You don’t often see retailers, including newsagents, actively promoting sympathy cards. Maybe, they don’t want to be seen to be promoting or making money off of death. Maybe they don’t like what they have to sell.
Sympathy is a card caption where the card itself is critical to striking the right tone the card giver wants for the situation. This is why range is critical and why people take more time choosing a sympathy card than some other captions.
The thing with expressing sympathy is … it is hard to do, hard to get just right. This is where we retailers play a key role, if we engage.
Too often, the only marketing activity newsagents engage in with sympathy cards is having them in the appropriate pockets in the card department. While this is okay for serving destination shoppers, it misses the opportunity with those who might otherwise, this time, not give a card.
For the sympathy category to help people express themselves, we need to reach outside the card department, in-store and elsewhere, and shine a light on expressing sympathy,. showing different cards, difference voices, through which ti can be done. We need to do this in a way that is respectful yet retail outcome focussed – we are in business after all.
Here his one way I ddi this with newsXpress recently, using video, for social media…