What Is The Most Popular Everyday E-Greeting Card?

Observed annually on November 29th, Electronic Greetings Day encourages us to send an electronic greeting. At the same time, the day reminds us of how much things have changed.

• Greeting cards were initially unsophisticated and mostly featured explicit messages written on wood, paper, and other materials.
• 1869 – Picture postcards started the evolution of greeting card designs. They were first used in Austria and had been dated back to 1869.
• 1910 – The brothers who later founded Hallmark created the folded greeting card around 1910.
• 1930s – Saw a massive change in greeting card designs, with the innovation of interactive greeting cards. Hall Brothers, a favorite greeting card manufacturer back then, designed cards using the die-cut technique. In addition to images, these cards featured moveable parts such as rotating wheels on a greeting card with a picture of a car.
• 1960 – The University of Illinois developed the PLATO system.
• 1960s – Photographic greeting cards did not come into the picture until the 1960s.
• 1970s – The ARPANET evolved into the internet following the publication of the first T.C.P.
• 1994 – Judith Donath created the first electronic greeting card site in 1994 at the MIT Media Lab. It was called the Electric Postcard.
• 1997 – SixDegrees launch introduces features that allow you to create a real profile and connect with people over the internet.
• 2007 – June 2007 saw a wave of emails with the subject “You’ve received a postcard from a family member!” and links to exploitive malware sites.
• 21st Century – The launch of social sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• E-cards are now more popular than ever. The 2020 pandemic brought the need for people to look for new ways to connect in isolation and over long distances.
• The convenience and speed of sending an electronic greeting allow more people than ever to participate in this thoughtful process. We all enjoy it when someone remembers our birthdays, anniversaries, and other important life events.
• While greeting cards continue to be used, electronic greetings are far more cost-effective and mean equally as much.
• These days, things like Facebook stickers and other electronic greetings dominate the field, but the concept remains more or less unchanged.
• These days, social media slideshows and video cards have replaced most E-cards, but electronic greeting card sites aren’t dead. If you want a blast from the past, use Electronic Greetings Day to check out modern E-cards. They’re higher resolution now, and many still have the classic cheese-factor as the E-cards of yore.
• The most popular Everyday card-sending occasion by far is a Birthday, followed by a number of secondary occasions that include Sympathy, Thank You, Wedding, Thinking of You, Get Well, New Baby and Congratulations.
  • The most popular Seasonal cards are Christmas cards, with some 1.6 billion units purchased (including boxed cards).
  • This is followed by cards for Valentine’s Day (145 million units, not including classroom valentines),
  • Mother’s Day (133 million units),
  • Father’s Day (90 million units),
  • Graduation (67 million units),
  • Easter (57 million units), Halloween (21
    million units),
  • Thanksgiving (15 million units)
  • St. Patrick’s Day (7 million units).
    • Galentine’s Day, celebrated on February 13, has increased in popularity for the last several years as women are celebrating their female friendships the day before Valentine’s Day aka…Galentine’s Day!
• Women purchase an estimated 80% of all greeting cards. Women spend more time choosing a card than men and are more likely to buy several cards at once.
• Seven out of 10 card buyers surveyed consider greeting cards “absolutely” or “almost” essential to them. Eight out of 10 of these buyers expect their purchases to remain the same going forward.
• Of the balance, twice as many card buyers
  say they will “increase” their purchasing as they will “decrease” their purchasing in the coming year.
  • Younger card buyers and those who are more technology savvy are currently the ones most engaged in buying paper greeting cards online.
  • Most people now acknowledge many more birthdays than ever before because of social media, but they aren’t necessarily sending fewer cards as a result.
  • The tradition of giving greeting cards as a meaningful expression of personal affection for another person is still being deeply ingrained in today’s youth, and this tradition will likely continue as they become adults and become responsible for managing their own important relationships.
• They are eco-friendly, as they are created digitally and sent electronically, and hence no paper is used.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

Days of the Year

Greeting Card

National Day Archives

Northern Cards