The Automatic Greeting Card: Is It Worth It?

What if you could combine the convenience of an e-card with the personal thought of a greeting card?

Well now you can.

And if you order now, you will also receive...the ability to have custom greeting cards sent on your behalf to whomever you want, wherever you want -- annually or otherwise -- with the click of a mouse. Plus, they'll even throw in your very own custom handwriting font.

No, it's not an infomercial, it's the business model propelling Send Out Cards. A website that relies so much on the hard sell that launching into a paid programming parody feels like the only way to truly do it justice.

Here's how it all works:

As if you're picking an e-card, you pick your card style from the website, fill in the inside with a personal message in a font of your choosing, upload a personal photograph, add an optional gift, fill out both the return address and recipient address and pay the fee. ($2.99 including postage for one basic two panel card)

It sounds like a thing of beauty. Never miss a birthday again, thank your clients with a personal touch and notify friends and family you've moved with more than a mass e-mail. Unfortunately, there are a number of caveats in the business model that, at the end of the day, make mailing out a Hallmark card yourself far less painful.

Send Out Cards isn't just an automatic greeting card business, it's a "income opportunity," a.k.a. a network marketing company where the product itself is not the focus of the business. Send Out Cards' true focus is to recruit "distributors," a.k.a. sales reps, a.k.a. people willing to buy the $398 Premium Package.

The Premium Package includes a contact management system, photo editing software, tickets to something called the "Treat'em Right Seminar," the ability to do card campaigns (send multiple cards at once), a personalized handwriting font (created from a signature you mail in), 200 points (we'll get to that later) and cards and gifts at wholesale price. In tandem with that, any aspiring distributor needs to get the $59 entrepreneur kit, which includes your distributor kit, your own Send Out Cards retail website, DVD, back office support, distributor support and basically everything you need to start recruiting more distributors to sell the Send Out Cards idea in the same way you were sold on it.

Like any multi-level marketing scheme, all "distributors" make money from those they recruit. In this case, they also make commission (the site says up to 30%) for every card and gift bought on their own retail site. Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that $457 is a little more than buying a card at Hallmark and mailing it. Which probably contributes to the fact that, (according to Send Out Cards own data), in 2008, 95% of people in the organization were still at the first "distributor" level, 0.07% were at the second-highest "senior executive" level and nobody (0.00%) was at the highest "Eagle" level.

But what if you just want to send a damn greeting card and you don't want anything to do with being a distributor? Simple question, complicated answer. The site gives you the "retail option" and you can buy cards a la carte, instead of committing to "retail packages" that start at $49. However, the $2.99 per two-panel card a la carte option does not give you a contact management system, does not allow you to upload photos, doesn't allow you to buy gifts and certainly doesn't include your own personal handwriting font for $49. But, so what? Maybe you don't care about any of that and you start the process anyway. Oh, but wait! Before you even start, you need to set up a profile with the site, which makes your e-mail address and phone number required fields.

This is because the site you are now purchasing a card from, is the retail site of the distributor in your area and the form with your contact info (that can't be bypassed) is used so that your local distributor can contact you and try to sell you on becoming a "distributor" like they are. (Literally, as soon as I went through the process and closed the browser window, I had an e-mail from my distributor in my inbox and she was already following me on Twitter)

But let's say you get to the payment stage, you've got your card all done and you're willing to provide your billing information. Even then, you can't just pay because that money has to be taken out of a Send Out Cards expense account, an expense account that doles out points that correspond to actual dollars used for paying for each card. The only way anyone can get points is to buy them through one of the retail packages that start at $49. Even if you just want the small number of points you need to purchase one card, and not the 200 points in the package, you are then informed that you must buy a minimum of nine points for an additional $4.98. Bottom line: a card that was supposed to be $2.99 has just ballooned to almost $8.00, which is still more than a card from Hallmark would cost to buy and mail domestically.

For those that don't want to deal with the hoops that come with multi-level marketing, there is a competitor that provides the automatic greeting card making experience without the hard sell network marketing structure.

Jack Cards Inc. is a U.S.-based company started by friends Katherine Santer and Melissa Kranzo in 2007. In addition to sending the card to the recipient for you, with your personal message handwritten inside, the bread and butter of their site is sending you as many cards as you need in the style that you select. Then, all you have to do is write your message, address the envelope and pop it in the mailbox. With your membership you will be able to pencil in events on your calendar and asked to be notified, so you never forget to send a card again. Membership on the site is free, each card starts at only $2.45 U.S., plus, an additional $1.50 handling fee if you want the card sent on your behalf with a handwritten message. If you're ordering or sending cards meant for an address within Canada, you will have pay the $1.90 international shipping charge, bringing the total for an automatically mailed card to $5.85 U.S. A card you mail yourself costs $4.35.

It's as simple as that. You can "act on your prompting" (as Send Out Cards CEO Kody Bateman calls acting on your thought to send a card) without bleeding money and being roped into the network marketing maze -- or you can just get organized.