Why I threw away your Company Christmas Card

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Recently I started receiving some holiday cards from companies we’ve worked with and I threw them away right after I opened them. Why you ask? Let’s do a multiple choice test:

a) Cause I am Jew and don’t celebrate Christmas.
b) You didn’t bother to write my name or anything personal to me / the company.
c) You didn’t spend the 2 minutes to know you could have sent me a $5 Chipotle gift card and I would have loved you forever.
d) You didn’t even include a return address or do anything that was handwritten.
e) Your generic message about working together and appreciation, made me gag.
f) All the above.


link to photo


Why is it so hard to be genuine? I think companies should just send the other company a lot of money or at least something memorable. Sending a $.35 card with some crap message just makes me think you don’t even care.

In the great words of Little Goat, “Christmas is the time of year when you realize how little people know about you.”

Merry Christmas:)

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14 Responses to “Why I threw away your Company Christmas Card”

  • V
    December 25th, 2008
    12:46 pm

    F for FAIL.

    Spot on, Noah. If a business genuinely cares about fostering a relationship with another company, it only makes sense to add some sort of personal touch. Why should business relationships be treated any differently than non-business relationships? Standards shouldn’t be lowered for the sake of formality or ease/convenience.

  • Katie
    December 25th, 2008
    9:59 pm

    Reason A is why I’ve stopped sending Christmas cards to anyone. Yes, a lot of Americans celebrate Christmas… but it’s pretty insensitive to assume everyone does. So now I’ve started wishing everyone Happy New Years instead. Works for everyone… and since I don’t have to rush to get things in the mail so early, I can spend time personalizing them. ;-)

    Pretty annoying to get the generic cards like that. Mine go in the trash as well. (Except for the very generic one that gave me a $15 gift card to their store with no restrictions… that has me all excited about their after holiday sales!)

    I hope that you’re enjoying this time of year anyways though. And Happy New Year, a little early!

  • Ross Hill
    December 26th, 2008
    8:25 am

    Happy new year mate ;)

  • Colleen
    December 26th, 2008
    10:14 am

    heheh, love the name of ur blog! Great minds think alike. in the past it was a nice touch to get a card at all from a co, because most didn’t track their customers or prospects that well, so just the fact that they cared enough to send you a greeting at all, impersonal though it be, gave them a leg up. But now that everyone has advanced CRM, the bar is raised and we get tons of it, so only the creme de la creme gets our attention.

    I remember thinking if I just had all the money companies spent on sending me crap I could fund the startup I’m cooking on. Here’s a novel idea: The company just starts randomly depositing $0.50 in people’s paypal and adds their promo pitch to the notification message. And if they were smart and had me in their DB they could personalize the message to match my known buying history. Similar to your GC to chilpotle idea. But even a $0.50 “cold-call” would get my attention!!

  • Vanae
    December 26th, 2008
    11:19 am

    glad you brought this up dear.
    i was thinking the same exact thing, as i opened up cards from partners that didn’t even bother writing a personal msg.
    lame.

    every year, i always send out silly photocards with a personal mg.
    if you’re going to invest the time & money, make it count.

    happy holidays jew-boy!
    Vanae

  • David
    December 26th, 2008
    8:00 pm

    I thought I was the angriest Jew around holiday time. Nice, Noah. Do you go the extra mile to correct the checkout clerk at Safeway when they wish you a Merry Christmas? The little things count!

  • Mark
    December 27th, 2008
    3:43 am

    I had this conversation the other day. I’m sick of these photo cards we keep getting. Sorry I don’t have kids but unless it’s a picture of me or porn I really don’t care to look at anybody else. Send me a picture of naked people and I might get the spirit! Happy Holidays – Cheers!

  • Kevin
    December 27th, 2008
    6:38 pm

    Haha good post Noah. I still feel like something is better than nothing at all – after all those $5 chipotle gift cards really stack up when you start mailing 100s.

    Hope you’ve been having a good holiday break. I’ll be in Vegas for New Years if you’re still around

  • borcho
    December 28th, 2008
    12:54 pm

    Good point. It is rather stupid to send Christmas cards instead of ‘happy holidays’ cards. However, I have found sending holiday cards along with your business card quite useful: 1) if you work in a hectic service industry, it’s an excellent way to remind other folks (especially clients) they are still on your radar, 2) if you changed positions, they get your updated contact info, and 3) they may actually like the card…

    Happy Hanukkah & New Years!

  • Patrick Jarrett
    December 29th, 2008
    11:59 am

    I wrote a post a few days ago about this sort of thing. I’ve gotten on the mailing list for a local State Farm agent and his letters are purely formal, mail merge style letters with a printed name for his signature.

    If he had even just taken the time to have someone sign his name in real ink that would be such a better impression. But I, the potential customer, am not even special enough to warrant a signature and instead get a printed form letter from a company that is supposed to make me feel like a person with a local agent.

    Sad.

  • dave
    December 29th, 2008
    9:52 pm

    Angry Jew is angry.

  • Games-boy
    December 31st, 2008
    2:25 am

    Why so sad? You may not take such a trifle so close to your heart. A formal letter addressed to everybody and nobody at the same time should be treated with no emotions.

  • Nicole Price
    January 2nd, 2009
    9:26 am

    Well Happy New Year to you. I mean that and I used my fingers and all :)

  • cleaning business
    January 4th, 2009
    9:37 am

    We offered all of our customers and incredible deal and made it about a new year and a new beginning, nothing about Christmas and we were shocked how well it did. I guess pluralism is going main stream- finally.

    It clearly meant allot more than just a default “Merry Christmas” mailing.

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