Holiday cards are not what immediately comes to mind when we reflect upon a season full of color and lights, family and love, and hope and reflection. Unless, of course, these cards come loaded with cold hard cash. But I rather enjoy receiving them. They serve as a testament to the amount of friends, family and business contacts we have accumulated over the years, and they hang like temporary trophies of relevance on countless refrigerators and reception desks.

Despite my appreciation for printed holiday cards, I have always been rather slack about getting my own in the mail. Of course, this one would have been a good contender with a Photoshop Santa hat for good measure – that’s my boy!

I did, however, distribute a holiday message for my employer, which is something I have done for many different companies over the years.

The Standard Approach

A common approach for businesses is to send a simple holiday greeting from the company and staff. There is nothing wrong with this. Instead of selling you something under the guise of a Seasons Greeting, a thoughtful card reminding you of the relationship can go a long way. If there is something charitable, humorous or creative about the card, which relates back to the brand of the business, then even better. But there are limitations to print, and it can be equally or more expensive than digital communications.

The Multi-channel Approach

This year I sought to communicate a message to a large and diverse audience across the globe. The recipients consisted of large and medium-sized media companies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and beyond. Companies like McClatchy, Scripps, Gannett, and the New York Times use our technology to publish content to the Web, print, mobile devices and tablets.

Here is a look at what I chose to do (click on any of the images for a larger view):

Email	The email was distributed using Vertical Response, which manages email deliverability such as Bounces and Unsubscribes, as well as Open Rates and Clickthroughs. It also integrates with Salesforce.com to record activity at the Account and Contact level.
Web	Recipients of the email were invited to click over to the company website to view the holiday message. Because the message resided on the website, it served to capture anyone who might have missed the email communication.
Video	A secondary component to the email blast and the website was the invitation to view a video demo on our iPad application. My goal was to keep it subtle so as not to conflict with the holiday message, but it was there and further backed the basic framework the flash animation conveys. I decided to use YouTube for video hosting but a popup to keep viewers from leaving the website.
Advertising	In conjunction with the digital aspects of this holiday campaign, I also made plans to run an ad in key publications focused on our target market. You’ll see that the creative very much matches that of the holiday communications.
Print	Last but not least I was able to complete a printed brochure that further details our capabilities in multi-channel publishing. Site visitors are free to download it from the website.

 

Hopefully this will give you something to think about for 2011. Cheers and I hope you have a wonderful new year!