Making Your Year-End Email Feel Personal Again

While I don’t miss the stress of compiling the list, printing the labels, licking the envelopes, and let's not forget paying for the postage, I do in some ways miss the tradition of sending holiday cards. It was a nice way to reflect on the year and recall awesome projects. My Mom loved sewing little embroidered ornaments to stuff inside, and creating the cards on Canva or Vistaprint with my own personalizations was always fun. In a way, the ritual made you slow down. You’d sit at your desk with a cup of cocoa, look back on the people who crossed your path, and send a little piece of cheer out into the world. That kind of pause doesn’t always happen anymore.

But now, on the other side of 2020’s pandemic, we’ve decentralized and work occurs just about everywhere, and likely nowhere published on a company website. So we turn to email…UGH! Still, for as impersonal as digital communication can feel, it’s also the one tool that reliably reaches everyone no matter where they’re working or what timezone they’ve drifted into. And because of that, it can actually be a lovely way to reconnect when you approach it with intention.

If you’re relying on email for a newsletter blast or end-of-year message, there are a few things you can do to make it memorable for all the right reasons and making your year-end email feel personal again.

As convenient as ChatGPT is, write it yourself. Using your unique voice will help to keep it sounding more personal, even if you are sending it to hundreds of people. With AI you also run the risk of it inserting long tail keywords which, while delightful for SEO, doesn’t exactly sound like a natural conversation.

Be brief. People are tired. They don’t want to spend any more time in email than they must. A brief reflection is plenty.

Don’t be overly emotional. Laying it on a bit thick ultimately takes away from your message of simple gratitude and hope for the future. While you may have had an amazing year with lots to be grateful for, keep it humble.

Don't forget it’s about your customer. Try to stay away from talking about “Me”, or “I”.

Overall, express gratitude, take a short look back, and share your hope for the new year. Maybe share an anecdote that reflects your larger message. A quick, relatable story goes a long way in reminding people there’s a human behind the keyboard.

A few things to avoid?

Don’t list every project you felt was a win. Odds are you’re not sending the note to the one who would care.

Resist the urge to Google greeting card language. Anything overly flowery sounds inauthentic.

Save the hustle for January. This is not the time to make your pitch. This is a time to be genuinely grateful.

And for pete’s sake, send the note from the address you used to communicate with your client. You want to be a reminder, not a new presence in their email box.

All in all, when your note feels like it could have been written by a real person with a warm mug of coffee or tea, sitting at their desk, people respond to it. They know you, and now is a time to appreciate that relationship.