttons or rows of product photographs.
• A no-reply sender, so nobody can answer.
• One large image with every word inside it.
• A logo where a person's name should be.
• The entire list, including people you have never served.

The third undoes the rest. A card that cannot be answered is a broadcast, and customers who reply anyway get a bounce message for their trouble.

What a genuine one says

Thanks, in one plain sentence. One real detail from the year: the move to a bigger shop, the job finished in the February snow, the new van. The dates you close and reopen. A name.

Four or five sentences is enough. Someone should be able to read the whole card in the preview pane.

Write it the way you would speak to a good customer at the counter. Phrases such as valued customers and at this festive time are what make a card sound printed by the thousand.

Text, not a picture of text

Many holiday cards are a single designed image. Some desktop email programs keep images hidden until the reader clicks to download them, and the card then arrives as an empty box with a link to view it online.

Animated snow fares no better. Desktop Outlook from 2007 to 2016 shows only the first frame of an animated image, and a large animation is slow to load on a phone.

Screen readers cannot read words inside a picture either. Put the message in ordinary text and, if you want an image, add one modest photograph of the real team or premises.

Who should get it

Send it to customers you have actually worked with, recently. Anyone with a purchase from you in the last two years belongs on it, since that purchase gives implied consent under CASL.

A box of old trade show business cards does not, and neither does a list bought or borrowed from someone else.

Use your usual email service, with your business details and the unsubscribe link as always. A card that slips in an offer is a commercial message under CASL, with every rule that comes with one.

Send it from an address that a person reads, and expect replies.

Timing

The second or third week of December, on a weekday morning, before most offices close for the holidays. Christmas Day is a poor choice, since the card will be buried by the time anyone reads business email again.

If the business has already sent several sale emails this month, a card now reads as one more. A short note in the first week of January, thanking people for last year, may land better.

A worked example

A sign shop makes storefront signs, vehicle lettering and banners for local businesses, and has about four hundred commercial customers on its email list.

Last year its holiday email was a single image of a snowy storefront with season's greetings in a script typeface, and under it an offer on January banner orders. It came from a no-reply address.

Several customers replied with good wishes of their own, and their replies bounced. At offices where the email program blocked images, the card arrived as a grey box with a link.

This year the owner wrote five sentences in plain text: thanks for the year, a line about the move to a larger unit in the spring, the days the shop closes and reopens, and her name.

It went from her own address to customers who had ordered in the past two years, with no offer. The replies came to her inbox, and she answered each one herself.

A subject line that sells nothing

The disguise usually starts in the subject line: holiday savings inside, our gift to you, a festive surprise. Readers sort their inbox by those words, and a card dressed that way goes straight into the sale pile.

Plain words work better: thank you for this year, or the dates you close and reopen. Leave out capitals, symbols and countdowns.

From a person, not a logo

The sender name in the inbox should be a person's name together with the business's, so the reader knows who is writing before opening it.

End with that person's first name rather than the company's. If there is a photograph, make it the actual team or the shop as it is, with everyone in it happy to appear.

A signature from someone the customer has dealt with is the whole difference between a card and a mailing.

When sending nothing is better

When the card cannot be written personally, leave it unsent. A generic greeting from a logo adds one more message to a crowded inbox and nothing to the relationship.

When most of the list has not heard from you in years, a holiday email is a cold message in festive clothes.

And for businesses whose work touches illness, loss or money trouble, a cheerful card can land badly. A quiet thank-you in January, or nothing, may be kinder.

The counter-case

Some customers genuinely want festive offers. A gift shop's subscribers signed up for deals, and a December email with a gift guide suits them well.

That is a sale email with a holiday look, though, and it belongs in the plan with the other sale emails rather than dressed up as a card.

For a holiday card itself, the rule holds: short, personal, signed by a person and selling nothing, or not sent at all.

Before you press send

1. Remove every offer and shop button.
2. Keep it to five sentences or fewer.
3. Mention one real moment from the year.
4. Give the dates you close and reopen.
5. Sign it with a person's name.
6. Send from an address someone reads.
7. Limit the list to recent customers.

Step six is the difference between a card and an announcement. Replies are the point of a card, and an address that cannot receive them turns thanks into a broadcast.

How a run of December sale emails wears down a list is covered in the third sale email this week.

Frequently asked questions

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