We track our Christmas cards - who we send to and from whom we receive. If you asked me to tell you whether we'd been getting more or fewer cards over the last few years, I'd say fewer. I'd say no one sends snail mail anymore, and few people take the time or expense to connect via the Christmas card anymore. You saw this coming, though, right? I was wrong.
According t
o our spreadsheet, we actually received more than twice as many cards in 2008 as we did in 1997. The chart was created in Google spreadsheets, btw. Now, in that time, we've also increased the number of cards we've sent. in fact, this year, we're sending way more than we received last year. But that's not actually the point. The point is that the number of cards has increased during the period in which snail mail was dying. Actually, there were two big leaps in our card-receiving: 2002-2003 and 2006-2007. I have theories to explain both.Before 2002, we sent department store cards and didn't write a Christmas letter; we'd just sign them and write a paragraph or so. The paragraphs got shorter and shorter as we got to the end of the alphabet. In 2002, we sent our first family Christmas photo card featuring the two of us holding an adorable baby. Bam, next year, we break 50 cards received. Then, in 2005, we started writing a Christmas letter, too, and we started including funny and cute quotes by our kids. We've gotten a ton of feedback from family and friends that they really like our card, mostly the quotes. It took a while, but I think that explains the jump from 2006 to 2007 as well. The better the Christmas card we send, the more we get in return.
This reminds me of when we had Madeline Stanionis, an email fundraising expert speak at a work event. A woman asked in the Q&A "how do we get people to read our email and not unsubscribe?" Madeline's answer was at once brilliant, simple and challenging to execute: "Send good email."
