My wife and I have sent out over 630 real, greeting cards to people since she joined forces with SendOutCards.com almost one year ago. We're on our way to 1000 random acts of kindness!
The kicker is: we never even left our desk. Every physical card was sent from our PC, printed in Utah and mailed for us. No trips to card stores. The wonders of on-demand printing at our fingertips, thanks to the web.
Seriously, though, how neat is that? I absolutely LOVE this service and I regularly recommend it to clients, friends and just about anyone within a 20 foot radius at any given moment. When was the last time you sent a real card (not talking e-cards here) to someone?
Probably the reason you haven't done it lately is it is a pain to do. First you have to remember to pick one up. Hopefully that happens when you're wandering the aisles at the grocery store or you happen to be near a Hallmark store or something, which usually when you do think of the person.
If that is when you think of them, though, you then have to fumble through cards which have already been pawed over, hoping to find just the right card. This can take a while!
If that were how SendOutCards worked, there's no way we would have sent out this many cards. It takes about 3 minutes (I timed it) to send out a card our way. This allows me to invest more time toward what I want to say to the card recipient.
I haven't even touched on the responses we have been getting from friends. These days people are just getting bills in the mail, so when they get a card and maybe a gift (we have included a lot of cookies with our cards for birthdays and so on), it really gets noticed. This is particularly true if we send a spontaneous, just-because card.
The optimist in me says this world could stand more of this kind of thing. People are so consumed by their fast-pasted e-lives these days. A little admiration goes a long way!
