Greeting Cards

Next time you want to buy a card , shop your local newsagency first.

Whether looking for a card for birthday, sympathy, thank you, new home, bon voyage or just because, your local newsagency will be better for you than anywhere else.

Here are my ten reasons why shopping for cards at your local newsagency is better than shopping at the supermarket, or elsewhere for that matter.

1. Range. Newsagents have a better range of cards than supermarkets. More cards. Better quality. More options for you to consider. Brands you can trust. For occasions often not covered by supermarkets.
2. Quality. Newsagents have better quality cards. Some supermarkets have cheap cards, which they charge too much for. Like anything in a supermarket, stock gets picked over. I think cards in a newsagency are cleaner, neater.
3. Help. When you want advice on selection, newsagencies have staff who can and will help, willingly. This is fantastic for people who are not sure of what to buy.
4. Comfort. No trolleys pushing you or people trying to get past doing their weekly shop. The local newsagency is more relaxed. Take your time. Choose the card that says what you want to say.
5. Price. Newsagencies have cards covering a broader price range. You can shop the range depending on the occasion. You have more choice.
6. Service. If you cannot find an envelope, need a pen to write on the card or some other help, the service is there in a newsagency. It is less likely to be there in a supermarket.
7. Loyalty. Your local newsagency is more likely to offer rewards for your loyalty. Sure, supermarkets may give you points, but what are they worth? Who knows!
8. Community support. Your local family run newsagency is more likely to invest more support back into the local community than a supermarket.
9. Guy friendly. The local newsagency is a more guy friendly shopping destination than a supermarket.
10. It’s good business. Your local newsagency will be a small business, a family business. The money you spend there will have a more direct economic impact than if you spend it with a national supermarket change. Spend to make that difference I say.

Local Aussie newsagencies have excellent ranges of cards, backed by wonderful, knowledgable, personal service.

Next time you want / need to buy a card for someone you care for, go to a newsagency first. Oh, and let them know that you deliberately did this instead of shopping at a supermarket.

Thank you.

This photo shows our opening pitch for Valentine’s Day in the newsagency. This is at the main entrance to the business.

I call it the opening pitch as the placement will move twice through the season. We are supplementing this in-store placement with a series of social media posts starting later this week. Social media is playing a big role in our marketing spend this year. We have a budget, which is measured against sales outcomes.

While we will get good traffic for Valentine’s Day card purchases, those who actively promote outside their businesses set themselves up for great success.

2018 is already showing itself to be a year for making our own success.

Several have reported excellent early Valentine’s Day sales. Each went out a day or two after Christmas, replacing Christmas singles. While most Valentine’s sales are in the last week, early display captures those who plan ahead and reminds others you are in this space.

Valentine’s Day is an excellent season for pitching the broader gift range in the business. It for this reason that I suggest newsagents not purchase gifts that are too Valentine’s focussed. Rather, they can buy items that will sell all through the year as well as for this season.

The season is also an opportunity to pitch the business as a card destination. It is important for Valentine’s day cards to be close to other cards, to encourage purchases outside the Valentine’s purchase.

I was in  the US last week and saw plenty of Valentine’s displays. The photo shows the range in a Walgreens store in the midwest, in Winconsin in December 27. The major retailers, like Walgreens, run like clockwork with stores required to take down and put up seasons on a national calendar.

Note their use of the shelf at the top of the card fixture, pitching bags. This is excellent use of the space and drives gift bag purchases.

Newsagency businesses remain a key destination for Valentine;’s Day card purchases. We can leverage this by in-store and out of store promotion, especially out of store.

I am curious about the commitment of other newsagents to foreign language Christmas cards. We have Greek and Italian covered but that is it.

Years ago, the range was bigger. I’d love to know what others do in this space.

I think taking cards off permanent fixtures to make room for seasonal cards is a mistake. If non-seasonal cards are good enough, valuable enough, important enough to be given space on permanent fixtures then they deserve that space all through the year.

People die during seasonal card buying occasions. They get engaged too, and marry. Babies are born. People have birthdays!

You can’t sell cards that are in a drawn.

Typo has a good range of $1.00 Christmas cards, pitched different to the cheap Christmas cards you see elsewhere.

Given the shoppers Typo typically pitches to, this range could do more to introduce people to buying cards than taking sales from more traditional outlets. That is what I want to think at least.

We have this Hanukkah card at the counter with Christmas cards from the designer range. These cards are not a top of mind purchase, hence the placement at the counter. The work well as an impulse purchase. They are help speak to the broader appeal of the business.

While Hanukkah isn’t the “Jewish Christmas”, it occurs at a similar time of the year. Having the cards enables shoppers to respect jewish friends at the same time as they share Christmas greetings.

If you see yourself as a card specialist / destination, having Hanukkah cards is important.

After a review of its Australian business, UK card company Carte Blanche is closing its Australian branch. My understanding is staff finish up this week, someone told me it is today. Simson is taking on the card range and Jasnor is taking on the plush range.

