A Little Touch of KindnessBeing kind is important in business networking as well as in life. Build customer loyalty with wholesale greeting cards from Send Out Cards
Every year on New Year’s, or sometimes even before, we sit down and write down our New Year’s Resolutions. What we’re trying to accomplish during the coming year is different for each one of us. Some of us want to lose weight. Some of us want to improve our overall health. Some of us want to be better parents…and so on.
I am usually very careful about what’s going on my “Resolutions List.” I consider New Year’s Resolutions like promises to myself and I don’t want to make any promises that I may not be able to keep.
Last year I made a New Year’s Resolution that I kept the whole year through. And I’m still keeping it. Namely to stay in better contact with my customers, family and friends. I stay in touch with them through greeting cards. I’ve always been good about sending thank-you notes to my customers letting them know that I appreciated their business. But now I’m also sending birthday cards, let them know when new products are introduced, or I send cards ‘just because.’ This keeps me on top of their mind and has made a great difference in the orders I get. I have noticed an increase of re-orders during the past year where before I had more one-time orders.
How do you keep in touch with your customers? Do you remember their birthdays? Do you send ‘thank-you’ notes for their orders and for the referrals they send you? Do you think it would make a difference to your business if you would?
Let me know your thoughts below in the comments box.
I don’t think there is any other time of the year when we feel more like giving than right now, in the month of December. We’re making our lists of customers, clients, neighbors friends and family. All those people whom we want to remember and show our appreciation to. Even though times are tough we still want to show that we think of those who mean something to us.
It’s the holidays. Forgotten is the doom and gloom of November and the struggles we had all year long. Our hearts are open. We’re happy. We’re smiling….And then realitiy sets in. Oh dear! Looking at our list of people we realize there’s way to many to send cards to. We start sorting and scratching off people even before we headed to the store. Then standing there in front of endless racks of cards that don’t say what we really want to say, we get frustrated because we can’t find the right card. And gosh, look at these prices!
That was me until a year ago. Sounds familiar? Then I found SendOutCards. Watch the video below and find out how I solved my Long-Christmas-Card-List problem.
Then visit my website at www.SendThemASmile.com and send out a couple of FREE Greeting Cards (on me) to experience this incredible system first hand for yourself.
I know it has happened to me in the past. Maybe it has happened to you at some point as well? In our busy fast-paced world it is easy to loose track of our customers, clients, well even friends and family members for that matter. We have every intention to keep in contact and want to give the best customer service, but we just get so wrapped up in the happenings of every-day life. We may be thinking of getting in touch with a customer one moment and in the next get interupted by a phone call or email and the ‘prompting’ is lost forever… or at least until we think about that person again sometime down the road.
When I found SendOutCards my life became much easier. SendOutCards makes staying in touch with my customers as easy as sending an e-mail, but as personal as sending a handwritten card. I can choose from 15,000 cards to find just the right one for the occasion, or I can make my own using SendOutCards Picture Plus feature. (I used this feature here to make a very special thank-you note for one of my customers.) No more running to the store and picking out a card. No more searching through drawers for the right postage stamp. No more walking out to the mailbox in bad weather to mail it. SendOutCards does it all for me. I pick the perfect card from the Card Catalog, type my personal message and click send. The elfes at SendOutCards print the card in my own handwriting and with my own signature. Stuff it into an envelope. Lick the stamp and put it in the mailbox.
That “Personal Touch” is so important, especially in this time and age where impersonal e-mails seem to have become the norm and the quick way of staying in touch. Just think how your customers or clients will feel if you remembered their birthday. They walk to their mailbox and there among all of the bills and advertisements is that handwritten card from you. (Btw. you can even include a gift with your card.) Whom do you think they will remember the next time they’ll need your kind of products or service? SendOutCards’ Contact Manager makes it easy to keep in touch with customers, clients, friends and family. Never again forget a birthday or anniversary or that special occasion.
