Looking to send electronic holiday greetings to your business contacts? Something with more oomph than a waving Hello Kitty figure or, even worse, spam?
A Port Chester e-card company has found a professional way to do just that.
Yourcards.com allow a company to incorporate its logo on e-cards. The logo can be clicked on to lead directly to that company”™s Web site.
And, the card can be customized so it can be literally sent through that company.
“What we are doing is taking the e-card business and turning it upside down,” said John Aslanian, founder of Yourcards.com. “Before this, there was no professional way to send greeting cards out online. We saw a big opportunity to serve the business community to allow them to customize cards that come from them and actually link back to their Web site.”
Launched just in time for the holidays, the free e-cards give professionals a new way to wish business contacts a happy new year.
“We are strongly confident it will resonate with the business community,” Aslanian said.
According to proprietary research conducted by Insight Express for Yourcards.com, approximately 60 percent of all Internet users send e-cards at least once during the year.
White Plains-based MyFunCards.com also offers a paperless and free option for businesses looking to send holiday cards this year.
“We are hearing of more and more businesses sending e-cards versus paper cards because it is more cost-efficient,” said Tim Allen, general manager of MyFunCards.com.
To keep up with the demand for professional e-cards, the site is coming out with a line of formalized e-cards next week.
“We are targeting your local dentist who wants to send e-cards to his patients,” Allen said. “It”™s a very standard card, but it”™s professional-looking.”
Allen said customization and personalization are important qualities users look for in e-cards, which can be found in the site”™s photo cards category, that allow users to upload a photo and add filters, borders, animated effects and text.
Group e-cards can be passed around to co-workers, who can sign the card and arrange for it to be sent to the recipient on a certain date.
“E-cards have continued to grow in popularity as people become more attuned to instantaneous types of communication,” said Barbara Miller, a spokesperson for the Greeting Card Association (GCA), a national trade organization representing greeting card and stationery publishers as well as suppliers to the industry.                          Â
Miller said the first commercial e-cards were produced in the mid-1990s.              Â
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“Rather than taking the place of paper-based cards, e-cards tend to compliment them,” Miller said. “Generally when you send an e-card it”™s more causal, fun and spur of the moment. Paper cards are far more a keepsake.”
Yourcards.com”™s mission is to provide high quality and creative cards on the Web with the added benefit of a free, easy-to-navigate, ad-free site.
“We took a look at the industry and there was clearly a great need for a focus and better quality card,” said Aslanian, who founded the company, formerly Month2Month.com, in 2006.
The cards can take anywhere from three weeks to two months to create, Aslanian said.
It all starts with an idea or concept, and then the cards are created in-house.
The six-person staff of artists, animators, and designers is solely focused on growing, Aslanian said.
“Right now we”™re in a growth phase,” Aslanian said. “We need to build up the user base to 1 million users. Once we do that, we have a unique business model plan that will start to roll out that will monetize those users with online advertising.”Â