I have not seen communication from Carte Blanche so I do not know the arrangements for returns.

Kudos to the folks at Simson for being out early, yesterday, with same sex engagement and marriage cards. They have a terrific range that is already being pitched to retailers. Beyond the good news at the imminent removal of discrimination, new marketplaces have opened and opportunities cities for our businesses will abound.

Put cards where people are most likely to purchase them.

While that sounds like common sense, many newsagencies are not structured or built for this approach.

Historically, newsagency businesses have been established with a card department created on the belief that anyone wanting to buy a card will enter the shop and look there. And they do, in good number.

However, cards only in the card department misses the opportunity to win impulse purchase business.

With many more types of retailers selling cards today compared to just a few years ago, we need to get better at tapping into the impulse purchase opportunity. Hence my advice:

Put cards where people are most likely to purchase them.

This means putting cards with gifts, in multiple locations in-store, and doing this with the careful thought of an editor making considered style decisions. It also means reviewing the placements every couple of days, to ensure they remain what you want.

Adjacencies matter with the type of card placement I am outlining here – the right products with the right cards. The goal is to sell both, oh, and a bag too.

Almost every department in a newsagency can support thoughtful card placement. But not all at once as that defeats the purpose of shining a light on cards.

There are obvious choices like baby cards with baby gifts, like in the photo with this post. Teacher cards with teacher gifts, male birthday cards with male birthday gifts.

But what about a display of gifts with sympathy cards, new home cards or thank you cards. In these three we have opportunities to source gifts to support the placement of a selection of cards from each caption outside the gift department.

Growing card sales in the newsagency can be achieved if we engage with cards in ways that have not been common for us. This suggestion of thoughtful placement of a small selection with gifts and other items is tactic way I am sure can help grow card sales.

Note to card companies: don’t tell retailers what cards to place where. Let them make those decisions in-store. By all means support with space efficient stands that are not made noisy with branding. However, retailers haver to make editorial decisions themselves.

While we know that around 60% of Father’s Day card sales are in the last two retail days of the season, already we are seeing year on year card unit sales up by 18% and revenue up by 21% – reflected in data to the end of last week. This is in a store that has been established in its current location for seven years, in a centre with another newsagency and many card competitors plus Father’s Day outposts.

Several factors are combining to play well for us including:

1. Consistent pitching of discount vouchers. A shopper who is not a regular getting a voucher for some other purchase often looks for what else they could purchase, to leverage the cash discount on the voucher. Our Father’s Day cards are situated to leverage this.
2. More consistent pitching of heartwarming Father’s Day cards on social media.
3. Consistent placement of a changing cycle of Father’s Day cards at the counter.
4. Launching a unique range of appealing and visually fresh Father’s Day targeted gifts that only twenty retailers in Australia have and using these as a traffic draw.
5. Attracting shoppers to the season using a stunning bold signpost visual merchandising.

We are also consistently executing what has worked well for us in previous years: Father’s Day cards on the lease line, rewarding card shopper loyalty, Keeping the card range looking fresh. Sequencing cards in the display based on our knowledge of our shoppers.

Interactive cards lend themselves to being used on social media to promote range. Where a good card has sound and terrific visuals we shoot a short video to use. The feedback online is good and sales in-store reflect the value of this type of use off social media for promoting cards.

Here is one such short video we have used recently with success.

Christmas cards are already selling in Gretna, Scotland. I love their use of Twitter.

It is easy to attract more likes for your business Facebook page if you use photos of carefully selected cards.

Take this card from Hallmark, for example. It features an image people will stop at rather than scroll past on Facebook. That is key to any Facebook post – getting people to stop rather than scrolling past.

Social media posts are multi-layered. first you ant them to stop. This is achieved by a fun, beautiful or shocking image. next you have text to support the image. finally you have something for them to do, to click or ring or some other way engage. This third piece is about them acting. It is not essential – it all depends on the goal you have for the post.

In the average newsagency card department there are hundreds of cards you can use for different posts, cards that call out range, fun and emotion, cards that help to make your business appealing beyond what people expect from your business.

If you are reading this and thinking that you don’t have the time I would say to you: you can’t afford to not do this. It is vital to the future of your business. Too often newsagents leave the card department to do its own thing. That will see you only sell cards to destination shoppers. Your card sales will decline.

By being proactive about cards, using fun and emotionally charged cards, you can expect to achieve net new traffic for cards and this is bonus revenue off the back of low or no cost marketing.

I urge you to take a walk down th cared aisle right now and choose a few cards for the type of post I a suggesting. I am confident you will find them.

Here a post I did recently along the lines of what I am proposing here. It pitches sympathy cards. It achieved engagement from more than 1,000 people. As you can see it is easy to choose good content, write a short post and get it live for shopper engagement. A small $$ boost on facebook can help you reach beyond your own regular community.

It all depends on whether you want to increase card sales. If you do, have a crack at this approach. If not, leave your cards to do the work for you … and watch sales match your overall store traffic.