So Channel 4 did a piece covering the demise of Clinton Cards last week and in the piece featured a lady called Sharon Little (pictured below). In this piece she said that eCards were just a “bit of an insult” and that people hated receiving eCards and that they are just viruses. We thought as we had not been given a chance to put our side of the industry that we would detail what is wrong with this.
1) Sharron Little run an organisation, the GCA, which charges companies a percentage of their profits generated from printed greeting cards. This means that effectively they are a pressure group whose charge is to promote printed greeting cards and to put down every form of greeting format. Their opinion is thus biased and needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. We actually tried to join the GCA and they told us that eCards were not part of the greeting card industry and to generally naff off.
2) Levels of friendship: According to facebook people have 156 friends which are in their network but this can be classed as friends, family and acquaintances. Close friends and family and friends might amount to 20 people and people might want a printed greeting card for these people. So what about the 136 other people (acquaintances) who also have birthdays? eCards fills this gap perfectly, they are free to send and now that people can post eCards directly to facebook walls all your school mates (you are friends with) will see this greeting card can get involved in wishing friends well on their birthday. We believe eCards have a significant role to play in keeping your friends network engaged.
3) Postage charges: It now costs 60p for a 1st class stamp. This is getting to a point where people are just not going to use it because of the cost. Couple this with the state of the economy and we see printed cards being sent less and less and eCards sent for free becoming evermore attractive.
We are really proud of the service we offer our users and we hope you support our view that eCards do have a position in the market. The bottom line is that actually you can do both if you want and ecards should be the first thing people do because they are free and people love receiving them. Whether you send a printed Cards depends really on how close they are as friend.
Sharon Little (GCA)
Channel 4 News Piece
