Holidays and birthdays
The message you rewrite three hundred times, written once
Every December the same thing happens. You start sending warm, personal notes. Around the fortieth one the warmth runs out, and the rest of the list quietly does not hear from you at all.
The problem
Copy, paste, change the name, send. Repeat until the feeling goes.
Holiday messages are the one time of year most people genuinely try to reach everyone. And it is the one job that punishes trying: the same words, retyped by hand, hundreds of times, in an evening.
The two escapes both cost something. The group text turns a personal greeting into an announcement and hands everyone everyone else’s number. The bulk email lands in Promotions next to actual advertising, which is a strange place for “thinking of you this year” to end up.
So most people do neither, and forty people hear from them, and the rest do not.
What it is for
The four sends that come round every year.
Christmas and New Year
The big one. Everyone in your address book, each getting their own note with their own name, from your own number. New Year often lands better — a quieter inbox, and it includes everyone regardless of what they celebrate.
Eid, Thanksgiving, Diwali, Lunar New Year
The greetings that go to the part of your list they actually mean something to. Group your contacts once and each send takes minutes.
Birthdays worth a crowd
A parent’s eightieth, a friend’s fortieth. Everyone who loves them, each sending their own note on the day, coordinated by you without a group thread.
Writing it
Two rules, and the second is the one people get wrong.
Use their name and almost nothing else. Type ::firstname:: and each person reads their own. Resist the urge to merge in more than that — a greeting that references a detail you have never discussed reads as a database, not a memory.
Say one true thing about your year. This is what separates a message from a card. “Merry Christmas” to three hundred people is pleasant and forgettable. One honest sentence — what changed, what was hard, what you are grateful for — is the thing people answer. The preview shows you each finished message before it sends, which is where you catch the sentence that sounds like a corporate newsletter.
And plan for replies. A warm December message to a large list produces a startling number of them, several from people you have not heard from in years. That is the return on this, but it is easier to enjoy if you did not send it at 11pm on Christmas Eve.
Questions
What people ask before the first send.
›How do I send a Christmas message to all my contacts?
Send each person their own. A group text at Christmas is the fastest way to make a warm message feel like an obligation being discharged, and copy-pasting the same text three hundred times is the afternoon nobody has. Human RM writes it once and delivers it as a separate message to each person, with their own name in it, from your own number.
›Do people mind getting a holiday text that went to others?
They do not know it did, and it would not matter much if they did. A holiday greeting is understood by everyone to be a gesture rather than a bulletin. What people mind is being visibly one of four hundred names in a thread, or being addressed as "all".
›What about birthdays — can it remind me?
Human RM does not track dates for you; it is a sending tool rather than a calendar. What it does well is the moment you already know about: everyone who has a birthday this month, or the whole family on a grandparent’s ninetieth, each getting their own note.
›Is New Year better than Christmas?
Usually, for two practical reasons. Christmas messages arrive in a flood and compete with several hundred others, and not everyone you know celebrates it. A New Year note lands in a quieter inbox, includes everybody, and gives you room to say something about the year rather than just the day.
›How many people is too many?
There is no limit in the app. Messages go out one at a time with a short pause between each so carriers stay comfortable, which means several hundred takes a while — start it and leave it running. The practical ceiling is how many replies you can answer, not how many the app can send.
Three hundred people, each hearing from you personally, in one sitting.
14 days free, the whole thing. Then $12 a month.