Get your holiday card list right
Build the list, let Tether suggest who belongs on it, and send current addresses straight to Minted, Postable, or Shutterfly.
What this is
A holiday card list is the single worst-maintained list most people own, and it fails silently. A wrong phone number bounces and you fix it. A wrong address just swallows the card — the envelope goes out, nothing comes back, and neither of you ever finds out.
Tether fixes it at the root: for anyone you are connected to, you do not maintain their address at all. They do. You never update this list again.
Before you start
- You need a Holiday Cards circle. Tether creates one for you, so it is almost certainly already there.
- The people on it do not all have to be on Tether. Connected people supply their own address; for everyone else you keep the address yourself, the ordinary way.
Steps
- Open Circles and find Holiday Cards.
- Tether suggests people who look like they belong. Approve the ones that are right and ignore the rest — this is a few taps, not an afternoon.
- Add anyone the suggestions missed. Search by name and tap to add.
- When it is time to order, open the circle and choose Export.
- Pick your card service — Minted, Postable, or Shutterfly — and Tether formats the list the way that service expects.
What to expect afterward
Next year, do nothing. People who moved will already have the new address on the list, because the address came from them and not from your memory of a change-of-address card you may or may not have opened.
The export only carries what the circle is actually allowed to see. If someone has not shared their address with that circle, they are left out of the file rather than exported with a blank — so you find out before the envelopes are printed, not after.
Troubleshooting
Someone I expected is missing from the export. They have not granted their address to that circle. Open their card and check what the Holiday Cards circle can see; if they are a connection, the fix is theirs to make, and Tether will tell you what is missing rather than guess.
A suggestion looks wrong. Ignore it. Suggestions never add anyone on their own — nothing joins a circle without you approving it.
I want a plain file instead. Export also produces CSV, JSON, and vCard. See Take your data with you.