One highly effective tool for connecting with all clients at the personal level, while keeping communication costs down, is the personal update note, inside your client greeting cards. Sharing a little bit of personal information about you and your life - as a person, rather than as an advisor - can help all of your clients get to know the real you better. The better clients feel they know you, the longer the relationship will last.
Here are 15 tips for using the client greeting card well.
1) The client greeting card is a great way to connect with all of your clients, simultaneously, at the all important personal level. This connection can only happen when you add a personal note to your greeting cards. We suggest you add a note of six to eight sentences or so. We’ll show you how to do this without your wrist collapsing. Read on.
2) To reinforce point 1, consider carefully the age-old wisdom of
3) Your note will be memorable and effective, only if it is personal in content. Write about your life, hobbies, travels, family, and pets. Don’t write about business.
4) If you want to promote your business, write a letter. Reserve the greeting card for personal communication only. Business content in a personal card is as bad as a signature-only card. However, you can include a useful value added insert of interest which may well be business related.
5) The P.S. is the highest read part of the card. Don’t forget to use it.
6) The birthday (or account opening anniversary) card, and two personal update notes a year, is the perfect mailing frequency to maintain and cultivate your many client relationships at the personal level. Any more than 3 cards a year is too much. Any less is probably too little.
7) Personal update notes should ideally be spaced about 6 months apart. For example, send one on July 4th, and one again at Christmas, or one at Easter, and another at Thanksgiving.
8) When sending birthday cards to married couples, you need to treat each person in the relationship as a unique individual. Never send the identical birthday card to both of them. Change up the note content as well.
9) Clients want to hear your ‘voice’ when they read your card, so write as you speak. Read your note out loud. If you don’t sound natural, re-write it.
10) Make your sentences easy to read. Cut out all excess verbiage. Simplify.
11) Motherhood stuff like “Have a great year.” or “Isn’t the weather awful lately?” all are a waste of ink. Get real. Be personal. Your clients want to read something about the real you.
12) Always sign the card yourself. Don’t ask your assistant to do that for you. Use a greeting card
13) Never use mailing labels or postage machines for a personal note-card. Each short cut diminishes the personal touch significantly. Laser address your envelopes, and hand apply a real stamp.
14) Your master mailing list should represent the essence of your career’s past and future. Be sure to include not only all of your clients, but also your own personal advisors, key centers of influence, important allies, back office supporters and front office VIPs. Warning: don’t cheap out and just send the cards to a certain percentage of your clients. No matter how well you have segmented your clients, the C’s are going to know the A’s, and since your client list is ‘a small world’, this means that you will hurt or disappoint those C’s and D’s who didn’t get a card, but do know a client who received one. Besides, what are you doing with clients that you can’t afford to spend $10 a year on? Fire them if they aren’t worth a card!
15) A good rule of thumb for who should and shouldn’t be on your greeting card mailing list? The people who belong on your personal mailing list are those who know your voice on the phone. We suggest you keep 99% of your prospects off this personal relationship list.
