History
-Did you know that greeting cards used to be a symbol of status and popularity among the wealthy? ! Servants were hired to distribute cards door-to-door, but now we don’t need that anymore.
These days the younger generation are constantly exchanging video clips
Print and Post Card services
Printed cards sent through the post for you. Normally next day delivery in UK. Select card, customise with your own printed text + with photos. Mostly British humour e.g celebrity links. Add gift e.g chocolates, flowers. Pay per card from. £4 incl postage UK
Good range, menus to refine search. 3D cards!
Alternate: https://www.moonpig.com/uk/ Add gift
*** Or Ecards
Cheaper, environmentally more friendly, more personal
Ecards in conventional card format
Openme.com e.g : https://www.openme.com/card-templates/112303
Free. Limited range and humour (xrated)
If you send a lot of cards: https://www.greetingsisland.com/cards Free trial (limited range). Then 2.45€ pm
Moving away from the card analogy you could add an animation to your email message
www.123cards.com : e.g https://www.123cards.com/birthday-ecards/squirrel-boogie/
Some cards a bit dated ? 7 day free trial then 2.49€ pm for unlimited cards
Combine your message with the animation
Perhaps too well known? https://www.jacquielawson.com/
Cute animated cards featuring flowers, balloons and animals. Somewhat over popular. 15£ pa.
More fun Video clips with message. BlueMountain (see also below) for e.g. https://www.bluemountain.com/ecards/birthday/im-so-excited-birthday-famous-song/card-3523241
Personalise the message and the animation
https://www.bluemountain.com/ https://www.americangreetings.com/
You can personalise the video message
Talking messages. Provide your own greeting. e.g. https://www.bluemountain.com/ecards/over-the-hill-birthday/talking-skeleton-birthday-personalize/card-3505792
Or a SmashUp
When you mix the lyrics of All Star (by Smash Mouth) with other songs. Most people think it originated from Jon Sudano. Ex. mixing the tune of shape of you with All Star.
Talking messages e.g. https://www.bluemountain.com/ecards/birthday/dolly-parton-birthday-time-song-personalize-lyrics/card-3499578
Bluemountain and American greetings, 7 day free trial then 20€ per year
Even if Dolly parton is not to your taste, the point is that a video message can be much more interesting than a printed one.
Collaborative videos
The younger generation have almost completely moved away from printed greeting cards (I think) and they are much more used to exchanging video clips almost on a daily basis. For special occasions they collect together video clips from friends and family of the recipient to make a video compilation.
At our age, we are more likely to want to put together messages for a Memorial tribute, but the principles are the same.
It is also nice to get a more personal message on special occasions in these times when we are unable to meet.
How do you do this? Lets look at how to make personal video messages:
There are several websites that make this easy for the beginner to make a collaborative greetings video. How does this work? This is a good website
Concatenate videos https://thebookofeveryone.com/uk/video-greeting
Automatically concatenates video clips to make a viewable video link available free for 45 days. £8.99 to download.
Appending video clips is fine but you might want more creative control of the video. You can not only drag and drop the clips into your preferred order but also trim them as required. Select colours, choose music, and add a brief message for the beginning and end
e.g This site – Vidday
Presentation-Link: https://share.vidday.com/b-fc6g8o
Upload media, change order, Select background theme, select background music invite etc.
NB Video rendring takes too long to do live.
Pricing 5€ 3 min 12€ 3-10 min
Vidhug https://www.vidhug.com/ provides a similar service. 15€ per collaborative video
This is all about sending someone you care about a personal message rather than just buying a card and putting it in the post, so if you decide to make a video message or are invited to participate in a collaborative video it is a good idea to get some tips about what to say e.g.
Presentation-Link: https://www.vidday.com/post/9-ways-to-make-a-great-video-message-for-a-friends-birthday
Finally, I want to show one more video service. These sites are about basic video editing, and this site gives even more options for creating an interesting video. Furthermore they do not charge for creating these videos, the only restriction being that the video will show a banner advert for the site.
You can choose a template to start then, In addition to the ability to join up video clips, you can combine text and media in different preset ways for each video clip and Can upload audio. (more personal than American voice). This shows some of the effects
https://animoto.com/builder/templates/all/happy-birthday-slideshow
Free with branding but Expensive to remove branding 168€ pa
So I hope I have given you some ideas if want to Impress kids/grandkids etc… …