At the end of 2011 my wife was participating in a women’s bible study at our church that centered on gratitude. As the women in our congregation talked about what they were discovering through this study I began to realize something: I sucked at thanking people.
I’m not talking about being bad at saying the words “thank you” to be polite, but at really expressing thankfulness to the people around me. Saying “thank you” to my mom when I pick up my daughter after some “grandma time” is easy. Telling my mom that I appreciate her taking the time to be a significant part of my daughter’s life, on purpose, that’s different.
I am aware of the gratitude that I have, but if I don’t express it…is it real? I’m not sure.
I also noticed that I was terrible at telling my customers that I appreciated them for choosing Date-Line. I had taken their loyalty for granted and I decided I needed to start expressing my appreciation when they did us the honor of allowing us to produce work for them.
So I designed a thank you card with our logo on it and started sending out at least one card every business day in January of 2012. It didn’t take long before I decided it would be fun to make some original cards that were funny or silly to make the message more personal. I designed a handful of cards and continued sending them out, at least one every business day.
Soon it occurred to me that others might like the designs. Travis and I decided we would start selling the cards in our lobby for cheap. As in 50Â¢ for a 5×7″ card with an envelope cheap. The point wasn’t to make a bunch of money, but to share something we were already making and give people an avenue to easily express their own “thank you’s”.
We set up a spinning rack in our lobby and customers really responded to them. I made a few more designs and continued sending cards out, at least one every day.
After a while I came to Travis with another idea. This time the idea was borderline crazy, but Travis and I have worked together for a long time so he is used to it.
I told Travis that it would be fun to create a program where we actually gave the thank you cards away. For free.
We talked about it for a while and worked through the logistics. It’s funny, my first fear was that no one would sign up. Then I did some math on postage and that fear was quickly replace with the fear that everyone would sign up. We decided it was worth it and I’m not afraid anymore.
Today I am excited to announce that our Free Thank You Cards program is now accepting participants. It’s really simple, too. Just fill out a small form and we’ll send you some free cards the next day. After that we’ll fire of new original designs every 3-months in August, November, February, and May.
I hope you will take 30-seconds and sign up today.
I love that you send out a thank you card every business day. I love your card designs and that you make them available at Date-Line. Thank you for motivating me to express my thanks more. I actually put two of Date-Line’s thank you cards in the mail today. Gratitude is meant to be expressed. I don’t think it counts if its not expressed. I signed up for your free cards…..what a great and generous idea. That puts a smile on my face!! Thanks, Geoff & Travis!!!
Thanks! I didn’t get your sign up info though. Did you go to http://www.datelinedigital.com/thx/ ?