Many organizations use holiday greetings and special promotions as a tactic to drive sales and check in with customers toward the end of the year. And that’s smart. But holiday mail, whether from a business or non-profit, is also a great way to connect. You can add warmth, sincerity, humor, or pizazz to your marking repertoire, build relationships, and make people feel appreciated. And if you start early enough, it can be a heck of a lot of fun to plan.
7 Fun Tips to Spruce Up Holiday Mail
If you don’t already have your holiday mail plan in place, we’ve pulled together some great ideas to make this marketing season easier, more effective, and a bit more sparkly.
Try one or more of these tips!
1. Don’t add to the madness
Ever seen a store opening on the Friday after Thanksgiving? The holiday market can come with some crazy. October through January are great times to offer deals, reach out, and capture renewed numbers. But you have a choice: spread cheer, or add to the madness. When it comes to campaigns and promotion planning, stay chill. Make a happy experience for staff and audience your goal. Keep it fun by planning in advance, staying on deadline, and creating campaigns and invitations that promote the peaceful. Let your audience feel invited, not pushed. This gives your organization the draw of customer care and maturity.
2. Make a new start
Your tried and true cottage-in-the-snow print is probably still great. But it does have a shelf life. If you always go for red and green, pick two new colors, or three! If you’ve never acknowledged New Year’s, send something shiny and eye-popping to ring in the new season. Are you typically formal? Adjust your tone to allow for humor. Dash and witty? Try reflective. If you’re especially daring, you might experiment with adding scent to the paper or designing the envelope to look like a present. Even something as simple as a gold seal or a new kind of paper adds fun to the project and shows your audience that you take the time to show you care.
3. Stay sincere
The end of A Christmas Carol is right: “money isn’t everything.” If you’re running a good thing, then you know you’re here to serve. And when it comes to making money, relationships go a long way in building financial health. Consider how this year’s holiday mail-outs can add creativity and generosity to your outreach and marketing goals. Imagine a reader opening your campaign. How will it represent your staff, bring a smile, and honor your business ethics, rather than becoming only a grab at more business? Stay sincere with your desire to reach and touch people. For example, don’t exaggerate any of your offers, and don’t send out a holiday message from your leadership team that they didn’t actually have a hand in writing. (It happens.)
4. Include a video
Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean upping your budget by a cent. Holiday greetings from your staff, pastor, CEO, or a group of fun-loving clients take a little time to produce and get right, but can be filmed as simply as pulling out your smartphone and uploading to your website or YouTube channel. A short video to convey a special message, give thanks, or cast a vision for a new year can go a long way in offering a real connection with your organization. Just keep the URL simple, and include it somewhere prominent in your campaign. A deepened sense of connection builds real loyalty, which the biggest marketing budget in the world couldn’t buy.
How do I improve holiday campaigns?
Better holiday campaigns mean planning, staying chill, and having fun. Simple ways to stand out include positive, low-pressure CTAs, non-traditional color schemes, metallic ink, video URLs, and special envelopes. An extra step would be to link your season’s revenue to a charitable cause.
5. Create a CTA with heart
Unless your holiday campaign is purely a friendly greeting or thank you, it’s vital to include a clear call to action (CTA). But what makes a holiday CTA stand out? Typically, you’re going for the bigger ask, offering the better deal, soliciting the more generous donation. But what if your CTA could go beyond yourself and reach into your community, too? A great way to gain new audiences and build the ones you have is through connection with your local community, through events and charitable giving. Grab a cup of cocoa and do some lively brainstorming about how to connect this holiday’s CTA with a cause you care about, for example, by donating 3% of December sales to a crisis center.
6. Gussy up the envelope
The first thing your audience sees should tell them what to expect. You need to make a good impression, so your holiday greeting doesn’t get mistaken for holiday recycling. Make sure your envelope is customized to reflect clearly two things: your brand (your unique identity), and your holiday flare. You can do this through color, font, images, paper texture, and the shape of your mailer (and thus your envelope). A white, business letter envelope with flat black Times New Roman font? Grinch-y. Color, interesting shapes, metallic inks, and special fonts make your mailer sing like a chorus of Who’s Down in Whoville.
7. Get your stamp on
If you’re working in smaller batches, choose a beautiful stamp that matches the envelope and evokes whatever holiday ethos you’re going for. USPS can even affix pre-canceled stamps to your holiday pieces rather than boring old meter stamps. Be sure to ask! And make sure that if you’re choosing your own stamps for the most personal-of-personal holiday business greetings (like cards and invitations with RSVPs) that you get them early. Holiday stamps are already available at the post office, but some designs sell out quickly.
We hope this gives you some great ideas!
When you’re ready to get your holiday campaign out there, Letter Jacket Envelopes has a great selection of fully customizable envelopes that give us very happy clients. We can’t wait to hear from you!
