Have you been getting a plethora of promotional emails lately, claiming to be Christmas greetings? Yet when you open these emails up, you find them to be promotional emails? To be honest, these emails have been flooding my Inbox for the past few weeks! To the point that it's almost annoying to be seeing them resurfacing again and again now.

So what has Christmas got to do with an article distribution company like us?

Obviously, we can choose to behave like everyone else, and hammer everyone over the head with tons of sales pitches. But that doesn't really help matters does it?

You see, Christmas is about home and family. And I know, for a fact, that many businesses are taking Christmas as an opportunity to bring in more profits. I can understand this. Businesses have expenses to cover. They have bills to pay, and employee wages to take care of. So it looks like every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing the same thing.

Fortunately for us, we are a small outfit who doesn't have the pressure like the bigger guys out there in the market. So we can afford not to promote anything this time round. In fact, we recently just wrote a letter, sincerely wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, without a single sales link on the letter.

The letter is a Christmas greeting. It contains fun and interesting information about my home country, Singapore, as well as some events that took place during the year. I introduced some food that my country has to offer, and showed everyone a Christmas tree that I had in my house.

Now you may ask, "Why am I doing this? Is there some ulterior motive?"

No, there is no ulterior motive. Like I said, there wasn't a single sales link on the letter. But I am trying to build a relationship with my customers. And it's hard to build a relationship when you are forever talking about business. How do you form a healthy relationship with someone who is forever asking you to spend money? It's almost impossible.

So I took the opportunity to take everyone's mind off business, and allow the relationship to grow. We learn more about one another, we exchange emails, and everything just takes off naturally from there. I personally think there is little need to try and sell and sell and sell whenever there is the slightest opportunity. That just kills off any chance of a pleasant relationship.

When you really think about it, that's what marketing is really about - building healthy relationships with other people. They may be your customers, your suppliers, or anyone you come into contact with. When you create the conditions for relationships to bloom, you set yourself up for success.

So do you now see the relationship between Christmas and article distribution? We used the holiday, and article marketing as a channel, to build healthy relationships.

Now what have you been doing for the upcoming Christmas? Built any meaningful relationships lately? No? Perhaps it's time to start.