Corporate E-Cards

E-cards have hit the mainstream. Many businesses and organizations have realized the true value of using corporate e-cards to extend Holiday wishes to their Clients and Customers.

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View our Holiday E-Cards

About our Photo and Text Flash E-Cards for Businesses

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Whether you’re a business owner; your boss' assistant; a member of your group's marketing department; or simply in-charge of sending out Holiday e-greetings, you are beginning your search for methods to get your corporate Holiday e-card created in-time the Holiday season. Where do you start?

Like most, when first starting to look for information, you fire up your web browser, open your favorite search engine and start searching on terms like, "corporate holiday ecard designers", "e-cards for businesses", and "holiday corporate flash e-cards". In fact, the list goes on, but in all cases, you undoubtedly will come across many company websites providing corporate e-card design services - and many of free ecard services too. That was easy. Now, you'll have to narrow down those providers and select an e-card designer who can fulfill the needs for your business or organization - which may not be so easy. There are some common factors that ususally play important roles in determining which provider is best suited for you. On this page, we'll give you a hand by explaining them.

For some, narrowing down corporate e-card providers is easy because they may already have experience with corporate e-cards. For others, it becomes more difficult because the only e-cards they’ve ever seen are those ‘cute and cuddly’ little animations to extend birthday wishes, congratulations and other similar, and more individualized, purposes. For many businesses and organizations, a cute and cuddly corporate e-card likely won’t reinforce their brand or convey the culture of their Group in a manner that parallels them in the real world. Especially since businesses and organizations take full advantage of the relationship building and relationship maintenance opportunities the Holiday e-card season creates. For this, you need to be looking for e-cards that create an experience for your recipients in addition to extending your wishes. Also, shaping the experience to seamlessly include your branding helps recipients associate that experience with your group – crucial for creating awareness and trust of your business or organization.

View our Photo and Text Flash E-Cards

So, how should a corporate Holiday e-card differ from the more common notions associated with e-cards? For starters, let’s talk about what basic principals that should be encompassed by a corporate e-card.

Firstly, going back to the idea that a corporate Holiday e-card should create an experience that is both entertaining and creates awareness for your brand is key. Sure, some businesses can get away with sending a simple e-card that has a funny joke in it and they slap their logo at the end and include a link to their site. Great! This can work well if you have a certain relationship with your Clients and you know that they would appreciate such humor. But, this case is more descriptive of smaller businesses who don’t manage hundreds or thousands of relationships across, their customers, buyers, suppliers, etc. For this method to work, the Client would have to really dig deep to understand every single buyer persona they deal with. Using these, they would need to determine a common trait that they all share and shape their e-card’s theme around this trait to ensure everyone considered. Now, when you’re dealing with hundreds of different people, and a number of different personalities, finding that common characteristic or trait can be like finding a needle in a haystack. In this case, what do you do? Well, in some cases you can still segment the large group into smaller ones based on common traits shared within each segment. Then, you can create multiple e-cards – one per segment – that each satisfy the common trait or persona of that specific segment.

Now, don’t get it wrong. There is huge value to just sending out a single e-card to all your Clients. In fact, if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you are looking to send an e-card yourself. We’re just saying many groups could be receiving more value if they sent different e-cards to different groups within their target and center their themes to compliment specific group personalities and character traits.

Now, do businesses really send out multiple corporate e-cards tailored to the different personalities in their target? Honestly, from our experience, not many - although, they could be more closely connecting with their target. So, why don’t they? Well, the main factor is time. Next, it’s their budget. Then, in some cases, they may not realize the value.

As you may likely have experience with, when it comes time to send out Holiday wishes to their target, it’s not a process that they really want to spend a lot of time on. Sure, they want to make sure it’s done right, but in the larger list of day-to-day business tasks, you can be sure it’s not always at the top. And, when time gets tight, often it comes down to which method will get it done the fastest and with satisfactory results.

Budget also plays a role in this. When businesses budget for a corporate Holiday e-card, it’s exactly that – they budget for a single e-card, not more than one. This is derived in part by the level of understanding they have about using corporate e-cards.

As for the level of understanding, well many do understand the value, but unfortunately don’t pursue the means to fully capture it because, again, time is the largest single factor in the entire process. In fact, there are many things you can do with just a single e-card to help market your business. When wanting to fully leverage the marketing potential of corporate e-cards for the Holiday season, the typical business should really get started early on in the year. Usually by early Fall the latest. Now, from our experience, there are businesses that do get started early, but for the most part, businesses tend to leave it till later in the year and end up with a ‘just in time’ result.

So, let’s step back to the ways you can narrow down your list of providers and select the right designer to create you corporate Holiday e-card. Taking the main factors groups commonly face like time, budget and little e-card knowledge, and how these play integral roles in the entire process, you should narrow your list of providers down by selecting a provider that can satisfy the following:

• They can produce a corporate e-card that creatively provides an experience that the majority of your target will appreciate. Plus, the experience reinforces awareness for your brand without being too ‘in your face’. For large audiences, they provide a solution that can still provide value to a wide and diverse audience.
• If time isn’t on your side, they can provide a corporate e-card solution that doesn’t require a large time and effort contribution from the Client and still yield a great result beyond the ‘cute and cuddly’! Also, they can produce a ‘just in time’ solution that is great!
• Additionally, the provider should have the tools and resources to provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ for your corporate e-card needs.
• The provider has proven experience with corporate e-cards and has the knowledge to provide insight and understanding, as well as answer any questions you have and the ability to work with your ideas given the current time frame available to you.
• When you look at samples from a corporate e-card designer, ask yourself, “Would this e-card compliment our brand AND would it provide true value to our recipients?”
• And, of course, they should have great Customer and Client service!

Well, this information is really just intended to help you understand what’s out there and hopefully will help you make a more educated decision when looking for an e-card provider for your corporate, organizational or group needs. You’re not alone if you were unsure where to start and not sure how to make the right choice. We’ve come across many Clients like you and have helped them understand the possibilities and the most efficient and effective approach for their corporate Holiday e-cards given their current resources. Additionally, we shaped our e-card services and process around the most common types of Client we serve. This truly helps both us and our Clients, by providing a process that is professional, educating, and efficient which yields great corporate e-card results.

So, if you are heading back to your favorite search engine, keep in mind what we’ve discussed. Alternatively, you may want to take a few seconds here to learn more about the benefits of using Holiday e-cards, view samples of our corporate seasonal and Holiday e-card design services, or just more about us.

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Our Photo and Text Flash E-Cards for Businesses

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We've got screenshots of our corporate holiday e-cards on Flickr. Or, view samples here.