As a mystery shopping company, we are thinking about the relationship between business and consumers, and particularly what a company’s behaviour says about itself and its relationship with its customers.
A quick search around the internet will find a lot of people decrying the e-card as pointless and impersonal. The reasons given are all fairly similar, the ease of which an e-card is sent makes them feel less meaningful. With a traditional card, you know the person sending it has thought about you as they chose, wrote and sealed the card, whereas with an e-card they may well have simply imported their email contacts and clicked 'send all'. But these arguments are all on the assumption that it is an individual sending cards to another individual. When a company sends greeting cards, they are taking your name from a database, using bulk purchased cards and preparing them in an automated envelope stuffer – probably the same one used to send your bills.
The process is not all that different from what they would be doing with the e-cards, so why not save the environment a bit and skip delivering actual cards? The answer is fairly simple as it turns out.
Most companies put a lot of work into not appearing faceless and corporate, they engage in massive programmes to engage their customers and ensure their customers think of them as something more than 'just another company' (we would know, we provide the mystery shoppers who check how they are doing!). When you’ve invested this heavily in building that relationship with your customers, the last thing you want to do is give the impression that you are being impersonal.
With electronic communication ever taking the place of traditional modes of communication, it is safe to say that the e-card is here to stay (and the traditional card might be doomed), but for now, if you are a business who cares about your relationship with your customers, a well chosen traditional card is your only real choice.
Let us know! Will you be sending e-cards this year?
