HOW TO TRAIN A NEW GENERATION ON HOW TO CHOOSE AND WRITE GREETING CARDS

For the future of greeting card sales, we need to train more people about them, why they matter and why people of all ages should give cards. We have to make more customers, locally.

Our advice is that you host an event to train young people in choosing, writing and giving cards.

Here are reasons cards are an important way to let people know how you feel, what you think of them:

1. Cards last longer than a text message.
2. Cards are a keepsake, bringing comfort years after the card was given.
3. Cards reflect history, being handed down across generations.
4. Cards can say thing you may not have the words for.
5. Cards have more warmth than pixels on a screen.
6. Choosing, writing and giving or sending a card takes more work than a message on Facebook or a text message. It shows you care.

Here is our advice for an event designed to attract people who don’t usually buy cards, who don’t like buying and writing cards or who never know what to write.

1. Set a date and time for the event. We suggest when the shop is closed. Offer food and drinks as a lure. You could do this close to a major season.
2. Give it a good name: Card buying and writing for first timers. Life training: how to choose and write an awesome card. How to win a heart with a card.
3. Pitch that you will have people of various ages to offer help.
4. Let them know that you will help with the words so they never struggle to write something on a card again.
5. Offer a 25% discount off all cards purchased on the night – or some other compelling discount.
6. Offer free postage on any cards purchased and written on the night.
7. Consider discounts on other products on the night too, to maximise the opportunity.
8. Try and have a grandmother or grandfather tell how much they love getting cards. Have a girl tell what she likes about getting a card.
9. Walk people through the card department and explain the different captions and why each occasion matters.
10. Have a sheet with suggested messages to go on cards.
11. Get people engaged with your cards. Have them choose the funniest they can find, the card that scares them the most, the most unusual and their all-time favourite card.

The goal of the event is to get people engaged in the category and through this to learn how your business is placed to help them next time they might send a card.

The success of the event will depend on the people you have in the shop who run it and the way you market it outside the business. It must feel like it would be fun.

Thinking about the marketing further, it could be you run the event as a grandparents and grandkids joint event, hopefully targeting grandparents of teenagers or twenty-somethings. They come in pairs and work together on the project.

Alternatively, you could run it as mums and kids of a specific age range (17 – 24 for example) where they get to do something fun together.

Or, you could run it in association with a community group where they pitch the people to come.

The more entertaining the event sounds the better traction you are likely to get. Think of it as you are creating an entertainment event for locals, giving them something good to do, that helps your business along the way.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT.

We need to grow the population buying cards. We can do this by educating them about cards and showing that giving a card is easy. This is important to our businesses.