Greeting Cards

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.

I have seen some amazing card designs at overseas trade shows this year, extraordinary designs, on point, different, fun, unique. And then there are celebrity card designs for which I suspect the publishers ay too high, like these:

Even though I am not the customer, I suspect these cards next to two of the best designs from an unknown designer targeting the same shopper would se the Taylor Swift cards remain unsold.

The cards are not bad. They are just not current to what cool designers are producing today. Sure, they have her name. But is that enough?

I am in New York for conference this week and dropped into several retailers early this morning (Feb. 14 here). In one CVS store the were refreshing their card department ready for anticipated big sales:

In the UK there are more raunchy Valentine’s Day cards than in Australia. The cards in the photo, click for a bigger image if you are game, are the tame ones from the raunchy mix. I got tons of card shops and the really dirty ones are what people were drawn to for a laugh.

The Reject Shop two doors away from the newsagency has started pitching cards on the lease line including these 75 cent cards. While colleagues tell me they have seen cards at this price before, I don’t recall seeing them. I can’t recall, either, seeing a strong pitch for cards on the lease line at The Reject Shop. While their shopper is not ur shopper, I look at the price and think how low will they go?

As for the cards, they are what I expect for the price, cheap, flimsy and clip-art graphics. However, they would only have them if they sell.

From a newsagent husband to his newsagent wife. Gold. It’s the thought that counts!

I love it!

I checked in with the move from last weekend of putting a selection of single Christmas cards at the newsagency counter.

It has worked a treat.

Some customers swapped cards they had selected for cards we had at the counter. Others added cards to their purchase.

The keys to selection were the careful selection of the cards in the unit and their specific placement.

This is a small step move by us, one which has paid off with extra Christmas card sales. It is the type of move all of us in retail need to make more often – small moves at key traffic stops to get shoppers buying that extra item or two.

I hope others tried this move.

We were all but out of single Christmas cards having achieved a 20% increase on what we did all of last year up to Christmas Eve. Things looked bleak, we preparing to take the stands off the shop floor. Then, our core card supplier found product from nearby major retailer and a secondary supplier filled some gaps. This means we are able to maintain close to a full range through to Christmas Eve and this is important so we can see how far we can take it.

Suppler support like this is invaluable, especially in this last week before Christmas. We are grateful to ur suppliers for their help, especially going to a competitor business and moving stock from them to us.

It’s the Christmas spirit!

Christmas counter card sales in this newsagency are up 34% year on year. They have accounted for 27.16% of all card sales in the last 14 days. Besides a good range at the entrance to the store, it is signs like this used in the business that encourage purchase. The message is a reminder about the low cost to send someone a message this Christmas.

To provide context as to the scope of the growth, this is a business doing $1,200 a day in cards alone over the 14 day analysis period.

Talking with a newsagent yesterday they commented they never send Christmas cards, can’t see the point. This was in a discussion about business performance including discussion about falling card sales.

We need to help Australians understand the value of cards. One way we can do this is by personally engaging with the category ourselves, personally. Hence my question about sending Christmas cards.

We ought to show people the value of cards by sending them. Not only at Christmas time but at other times through the year, especially for non traditional occasions – to help Aussie understand how valued receiving a card can be.

Given card sales nationally and in our channel, this should be mission critical for us. It is up to us to pitch cards as an ideal way for expressing ourselves. Christmas is a terrific season for doing this.

Rent here in Hong Kong is high. Retailers need to make the most of the little space they have. hence these compact displays for cards, holding more stock per pocket than we see in Australia. Here is how cards look:

Here is a close up of a couple of pockets.

It has been fascinating looking at card retail here and learning from some innovative retailers – not so much the retailer where I took these photos though.