It’s Greeting Season. The time of the year when mailboxes are filled with friendly mass emails: We all get more than enough Christmas Cards and Holiday Season Greetings samples from business partners and friends. zistemo gives you total control over the mailing process with an easy-to-use export of addresses. Mass mailing has never been more fun!
Have you done it yet? Are you doing it right now? Or, god forbid, does it still loom on your to-do list? We all love to get nice Christmas Cards and Holiday Greetings – but sending them out is not always easy. If you’re like me, you’ll be fiddling to find the right words and image for hours. And then, when you’re finally there, the address-hassle starts. But not this year. Because this year, all it takes is one click. One click and zistemo hands you a beautiful list of your contacts. Easily exported and just as easily imported wherever you need them.
Import your contacts in Outlook
We live in a digital world. Nothing new there. It won’t surprise you to hear that the vast majority of freelancers, Startups and small businesses send out their Holiday Greetings online via e-mail. The contacts exported with zistemo come in excel or csv Format – one, two, three and they are being imported into Microsoft Outlook and any other e-mail software. Without the mailing hassle you’ll have more time to spend on what really counts: design and content.
Professional Mass Mailing
I’ll be the first to admit: It is no easy to find the right design. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to have a marketing team at your disposal. For the rest of us, Greeting Card Season means making time and finding the energy to create a personal yet professional, crispy yet celebratory message in between end-of-year reporting, seasonal celebrations and the odd deadline. Not easy indeed.
But rest assured: you can do it.
There’s not that much that you can do wrong, if you follow the two basic principles of a professional Holiday Season Greeting:
- Do not send out private photos and stories about your life to your business partners. Seriously. Never. Your baby, cat or dog are cute. No doubt about that. But they don’t belong into professional communication with your business partners. As well as the story of your recent divorce, by the way. Keep it friendly, clean and simple.
- But, and this is important, keep it personal. There’s not much worse than using automatic Holiday Greeting Card text samples and the same boring illustration every year.
“One cannot not communicate”, to quote the German communication psychologist Paul Watzlawick, and he is so incredibly right. A nondescript Christmas card does not tell nothing. Instead, it tells your business partner that you did not set time aside – for them. Your clients. Your bread and butter. I’m sure that’s not what you wanted, but that’s how it seems.
Improve Client Communication Skills
We both know, you and me, that time is your most precious resource. And a very scarce one. Still, client communication skills should be your highest priority. It does not take much: A personal address, an individual greeting accompanied by a refreshing image, that’s it. The goal is to make your clients feel that you care about them – personally (but not private).
Snail Mail: Because they are worth it
Even though ours is a digital age: Your best option still is the good old postcard. The one you can hold in your hands, sign with your handwriting and send out via the postman. That’s my humble opinion, backed by years of experience as well as communication specialists all around the world. Sending out a postcard might be a bit more expensive than using mass E-Mail – but it will be worth it. Because you’re letting clients know that THEY are worth it. Add a handwritten line, re-tell the story of your cooperation and let them know just how much you appreciate them, the reward will be yours. Of course zistemo can help you with that: Just use your exported contacts and import them into your software for printing labels.
Easy Import into Newsletter Tools
Unlike Santa, zistemo makes your wishes come true all year long. We have created her to facilitate client communication as much as possible. Exported contacts can be imported virtually anywhere, for example into well-known newsletter tools such as Mail Chimp & Co. Newsletters, by the way, are still the most important marketing-tool for freelancers and small businesses, even though the competition in the mailbox is fierce.
The goal is to make people read it – and to achieve this, you’ll have to find your own voice. The one that makes you and your work stand out in the mass of mailings. zistemo can’t help you there. But with zistemo you’ll have the time and energy to create, to search and fiddle until you get it right. And believe me: it will pay off.
Happy holidays and much success in 2016!
Sincerely, zistemo
