As the holiday season approaches, some of you have been asking for advice about holiday business cards for small businesses, to write them or not, to email them instead, which messages and when to send them. I cannot answer individual questions although I would love to do so, I made up those four steps to make your holiday greetings the red carpet business messages to prepare, write and send. In my opinion, once you’re in business, doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur, you have customers, partners, peers and they are all part of your business life and it is good business sense to take every opportunity to thank the people with whom you work and who create your success in a way or another, so yes, you should definetely seriously consider holidays business greetings.

1. Plan early : if you can start before december it’s perfect, because you’ll have more time to prepare, more opportunities to save time to prepare yours lists, to save money with earlier holiday. It’s time for you to choose which kind of greetings you’ll send and to whom. If email is the only way for you to reach your customers or others, then email is your choice. Otherwise if you have people’s adresses and the budget, send your greetings by mail.

2. Make yours lists : your greetings are an huge opportunity to say thank you to multiple types of persons so, you need to personalize your messages according to the receiver, you want to have differents lists : client or customer, partner, peers, employees…Make sure to check and recheck your lists in order to avoid mistakes and oblitions, specially if you »re dealing with peers groups.

3. Design your message : even if you’re sending preprinted holidays cards, you will need a good phrase or two to include in your business holiday greetings. Always think about your readers when you choose your words, unless you’re totally positive about theirs beliefs don »t mentionned Christmas, and avoid the « dear customer » and typed signature whenever it’s possible. Here are two links written and samples where you can find some greetings examples that you could adapt to suit your people.

4. Send at the right time : Many people take time off near the holidays. So take your lists and make sure that emails or mails, you have of all of them, a specific date to send them early enough to make sure their arrive at your recipient’s before they takes off for the holidays. You really don’t want to be waiting until the last minute to show you care and appreciate your business people.

I hope you find those four steps helpful. Let me know down bellow if you have any other process to select and write holidays business cards that rocks !