Try it out for yourself. Just visit my website. Click on the red banner that says “Click to Send a FREE Card.” Select the greeting card you want to send from the card catalog, type your message, upload an image and click “Send Card.” Tada! You’ve just sent your very first card. (Here is a video you can watch beforehand that will show you how to send a card.)
Pretty simple, huh? And fun! And pretty easy on the budget as well. You can send a greeting card for as low as 62 cents plus postage. That’s very reasonable considering that the average greeting card costs between $2 and $4 according to the Greeting Card Association. You can also send a postcard for as little as 31 cents (plus postage.)
Well, enjoy sending out your FREE greeting card, and please don’t forget to leave me your comments below.
Another great Simple Truth movie landed it my inbox this morning. I will share it with you below.
“Gratitude is the king of all virtues. Without it…there is no happiness in your life.” I totally agree. Being grateful for even the littlelest things in our lives gives us a feeling of peace. Being thankful for every blessing no matter how small and insignificant it might be opens our hearts for more. A simple “thank you” and acknowledging someone’s kindness can make their day.
Here’s what Melody Beattie said:
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Truly understanding the power of gratitude can change your life forever!
Watch the 3 minute movie: “Learning to Dance in the Rain”
P.S. By the way, Send Out Cards was founded on the principle of gratitude. Show someone your gratitude today. Send a FREE greeting card!
That special greeting card for that special person on that special occasion.
My mother-in-law’s 85th birthday was coming up on July 25th. I had been thinking for a while what kind of card I would send and what it would say. I knew I was not going to find a card like that at the card store. Yes, they have beautiful cards there, with nice words, even poems specially written for any occasion…But written for just anyone. I wanted something really personal.
My mother-in-law was a very special person and I wanted her to have a very special card for her very special birthday. So I made one. My husband Randy and I were looking around for some pictures of her and her grandkids and we found just the right ones.
For the front of the card we picked a beautiful shot of her and my sister-in-law when they were at the Rose Bowl some years back. She had always dreamed of going there so it finally had happened and she had a blast. I thought that was the perfect opener to personalize her greeting card and make it special.
On the inside we wrote a very personal message and added some pictures of her and her grandkids as they were growing up. Special shots that we thought she might enjoy. We ended the card with a picture of her blowing out candles on her birthday cake and “Happy Birthday!” wishes.
She LOVED the card.
Sadly, my mother-in-law passed away this week. Just 4 days after her 85th birthday. She was a wonderful person and will be sorely missed by her family and her many friends.
I am so glad I didn’t just go out and buy a card at the store but took the time to make a special one for her. She so deserved it.
(After I had gathered all the photos I was going to use, it took me just a few minutes to put the card together with SendOutCards and add that special birthday message. I had created a very special personalized greeting card at the fraction of the cost of a store-bought one. And I touched someone’s heart in a way I could never have accomplished with just any card.)
A little touch of kindness goes a long ways. So does a nice gesture. A piece of chocolate. A brownie or cookies. Have you ever noticed the dish of candy in some professional offices? It’s not for the employees (although they might enjoy it too). It’s for the clients. There’s something about chocolate that gets us into a good mood. I’ve never seen a person eating chocolate and being crumpy at the same time. Maybe before, but not after putting that delicious treat in their mouth. And when we are in a good mood we are more likely to buy something, agree with or do business with someone.
Gail was a freelance graphic designer with the typical self-employed person’s problems:
lots of work, but little money coming in. Although her business was brisk and her billings
were high, her clients simply weren’t paying their bills. “My money seemed stuck in their
bank accounts, ” says Gail. Gail tried a number of tactics to convince her creditors to
pay – from letters that said “Please pay soon” festooned with smiley faces to diplomatic
phone calls – but nothing worked. Desperate, she stumbled on what turned out to be a
brilliantly effective idea: bribing them with baked goods. “I would send out reminders
of past-due invoices with the enticement that if paid by a specified date, I would reward
the client with fresh baked cookies, brownies, cake – whatever they wanted. And it worked.
