Question

Topic: Just for Fun

Relationship Marketing - New Technique

Posted by Jeff K. on 8/9/2008 at 6:35 PM ET 25 Points
The industry I'm in is very relationship driven, but then I'm guessing most industries are. Anyway, I ran across a new way of building relationships with our customers. It's an online service called Send Out Cards. You can upload all of your contacts into a contact manager and then send out a custom card, i.e. thank you, birthday, Christmas cards, etc., to your customers. If you know their birthdays, it will even send you a reminder email, so that you can get a card out to them. You can choose from about 14,000 cards, put your message inside and then Send Out Cards print it, stamp it and send it out. All for $1.05! Not sure how they do it for that low of a cost.

To top it off, you can send gift cards like AMEX, Starbucks, Home depot or even brownies, cookies and other baked goods. My wife is using it for our own personal cards, because she can put pictures of our kids on the cards, but I'm starting to use it for marketing purposes too. You can even establish campaigns, which I'm not quite sure how they work, but I'm going to look into that this weekend. It's a pretty cool concept.

If you want to check it out, go to [URL deleted by staff]. You can even send out two cards for free to try it out. Enjoy!

Jeff
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 8/9/2008 at 7:22 PM Accepted
    This forum is pretty by the book...you may want to disclose that your wife (or sister or other relative with the same last name as yours) is an affiliate of SendOutCards, and that your link is hers and will help her build her business.

  • Posted by Jeff K. on 8/9/2008 at 8:13 PM Author
    Sorry, my wife is the one who signed up for it and there are different types of accounts that you can sign up for. This is just a suggestion and I'm really not pushing to build her business. She has an interior design business and just does this to send cards out to our family. I was the one that saw the marketing side of this and how it could be used to build customer relationships. Didn't mean to mislead anyone!

    There is a business side of this, where you can make a commission on sign ups, but the point that I was making is that this is a tool for potentially building relationships with your customers. That is why I posted this in the "Just for Fun" forum. Again, sorry if I mislead you, that was not my intention.

    Jeff
  • Posted by Jeff K. on 8/10/2008 at 1:00 AM Author
    Thanks Randall. I've actually been a member for about three years, I've just been super busy the last six months with a major product launch for my company. Darn work is getting in the way of checking things out here to see how everything is going.

    Jeff
  • Posted by Frank Hurtte on 8/10/2008 at 1:13 PM Accepted
    Sounds cool and looks affordable...

    I probably would never use it.... I hate cards unless they have a hand written personal message. The ones I get from the power company and my bank with the personalized greeting - all neatly computer generated don't do much for me.
  • Posted by Jeff K. on 8/11/2008 at 2:21 AM Author
    Frank -
    I totally agree with you about the hand written personal message. They have even thought of that. You can fill out a form with your handwriting and they create a custom font that you can use on the card that is your handwriting. You also get up to four personalized signatures. When they send it out it gets and actual stamp, not a metered stamp, which all of you DM experts out there know means that the open rate is better. All in all, it's a pretty cool tool.

    Jeff
  • Posted by phil.wesel on 8/12/2008 at 10:54 AM Accepted
    Jeff

    First, pushing a product is different from asking a question in this forum. A google search will show that there are many people lined up on both sides of the aisle regarding the benefits that sendoutcards can offer to DM marketeers.

    From what little I read it is attached somehow to seminars? and you can buy a distributor kit for as little as $99 or as much as $699.

    Personally I have a son in law involved in Quixtar and I personally see it and Sendoutcards to a lesser degree as a form of business franchise that only benefits those at the top.

    I wish you the best of luck in promoting direct mail cards as done the right way it can help build a relationship with a customer of interest but if your goal is simply to promote sendoutcards as the venue to do that. I personally would ask you not to use this forum to do that

    Phil
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