Last year, I wrote about thank you gifts for mediation clients and referrers. In the post, I suggested sending Thanksgiving cards instead of Christmas cards as part of your mediation marketing strategy:
“I thank my clients and referral sources at Thanksgiving instead of in December because:
- No one else does, so my thank you stands out.
- I can neatly sidestep the entire Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Chrismukkah thing.
- Thanksgiving is a time of giving thanks. What better time to give thanks to those who chose me or suggested my services to someone?”
The nonbillable hour’s Matthew Hohmann has now added a couple more good reasons to send Thanksgiving cards:
“3. Thanksgiving cards have a long shelf life. Literally. What do people do with holiday cards? They display them. If you send a Thanksgiving card, it will be likely be the first one up on the mantle, and will probably stay there, alone at first, until Christmas card season is done.”
and
“5. At Thanksgiving, there’s still time for your clients to do end-of-year work. This is perhaps the least-recognized, yet best reason to send Thanksgiving cards: they’ll generate more end-of-year business for you. When you send a Christmas card, it is already too late for most clients to get more legal work done before the new year. By the time the holiday rush is over, they’ve forgotten what they wanted you to do, and wait probably wait another year. A Thanksgiving card can give them that subtle prompt when there’s at least a month left before the rest of the holiday’s hit, allowing you to close the year on a high note.”
And a commenter on his post echoed the value of sending a Thanksgiving card:
“I couldn’t agree more. We’ve been sending T-giving cards for at least 15 years. We actually get thank you notes for the cards. It’s great to visit a large client office and see our cards displayed in many offices. We also get Christmas cards from people who likely wouldn’t send otherwise. This is just one more connection.”
If you order now, you’ll have them in plenty of time!
Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.
My favorite mediation group has a “harvest festival” every year and has a dinner around the time of Thanksgiving rather than Christmas, etc. cards and it has always worked very well for them.
You’ve made an excellent suggestion.
Stephen M (Ethesis)s last blog post..Class in America
Stephen, what a lovely idea to host a harvest-time group gathering instead of the traditional Christmas event. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d feel like I could sit back and enjoy an event at that time of year more than during the “holiday” season when people seem so frenzied.
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