From The Power of Nice…Let ‘Em Eat Cake, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, pp 31
They say, “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Or in this case with cookies and brownies.
Another example, my husband, who’s in the mortgage industry needed a loan closed before the holidays last December. As we all know, things move very, very slow right before the holidays. To expedite the loan, he send a box of cookies to the underwriter and what normally would have taken 2 – 3 weeks was done in just a few days.
These eye-opening statistics below only confirm why it makes good business sense to use SendOutCards to keep in touch with employees, customers and prospects.
Most businesses lose 10-17% of their business every year.
62% of your clients aren’t taking advantage of all your products or services.
91% of our customers say they would give us a referral.
80% haven’t been encouraged to do so!
You lose 10% of your influence for every month that you don’t have contact with your client.
A 5% increase in customer loyalty could yield 20-80% to your bottom line.
Studies show that an average prospect won’t do business with you until they’ve seen or heard from you or your message at least 7 times.
79% of all trade show leads aren’t followed up.
66% of your business within the next year will come from your sphere of influence.
Only 3% of the mail we receive is personal.
Of course you won’t know what this system can do for you until you try it out for yourself. So go ahead…send a free greeting card to anyone you chose today. See how easy it is. SendOutCards not only saves you money (at just 0.62 cents a card) it also saves you a lot of time.
No running to the card store to pick the perfect card.
No stuffing envelopes
No rummaging through drawers to find a stamp.
No running to the mailbox or post office to mail it.
Send one or a hundred with the click of a button.
Let your customers know you care by remembering their birthdays. Send them a special “Thank You.” Remember them on holidays. Let them know of any upcoming promotions or specials. They will appreciate your thoughtfulness and reward you with their business and bring you referrals.
I’ve long made it a habit to write “Thank You” notes to all of my customers every time they placed an order with me. However, I’ve never received a phone call to thank me for a card I sent until just recently.
Grace is one of my Equine customers. She had placed her first order 3 or 4 years ago and in the meantime has become a loyal customer and a very dear friend. She has several horses who are on Tahitian Noni’s Equine Essentials and doing quite well. Actually, one of her horses has moved up from being laughed at to become the 3rd-fasted race horse in Colorado.
After Grace’s last order, I wanted to send her a very special “Thank You” note, because she really is a very special person. I happened to have a great shot of her 3 year-old horse on the day of his very first win. So I picked one of the Equine thank you notes I had made with the “Picture Plus” feature in SendOutCards and on the left inside, I put a full-bleed picture of her horse. On the right side I wrote a heartfelt “Thank You” for her order. (SendOutCards printed the card in my own handwriting and with my own signature, stuffed it in an evelope, put a stamp on it and mailed it for me….all with the click of the “Send” button.)
Every year on New Year’s, or sometimes even before, we sit down and write down our New Year’s Resolutions. What we’re trying to accomplish during the coming year is different for each one of us. Some of us want to lose weight. Some of us want to improve our overall health. Some of us want to be better parents…and so on.
I don’t think there is any other time of the year when we feel more like giving than right now, in the month of December. We’re making our lists of customers, clients, neighbors friends and family. All those people whom we want to remember and show our appreciation to. Even though times are tough we still want to show that we think of those who mean something to us.
I know it has happened to me in the past. Maybe it has happened to you at some point as well? In our busy fast-paced world it is easy to loose track of our customers, clients, well even friends and family members for that matter. We have every intention to keep in contact and want to give the best customer service, but we just get so wrapped up in the happenings of every-day life. We may be thinking of getting in touch with a customer one moment and in the next get interupted by a phone call or email and the ‘prompting’ is lost forever… or at least until we think about that person again sometime down the road.
That special greeting card for that special person on that special occasion.
I’ve long made it a habit to write “Thank You” notes to all of my customers every time they placed an order with me. However, I’ve never received a phone call to thank me for a card I sent until just recently.
