business xmas cards, worth doing?

The one's my company has sent out this year are awful and I'm embarrassed to be associated with them. Send clients booze instead.

We used to send 250 odd and receive about the same say 20 years ago

we now send about 100 and have thusfar received 2 !

an e card in my view has no sincerity whatsoever along with those self righteous messages that say we have donated our christmas card budget to a charity (when you know full well they havent )

they wont have any negative effect but judging from the experience above its a thing of the past ...I am sad to say

depends on the business i think, i work for a small family owned business and we have accounts with suppliers for well over 30 years, majority of them drop us in a few bottles or a few crates of beers for the lads on the trade counter and send xmas cards and its if anything expected, this year however it has been noticed who hasn't sent anything at all, so for our business if we didnt recieve anything it has been noticed and a few of the reps have even been pulled on it, personally for me i dont really want a bottle of cheap red wine, but the owner thinks its a principle thing.

Pointless exercise.

We do an email nowadays but haven't even done that this yrar

yes .. make them eye catching but with NO glitter .. they show that you're on the ball and value your contacts/clients/customers .. however .. a bottle of spirits and chocies for the gals/wives goes down even better .. only for the biggest spending clients though .. a calendar/diary for a select few is better than a card though more expensive of course

Can't talk on the business side, but on a personal level I can honestly say that I've found few things in life as liberating as deciding that I won't be sending xmas cards any more (except those to Roly and Pinocchio, of course).

razil said:

views please?

No, send me a bottle of whisky instead. Islay best.

I can only say as someone who once received a lot of Xmas cards from firms.
I enjoyed receiving them. Primarily, I suppose, because they tended to be of a much higher quality than the ones my cheapskate friends and relatives sent!
Also nice if all the contacts signed them individually.
I guess at the end of the day, anything that gives a business an edge is worthwhile. So if two businesses were vying for a contract and there was nothing to choose between them on price/quality, then a punter might go with the one that sent a card.
Perhaps a better option though is to send out something which might bring your name into a customer's brain 365 days a year. So, a quality calendar or mug or something similar might be a better option than, say, a bottle of booze which has been drunk and gone for recycling by Jan 2nd.

I send Christmas cards to all of my clients. In fact I've just finished writing them.

I would estimate that every year I generate over £10k worth of extra income that wouldn't have happened if I'd not my myself in their thoughts.

Each to their own but for me Christmas Cards are the most financially rewarding marketing I do, and by comparison it costs, virtually, nothing.

Awful things, I'd say rather than having no effect the actually have a negative effect on my perception of the supplier that's sent them.

A text message saying "have a merry Christmas and we'll catch up in the New Year" is way, way better.