The Importance of Business Cards in a Digital World

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

In today’s tech-charged world, where people carry so much information in their pockets, it’s reasonable to question the value of the traditional business card.

But business cards are still a key marketing tool for new entrepreneurs, even in 2023. A thoughtfully designed card can do a lot to propel your business forward. Modern business cards, both the traditional paper variety as well as digital ones, can expand your name in the marketplace, strengthen your distinct brand, build connections and legitimacy and, ultimately, drive sales.

The importance of business cards in today’s world

Business cards remain unquestionably valuable even as technology swirls around us. They represent another outward extension of your brand, a powerful device to connect with customers and a handy tool to legitimize your business.

Whether you are running a new or established operation, business cards are a savvy, cost-effective and relevant marketing tool offering a range of business-boosting benefits. From easily sharing contact information to shaping potential customers’ perspectives about your venture, here are nine reasons the modern business card remains relevant.

1. Share information in the simplest way.

For all the promises and speed of the digital age, business cards are the most straightforward way to share key information about your business. You never know when you’ll meet a potential customer or partner, so it’s smart to have business cards on hand. When you share your business card, you’re handing the recipient a tidy overview of who you are and what you do.

2. Make a positive first impression.

Having a high-quality, well-designed business card at the ready signals professionalism and preparedness. It legitimizes your business and, particularly for new ventures, delivers a shot of credibility.

If you went to a fancy restaurant and received an error-laden menu on plain copy paper, wouldn’t that compel you to question the establishment’s quality? Odds are it would. The look and feel of a business card can similarly inspire confidence, elevate your brand and distinguish you from competitors. With premium stock and features like embossed gloss, you can show you are an invested professional who’s focused on the details.

3. Encourage further engagement.

Hosting key business information, such as your website, email and phone number, a business card encourages people to contact you, visit your business (online or in real life) and learn more about you. Another way to encourage customers to engage — and hold on to your business card — is by adding an incentive. Maybe it’s a free consultation, or a 10% off coupon when they make their first online order. Handing someone a business card can be the first step in forging a relationship…and strong relationships are critical to business success.

4. Provide a tangible reminder.

Remembering names after a first introduction isn’t a skill that comes naturally for very many people. Offering a business card takes that pressure off and increases the likelihood that the person you just met will put together your face and name and ultimately contact you again. Business cards can also prompt people to schedule an appointment, swing by your shop or peruse your products and services online.

5. Let people spread the word about your business.

Personal referrals and word-of-mouth advertising drive business results. Cards are frequently passed along from person to person, or you may arrange with colleagues or other businesses to distribute each others’ information. An artist, for instance, could display their business cards alongside their pieces for interested aficionados to collect and share, or a bridal boutique might gather up the cards of local tailors, florists, photographers and caterers to recommend to its customers.

6. Spark conversation.

When you tell someone you own a restaurant or fitness studio or another niche business, they’ll probably want to know more. Handing them a business card pushes that conversation forward. And if your business card features a unique design or dynamic feature, you’ll have even more to talk about.

7. Direct people to your digital experience.

When a business card lists your website or social handles — or features a QR code that will instantly open your site on a smartphone — you increase the likelihood that people will enter your digital orbit. Once there, they can explore your products or services, connect with you on social media, book an appointment with you online and more. Business cards open the sales funnel and increase the probability of customer conversion, which is the ultimate goal of any marketing endeavor.

With URL and QR code information, modern business cards are like a ticket that leads people back to you. Anyone who receives your card has a tangible reminder of your interaction and won’t have to do any legwork to track you down. