Hallmark Teams Up with Alexa to Send Holiday Greeting Cards

Hallmark is teaming up with Amazon to offer personalized holiday greeting cards through Alexa Skill Blueprints, a way for anyone to create and share customized Alexa skills in just minutes. The greetings are available on the Alexa Skill Blueprints website and include custom Hallmark images and personalized messages.

“Advancing our work with Amazon is a top priority for Hallmark,” said Sara Beth Burton, general manager of digital commercialization with Hallmark Greetings. “As more consumers rely on voice services like Alexa in their daily lives, we thought this would be an opportunity for us to test new technology and make Hallmark greetings available in a new way.”

This month, Amazon launched the new Hallmark Holiday Greeting blueprint on its Alexa Skill Blueprints website. Skill Blueprints enable anyone to create and share their own personalized Alexa skills using a set of easy-to-use templates—no coding required. When a customer clicks on the Hallmark Holiday Greetings blueprint, they receive step-by-step instructions guiding them through the process of creating the skill. Customers can select a theme featuring artwork designed by a Hallmark artist and choose a message written by Hallmark writers and narrated by Alexa. There are also options to record custom messages and upload custom background images. Then the customer can share their skill with others so the recipients can receive their Hallmark greeting card through their own Alexa-enabled devices.

“The holidays can be hectic—that’s why we’re excited to team up with Hallmark to make it easy for Alexa customers to send personalized holiday greeting cards to their friends and family,” said Rob Pulciani, Vice President, Amazon Alexa. “The new Hallmark Greeting Card blueprint makes it easy for customers to stay connected with their loved ones in a unique and fun way through voice.”

For more than 100 years, family-owned Hallmark Cards, Inc. has been dedicated to creating a more emotionally connected world. Headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri and employing more than 30,000 worldwide, the approximately $4 billion company operates a diversified portfolio of businesses. Its global Hallmark Greetings business sells greeting cards and gift wrap in more than 30 languages with distribution in more than 100 countries and 100,000 rooftops. Hallmark Retail operates 2,000 Hallmark Gold Crown stores in five countries and Hallmark Home & Gifts sells a broad array of home décor and gift product throughout the U.S. Crayola® offers a wide range of art materials and toys designed to spark children’s creativity around the globe. Crown Media Family Networks operates three cable channels – Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and Hallmark Drama – in addition to Hallmark Publishing, the e-books division of the Hallmark channels, and Hallmark Movies Now, a subscription-based streaming service. Crown Center is a real estate development company that manages the 85-acre hotel, office, entertainment and residential campus surrounding Hallmark’s headquarters. For more information, visit Hallmark.com.