According to the Greeting Card Association, Americans purchase approximately 6.5 billion greeting cards each year. Annual retail sales of greeting cards are estimated between $7 and $8 billion. The most popular seasonal cards are Christmas cards, with some 1.6 billion units (including boxed cards) purchased each year. Although it's always nice to receive a thoughtful greeting card, they're not exactly the most innovative medium—or at least they weren’t until this season. In 2014, greeting cards are taking on a whole new dimension with their ability to blend interactive elements.

Augmented reality is one of the hottest technologies that is being used to add excitement to holiday greeting cards. For those unfamiliar with augmented reality(AR), it is a software tool set that takes objects and places in the real world and adds a layer of digital information to “augment” (or add insights to) the experience. By pointing the camera of a mobile device at an AR-enabled object, consumers can engage and interact with various types of superimposed graphics, audio, and other sensory enhancements over a real-world environment in real time. When combined with print, AR provides a powerful tool to engage an audience. Marketers and communication decision-makers are beginning to see the value in pursuing AR print applications. Recent examples of AR-enabled print include in-store packaging applications, engineering manuals, educational books, and games. Now greeting cards are also leveraging this technology, and they are becoming more interactive than ever. For example, Hallmark has launched a line of holiday webcam greeting cards. When they receive one of these cards, users only need to download the app to their webcam and their card will come to life in three dimensions.

Figure 1: Holiday Webcam Greeting Cards from Hallmark