How to Send Your Customers Memorable Christmas Cards

The magic of Christmas isn't in its music, fireplaces, glühwein – it's not even in its ugly sweater competitions.

The real magic is in the impact that Christmas has on our sentimentality. We all get a little bit more receptive towards showing and receiving appreciation.

And that's why it’s the perfect time to connect with your customers – to show appreciation and reinforce your personal relationship. One nice way to do that is through customer Christmas cards.

But most business Christmas cards totally miss the mark. Sending out cards with a generic Christmas tree and a "thank you for your business" message wastes this once-a-year opportunity.

Here are Userlike's tips for better customer cards.

1

Show your people

To make your card personal, show the people behind your product and services. Some esoteric cases notwithstanding, you can't build an emotional connection with a lifeless object like a service or product. You can only build it with people.

The first sketch of this year's Christmas card.

In designing our last two Christmas cards, we added a few personal touches: profile pictures, signatures, and a personal message.

We added the profile pictures to the front of the card, showing some teammates with Chat Operator-style pictures.

What's more, we collected signatures from our employees, which were inside the card. We didn't ask everyone to sign 100+ cards, of course. We scanned the signatures and copied them in. It looked real, though. So much so that some customers asked us how long it took us to sign the cards!

Then the final touch was a short, personal, handwritten message from one of our Customer Success people. This was unique for each customer so that we could tailor the message. If that's too much work for you, consider a service like SimplyWritten , which allows you to type your cards in handwritten fonts.

2

Focus your message on the relationship

This relates to the message(s) on the card. Most customer cards get this wrong. They either feature generic messages like "Merry Christmas!," or their messages are clearly egocentric, like "Thank you for your business."

Your business. Do you really think the customer cares about your business? About the monetary value she represents to you? Why not write, "yo, thanks for the cash!" directly? The customer only cares about your value to her.

Niklas taking his elf duties very seriously.

You also can't tailor your message to the customer exclusively, that wouldn't scale. Instead, focus on the relationship. What is it that binds you to your customers? If you guessed “our mission statement,” you’re right.

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For Userlike, our mission statement is to "fundamentally improve relationships between businesses and the people they serve." So that's the angle we went for: "Thanks for building customer relationships with us!"

3

Make your card unique and recognizable

When your customer receives your card, does it drown in the pile of other cards? Or does it stand out as a unique reminder of her relation to your company? I suggest you aim for the latter.

Userlike's 2018 customer Christmas card.

If your design resources permit, I recommend going for a custom card. At Userlike, we represent chat and messaging. All of our customers are familiar with the design of our chat windows and Chat Panel, so we decided to build our card design on that. As a nice side convenience, this allowed us to show some teammates as chat Operators giving merry holiday messages.

4

Don't reuse last year's customer Christmas cards

Like most businesses, Christmas is a busy time for us. Because of that, the idea was raised to reuse our design from last year. But that screams cheap and sloppy. It suggests you don't really care about the customer relationship.

Last year's card – collector's item!

Think of how much nicer it is for your card to be a unique greeting that your customers can look forward to every year.

Deciding which customers to send your Christmas cards to

Now, this is a hard one. Writing Christmas cards is one of those things that doesn't scale. How many you can write largely depends on your resources in customer support.

At Userlike, we left the choice to our Customer Success people. They assessed who they wanted to send a card to, ordered the appropriate amount and wrote the message themselves. They have the best feeling for which customers a card would be authentic and appreciated.

Have fun sharing your customer appreciation this Christmas!