How to Send eCards in Bulk (Without It Reading Like a Newsletter)

Sending one eCard to a whole list sounds like a mail merge, and that’s exactly the problem. The moment a card reads like a mass mailing, it stops doing the one thing a card is for. Done well, a bulk eCard is the same card sent to forty clients, and each of them opens something that feels addressed to them. The difference is in five details: the list, the personalisation, the timing, how it’s sent, and how people can opt out. Here is how to get each one right.

1. Start with a clean list

Everything downstream depends on the spreadsheet. Before you upload anything:

• One row per person, with a header row. At minimum: name and email. A timezone column helps if your list spans countries.
• Use the name they actually go by. “Dr Elizabeth Morgan” in your CRM may be “Liz” in every email you’ve ever exchanged. The card should match the relationship, not the database.
• Remove addresses you haven’t written to in a year or more. People change jobs. A dead address bounces, and a batch of bounces makes mail providers trust every later send a little less.
• Check for duplicates. The same person under a work and a personal address will get two cards and notice.

A good tool checks the list for you before anything is saved: missing names, malformed addresses, unknown timezones and addresses that have bounced before. Fix those first. A list that is 95% right sends 5% of your cards nowhere.

2. Personalise the part that’s read first

You are sending one message to many people, so the personalisation has to do a lot with a little.

Their name in the greeting. Dear {first_name}, filled in from your spreadsheet is the minimum, and it matters more than it looks: it’s the first thing read, and the difference between a card and a circular.

Their name on the card itself. On a designed eCard, the recipient’s name on the front (“For Priya”) does the same job before the card is even open.

A different line for a few people. You won’t write forty bespoke messages, but you probably have five clients where something specific happened this year. Give those rows their own message. Everyone else gets the general one.

For the message itself, see holiday messages for clients and thank you messages for clients. The rule from both: one real detail beats three adjectives.

3. Write one message that sounds like one person

If the card should come from the team, write it as one message from the team (“From all of us at Acme”) rather than collecting a dozen signatures. Twelve signatures read as personal on a card to one colleague. Copied onto forty client cards, the same twelve lines read as a form.

Keep it short. A bulk eCard is read on a phone, between other things. Three or four sentences: thank them for something, wish them well, sign off.

4. Send it at the right time, and not all at once

Each person’s morning. A card that arrives at 9am lands in the day’s first look at the inbox. One that arrives at 3am is buried by breakfast. If your list spans timezones, schedule by each person’s zone rather than yours.

Spread out, not in a burst. Fifty identical emails leaving in the same second look like a spam run to the servers receiving them. Spacing sends a minute or two apart looks like what it is: one sender, writing to people they know. It also means that if part of your list is stale, the bounces trickle in rather than arriving as one spike, so your other cards keep getting through.

Not on the busiest day. For holiday cards, early to mid December beats the last working days before the break. For thank-yous, within a week of the thing you’re thanking them for.

5. Send each person their own copy, never one email to everyone

Avoid the two shortcuts people reach for:

• One email with everyone in To or CC exposes your whole client list to your whole client list. Don’t.
• BCC from your own mailbox hides the list, but it’s still one message to many people, often flagged as bulk, and it can’t put each person’s name on anything.

What you want is a tool that sends a separate email to each address, each with its own link to its own copy of the card.

6. Make it easy to say no

Some people don’t want cards from suppliers, however nice. Every bulk eCard should carry a way to stop them: a link in the email and, ideally, support for the unsubscribe button Gmail and Outlook show beside the sender’s name. It’s courteous, it keeps people from reaching for the spam button instead, and in many places it’s expected for anything a business sends to a list.

Doing it with TeamRally Cards

TeamRally Cards does this for lists of up to 25 people per send, free:

1. Make a card and choose Send it to a list.
2. Write one message. {first_name} fills in each person’s name.
3. Upload or paste the list: name and email, plus optional timezone and an optional message that replaces yours for that one person. It’s checked row by row before anything is saved.
4. Each person gets their own copy at their own email, with their name on the front, at 9am in their timezone, one to two minutes apart. You see who it went to and who opened it, and every email carries a way to stop cards from you.

Putting your logo, colours and company name on it is optional, at $19 for the year. For lists in the hundreds or thousands, a paid sender such as eCardWidget or ekarda is the better fit; we compare them in corporate holiday eCards and eCardWidget alternatives.

Checklist

• Header row; name and email on every row; timezone if the list spans countries
• Names people actually go by; stale addresses removed; duplicates removed
• Dear {first_name}, in the greeting; a different line for the few who’ve earned one
• One short message, from one voice
• Each person’s morning; sends spread out; not the last day before a holiday
• One email per person; never To/CC/BCC to the whole list
• A way to opt out on every email

Frequently asked questions

How do I send an eCard to multiple people at once? Use a tool that sends each person their own copy from a spreadsheet, rather than one email to everyone.

Can I personalise a bulk eCard? Yes: their first name in the greeting at minimum, and a different line for the few people where you have something specific to say.

Why shouldn’t bulk eCards all go out at once? A burst looks like spam and makes bounces arrive all together. Spread them out and send in each person’s morning.

Is there a free way? For up to 25 people per send, yes. For hundreds or thousands, you’ll need a paid sender.

Related: corporate holiday eCards · eCardWidget alternatives · holiday messages for clients · send one card to a list