I received three Thanksgiving cards yesterday from three different firms– one was a custom design that made an extremely positive impression, the other two were the SAME stock card that looked mechanized and devalued the repute of the recipients.

I have addressed best practices to ensure holiday cards contribute to lawyer personal business development and where they fit in a law firm marketing plan in a prior article published by the ABA. These cards bring up additional concerns I have not previously addressed.

First, you don’t want to convey that you treat clients in a cookie-cutter fashion. You run the risk of this buying a standardized card from a stock printer.

Second, skip the mass signing absent at least one signatory writing something personal to the recipient. One of the cards I received is signed by seven people, none of whom I recognize. It does have the firm name on it. I looked it up on the Internet and do not recognize the firm. Bad mailing list!

The good card? It had pictures of firm members as they worked on various pro bono and charity projects over the past year. On the back, it explained each event. Classy. These people think about what they are doing, they preapre. Perfect messaging. I read the summaries, spent five minutes with the card, and feel more positive about the firm than I did before.

Other holiday greeting card approaches that work year-after-year– one of our clients has holidays scenes painted by its lawyers, another shows art created by spouses or commissioned. These always get a great response. Pictures of your people also get consistently high marks– yes, high marks. Firms that invest in the holiday greeting card process get positive feedback.

In the end, our recommendation is to a better (custom) card, preferably mailed, to a controlled (small) mailing list. Treating it as a mass mailing just does not get the job done, and may wind up being a negative.