How to Use Business Greeting Cards to Build Customer Relationships

Business greeting cards are one of the most powerful relationship marketing tools that anyone can use. They are ideal tools for small businesses who want to build their clientele and keep more of those that they have right now. Research has demonstrated that for every 5% of those customers you retain without having to re-obtain or re-prospect for, you can expect a 50% increase in sales. It is far, far less expensive to maintain existing customers than it is to find new ones or win back lost ones. Doing whatever you can to please and retain your existing client base also gets you more prospects and in a far less expensive way, in the form of referrals.

Yet, business greeting cards are under-utilized as relationship marketing tools today. We are so used to electronic communications that the printed greeting card is falling by the wayside. But a personalized printed card that someone can hold in her hands is still the more touching way of communicating a personal message. Customers mainly abandon their loyalty to a business because they feel neglected. They don't get enough personal contact or they don't get enough personalized attention. If they were to receive more attention, more customers would keep doing business with the same business.

Business greeting cards are a perfect tool for the small business owner. Small businesses are more personable than large corporations by their very nature. Small businesses cannot usually compete with large ones on price, so they must compete on service and on their capability with relationship marketing. Imagine placing yourself in your customer's shoes. How would you like to get nice personalized card in the mail every October from a local business whom you first became the customer of three Octobers ago? This makes you feel remembered and appreciated. You feel like a human being, not like a walking dollar sign.

Many businesses assume that by giving their customers great products at competitive prices they are making people feel appreciated. But business greeting cards transcend this and go further with making a person feel wanted. When you are in the role of prospect and you have a choice between two competitors with essentially the same pricing and the same business model, how do you decide if you should stay with one or try out the other one? It comes down to the relationship that you feel you have with the one you're with. If you had reason to believe that their competitor could make you feel more at home, you would switch over to them. And this is the kind of thing that happens to small businesses all the time.

Business greeting cards send the message that you care and that you are cognizant of the particular circumstances of somebody's life. In addition to sending out a card on somebody's anniversary of having become your client or customer, there are plenty of other good reasons to send them one.

• Their wedding anniversary.
• Their birthday.
• The Christmas season holidays or other big holiday seasons.
• Their children's birthdays.
• If you find out that a special event has just taken place in their life.
• Sending out a "thank you" card after every time a customer makes a new purchase from you.

If the cards are appropriate and their message is sincere and timely, there is no shame in this "shameless self-promotion" marketing technique. Relationship marketing is all about giving your business an aura of quality that others lack. A business that practices it will set itself apart from all others that don't. Many people are willing to pay for quality service and they are willing to remain loyal to those that deliver it.

Business greeting cards demonstrate that you understand that people do business with other people, not with commercial entities. As business practices are tending to become more depersonalized and communications more automated and remote-feeling, you will stand out from the crowd with your card sending practice. You'll give yourself the edge in relationship marketing and that will bring you more referred prospects, more retained clients, more money -- and all for less cost.

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