Sending eCards with Paperless Post

Remember the pre-social media days of the Internet when we’d chat with our friends on AIM and send e-cards on our birthdays? I used to spend hours combing through the different card options, testing out various animations, and adding annoying songs and joke messages. Well, those days are back via a company called Paperless Post. I recently tested out Paperless Post’s services, and it took me back to those e-card days – only they’re a lot less cheesy than the jokey cards I used to send. Here is my experience sending out cards and invites with Paperless Post.

How Paperless Post works

Paperless post offers numerous message options from cards to stationary and invites for multiple events such as holidays, birthdays, and weddings. You can browse through each category individually or search from a master list of events.

Each message option comes with a variety of design features. These features include cover images, backgrounds, logos, and envelopes. They’re purchased using coins that you buy and add to your account. Each coin is worth about 40 cents, but you can get discounts as low as 10 cents per coin based on how many coins you purchase at a time. Then, you use these coins to customize and send your cards, letters, save the dates, invitations, announcements, and stationary.

Once you’ve purchased your coins, you get to work designing whatever type of message you want to send out. As you make your selection and personalize it, you can see how many coins it costs to send out each one. You also have the option to preview each feature as you personalize it.

Designing a card

Running a blog is like running a business, and as a business, it’s nice to send out holiday cards to our subscribers. But rarely, if ever, do we swap mailing addresses. Instead, we have email lists. This is where Paperless Post comes in handy.

With Paperless Post, bloggers can send out environmentally friendly holiday cards to their subscribers. Their site is easy to use and comes with multiple templates that you can personalize with your brand colors, logo, and distinct style.

I never know what to write inside a card. So, I appreciate the fact that these cards come with messages already printed inside. Unlike printed cards, though, you can tweak the message if need be.

I especially love their typeface options. There’s a variety without being too many to choose from. As someone who struggles with decision making, this saves me a lot of time from trying hundreds of fonts until I decide on the one I want. All are elegant scripts that you’d find in a Hallmark card, and they don’t charge you to change the font.

The same goes for their text colors and spacing options. It gives you just enough options to really personalize the card to make it unique without feeling overwhelmed by options.

Designing envelopes

Just like classic e-cards, Paperless Post e-cards include an e-envelope which you can customize. You can alter not only the outside of the card but the inside design as well. Each feature costs one coin.

The next step takes you to the front of the envelope where you choose the text font for your address, and you can choose to purchase additional features such as virtual stamps and other designs.

In the upper right hand corner of the screen, you’ll see the cost for each card you’ll send out. If you’re sending the same card to multiple recipients, keep in mind how many coins you’ll need to send the card to everyone on your email list. To send the sample card that I designed cost five coins per copy.

Sending a card

You have the option to preview the card before you send it and go back to correct or alter any features. When you’re ready to send, there’s a screen to add your recipient names and emails. You can keep an address book full of emails that you’ve requested from your contacts, imported from your email or a file, or you can enter them manually.

There are options to send the card immediately or schedule for later. I sent my sample card to myself to see what it looked like. It showed up in my inbox immediately. I also got a notification that my card had been delivered.

The front of the envelope I had designed appeared in my email body with my name written on the front in the font I had selected and the stamp I had chosen in the upper right hand corner. Above the envelope is a button that reads “view the card.” After a few seconds of loading, the card opens itself, and there is your message.

You can track your message to see who in your email list opened the email and who did not. That way, you can ensure that the email at least got to your recipients and find out who engaged with it so that you don’t continue to spend coins on messages that get deleted.

I recommend paperless post to environmentalists, bloggers looking to add a personal greeting to their mailing lists, or those nostalgic for the e-cards of the past. Check out Paperless Post here! 

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