Image by Kiera Duggan

In a former office workplace, we used to look forward to the holiday cards folks would send us. The administrative assistant would hang each holiday card in the front entrance, and we’d look at the new cards daily. In the age of social media, I’m pleased to see that holiday cards are beginning to morph into virtual cards and engagement strategies. Goodbye standard pre-printed card with scenic snowscape on the front. Hello creativity and innovation! You’ve got my attention when you send me a video card. (Now, how do you hang those up?)

There are two types of holiday video cards: the humorous video (that often parodies something known) and the end of year annual appeal. Each has its advantages.

Humorous Holiday Video Cards

In a humorous holiday video, I want to see another side of the company’s personality and the staff in the video. I love feeling like I know the company a bit better, which makes me feel as if I have a stronger relationship with them. Humorous videos can be forgiven for a lot: they don’t have to be professionally produced or scripted well. However, they have to have heart, soul…and humor.

The best video card that I received this holiday season was from See3. I loved it because it is incredibly innovative and it’s humorous. At the outset of the video, the view is asked to enter his/her name and mobile phone number (See3 promises not to keep this information). During the video, Santa’s elf calls to find out if you have been naughty or nice this year. Get this: your phone actually rings and a recording asks you to answer the question. Depending on your answer, the ending changes. (Hint: being naughty is more fun.) See3 left me wanting to know more about using this technology integration.

Runner up was a hilarious holiday card video animation from Eckerd College. The college created a custom animation mocking the university President’s lack of social media skills. I’m not familiar with this university (the link was passed to me by @Ashli_Cooper), but I can only assume that the President is quite tech savvy. According to the material on its website, Eckerd College was named #7 of the Top 20 Wired Colleges of 2008 from PC Magazine. It’s also worth checking out their website page of previous Eckerd College holiday cards.

I also really enjoyed a holiday e-card sent to me by Donor Tools and created by jibjab. Unfortunately, the video was embedded in an email so that I could not link to it. However, check out some of the jibjab video e-card options here. They all ask you to put faces to animated videos, and the videos are quite funny.

Image by PAUL

Serious End-of-Year Video Cards

If your organization wants to produce a serious, “we have accomplished so many things video,” it must be produced beautifully, visually stunning, and tell a compelling story. If it isn’t, I’ll click away instantly.

I was moved by the New Israel Fund’s end of year video. “If Israel Were A Village of 100 People, What Would It Look Like?” is as powerful a video as I’ve ever seen, and it is just words and images. It is is the story of the demographics of Israeli residents, but also compels you to think about inequality.

Honorable mentions:

The Rhode Island School of Design‘s annual giving campaign video. Though not a holiday video card per se, it’s humorous and sentimental, gentle and compelling. It is a mix of claymation and a live actor.  In the video, a RISD grad recieves an annual appeal letter and remembers an old college friend.  As reviewed by @Elisa_Hebert, it was “really cute and made me want to give.” Who doesn’t love a cute, sentimental, animated monster?

Hubspot‘s holiday video card “We Wish You a High Conversion” features the Hubspot staff singing by the fire. It shows off some of the company personality, with creativity.

The Toronto Community Foundation‘s holiday video has a lot of heart. It features a gift being passed from employee to employee, filmed in several locations around Toronto. Though not humorous, it has heart and soul, and connects you with the staff.

Lastly, I also want to reference an audio holiday recording that is not a video card. I’m including it because it is genuine, warm, and inventive. It is a window into how much Karen Zapp cares about her clients. She was kind enough to allow me to link to her audio recording of A Carol for Associations (to the tune of Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!) and A Carol for Charitable Nonprofits (to the tune of Angels We Have Heard On High!)

Happy Holidays to all of my wonderful, giving readers. I wish you a very happy new year, and look forward to many more conversations in 2010!

The direct marketing agency Epsilon just released a new study by ROI Research revealing reasons why people most often unsubscribe from email lists, and the rates at which they unsubscribe. Not surprisingly, the most often-cited reason (67%) is irrelevancy of emails. The second highest reason (64%) was high frequency of emails, and the third most-cited reason (50%) was fear that their email addresses were being sold or shared. Conducted by ROI Research, the study is based on an April 2009 survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries.

Image courtesy of emarketer

Image courtesy of Online Media Daily

In essence, the reasons most email list subscribers unsubscribe boils down to:

• receiving messaging content that is irrelevant to the reader
• not understanding the needs of the customer
• mistrust of the company sending the email

If your company or organization uses email lists, then why not use social media to cut down those unsubscribe rates!

Social media platforms (Facebook, twitter, blogs, MySpace) create conversations, which tell you exactly what the readers want. Use the conversations with your customers/fans/clients/donors to inform the content of your email messaging.  Are certain blog posts shared frequently online, while others die the fate of the unseen post? Why is that? Do you receive lots of comments on certain topics or videos? Utilize the information you learn from your social media interactions so that email messaging won’t suffer from irrelevant content.

Social media relies on trust because it is incredibly transparent. Due to the nature of the medium, people search for information about you before following your blog, Facebook page, or joining your company’s social network. They’ll “out” you if your company’s activities are not completely transparent, and become your biggest fans if you are. Remember the controversy over the fact that some Twitter users have “ghost twitterers,” who post to Twitter under the actual user’s name? However, if they find value in the engagement, they will pass that value along and bring their friends to you as well.

Use social media to allay the fear, once and for all, that your organization will never, ever sell or share the names of its email list subscribers. Write a blog post about it. Create a conversation about why that isn’t your organization’s policies and how you value the privacy of all your subscribers. Refer to these conversations in your email messages and ask email subscribers to contact you directly online if they want to ask further questions about privacy.

Remember the “golden rules” of social media: Be Yourself. Be Transparent. Listen. Engage.

You can’t listen and engage in an email blast, but you can take the information from listening and engaging on social networks, and use that to make your email messaging relevant and valuable to your stakeholders.

Do you have other ideas about how social media can decrease email unsubscribe rates? Please share them in the comments!