The hidden admin cost of doing corporate cards in-house

On paper, sending corporate cards is simple. You order the cards, sign them and send them. Most teams budget for the cards and assume the rest is free.

The rest is not free. It is just hidden, buried in the hours of whoever gets handed the job. Usually that is an EA, an office manager or someone in HR who already has a full week. The cards are the cheap part. The admin is what actually costs you.

What "just sending cards" really involves

Walk through a single seasonal run, say Christmas cards to clients, and count the steps.

• Sourcing and design. Finding a supplier, choosing a card, getting your logo and a message laid out, proofing it, then reordering when the colour comes back wrong.
• The list. Pulling names and addresses out of a CRM, removing duplicates, fixing the ones that are out of date, and formatting them so a mail merge doesn't mangle them.
• Signing. Hundreds of cards, by hand, because a printed signature feels impersonal. So it lands on a rota of people who would rather be doing their actual jobs.
• Addressing, stuffing and stamping. Envelopes matched to cards, sealed, labelled and franked or stamped.
• The post office run. Bundling it all up and getting it there before the last posting date.
• The chase. The few that bounce back, the VIP who got missed, the reorder when you run short.

None of these steps is hard on its own. Put together, they are a quiet, repeating drain on your most organised people, and it comes round again every Christmas, every birthday and every client milestone.

The cost you don't see on the invoice

The card has a price. The hours don't show up anywhere, which is exactly why they get ignored.

But add up an EA's time across sourcing, sorting the list, signing and posting a few hundred cards, and the labour often costs far more than the printing, for a job that adds nothing to their real role. Worse, because it is a chore, it gets rushed, skipped or done late. The thank-you that was meant to strengthen a client relationship turns into a missed deadline and a stressed team.

The hidden cost isn't only money. It is the cards that never get sent because nobody had the time.

The fix, in three steps

This is the whole reason Greetd built Send Direct. You keep the part that matters, deciding who to thank and what to say, and hand off everything that eats the hours.

1. You send the list. Names and addresses, however your CRM exports them.
2. We design, print and pack. With free design support to get your card and branding right, as a bulk run or as scheduled individual sends.
3. We post each card direct to the recipient by Royal Mail. They open a card on their desk and nobody on your team touched an envelope.

No signing rota, no post office run, no chasing bounces. The relationship-building still happens. The admin disappears.

If you would rather have the cards in your own hands to send yourself, that is the bulk-to-office model, and we will help you work out which one fits your team.

What this is worth to your team

The point of Send Direct isn't really that it sends cards. It is that it gives your EA, office manager or HR lead their week back, and makes sure the cards that were meant to go out actually do, on time and looking right.

That is also why it is the page our outreach points to. It is the clearest example of the admin Greetd takes off your plate.

See what it would cost and save for your team in the ROI calculator, or request a free sample pack and see the quality before you commit to anything.