"A lot of the families that use our service come from Alabama and from the Atlanta area as well," says Bobbi Griggs, who cofounded Beach Butlers, a grocery delivery service for vacation home renters, with her husband five years ago after moving from Park City, Utah. “To get new customers, we advertise locally in those markets and then we also work with property managers here, sort of as a value-added service that they can recommend to their new clients," she says.

But because their business is primarily geared toward making their customer's arrival at a vacation home more enjoyable, recruiting new customers can be tough. Often, it means having to wait until a client that heard of the Griggs' service during their first visit returns to the area the following summer. As a result, holding onto current customers, who act as a valuable source of word-of-mouth advertising, becomes even more important to growing their small company.

"So, in 2005, I started sending out simple, holiday cards as a nice, friendly follow-up to the families who used us in the previous season," explains Griggs, who handwrites personalized notes on each card (a considerable task given that this year she sent out nearly 350 of them). "It doesn't cost much and everybody still loves to receive cards in the mail," she explains. "And by using a beach theme on the cards, I hope to bring back some of those nice vacation memories that our customers had and have them think of us as well."

While Griggs doesn’t formally track the holiday cards' effectiveness, she has empirical data that speaks to a successful direct mail campaign. "We get nice comments all the time from people who, when they call in and place an order, express their thanks about how much they liked the card and how they tell all their friends about us," she says. "And, from 2006 to 2007, we experienced about 60% growth in overall business," she notes, adding, "next year, we’re going to have to add two temporary employees to deal with all the deliveries."