The Christmas card is dead - long live interactive viral Christmas cards, Christmas games & Christmas e-mail marketing tools!

Viral has been a big word over the past 2 years and the Christmas season presents organisations with the opportunity to use viral communications that is justified for existing & potential customers. This can take  the form of interactive viral Christmas cards, viral Christmas games & even more the more basic, viral animated Christmas card delivered by e-mail. These are underneath the ''soft'' exterior marketing tools aimed at either building the relationship with the customer or creating new opportunities with new customers.

When developing marketing tools like interactive Christmas cards or Christmas games, it is very import to be ''''contextual''''. In other words, if you business is selling smoked turkeys, then any interactive content created should feature turkeys (in some humorous way naturally). This builds a deeper connection between your brand (which should feature prominantly within the content), your product and the ''''positive'''' feeling experienced by the person experiencing the marketing marterials you have sent (disguised as an interactive Christmas card).

A classic example of this missed opportunity is the ''''elf tossing'''' game, which achieved massive popular presence - most people had played or at least heard about the game - but no one was aware of which company the game was promoting.

For this reason, when designing & developing interactive Christmas cards or Christmas games for our clients, E-creation spends a large chunk of time developing a strong conceptual ''''backbone'''' to the content, that not only makes the content engaging and interesting, but builds the profile of an organisation.

This approach is more time consuming (and therefore more costly) than simple applying a company logo and name to a ''''pre-prepared'''' Christmas card or Christmas game - and for this reason - most of our clients tend to be larger organisations with a large database of customers or potential contacts that they can send the content to, reducing the ''''cost-per-contact''''.

For example, a typical interactive game development might involve 1 week for concept development and basic illustration of content, 1 weeks for final design & 2 weeks for programming with an average cost of around £10,000. If this was viewed by 50,000 people, then the cost per ''''contact'''' is 20p per person - or less than the cost of a first class stamp.