Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (1)

New Twist on Christmas Cards

December 18, 2008 During the holiday season, most businesses buy a pack of cards, have the employees or management add their signatures, and send them out to key customers. This is a standard way to say "thank you," and at the very least, stay even with your competition during the season of good cheer.

But what if you could do something that really makes you stand out? This morning, I took a holiday card out of the mailbox, and you'd better believe it, it made an impact.

The card from from DIG Creative, a marketing firm that specializes in 1:1 printing and personalized URLs (among other strategies). The text read, "Heidi, have a one-to-one holiday!" It then invited me to log into my own personalized URL (something like www.HeidiTolliver-Nigro.Choose_Your_Charity.com) to help the company choose its 2008 charity donation.

Once I logged in, I was greeted by name, then asked to choose from one of three charities in a drop-down menu. On the same page, DIG asked me to choose a theme, such as music, shopping, or sports, so it could send me an email with my "personalized Christmas tree." There was also a short "match the decorated Christmas tree to the right DIG staff member" game that gave me some insight into the personalities of the DIG staffers that I didn't have before.

By the time I clicked out, I felt that the marketing firm had done a tremendously effective job. Not only had it kept the company top-of-mind during the holidays, but it had positioned itself as a company that gives back to its community. Now that I knew its favorite charities and more about the personalities and quirks of its staff members, this created a slightly tighter bond between me and the company. The entire campaign also positioned GID as a creative thought leader capable of implementing a personalized, multi-channel marketing campaign in a highly effective and memorable way.

Sure beats signing a box of pre-printed Christmas cards!

What could you do with a campaign like this? While marketers may shy away from personalized campaigns, thinking they are too complicated and expensive, this is a misconception. Granted, this was a sophisticated and highy strategic campaign, but not all campaigns have to be this complex.

At their most basic, personalized URL campaigns can be implemented using nothing more than a clean mailing list. The cost will depend on how much help you need with the creative and the complexity of the campaign. Marketing specialists will charge more, while many digital printers will offer to deploy a basic personalized URL campaign for very little premium.

So before you send out that set of boxed cards, you might want to reconsider!

Have questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at info@digitalprintingreports.com. For more information on primers for marketers and small businesses on digital, 1:1, Web-to-print, and personalized URL applications, visit Digital Printing Reports. You can also keep up with all of my posts on EBS, The Inspired Economist ("Greening Print Marketing"), and other blog sites by following me on Twitter.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on December 18, 2008 | Comments (1)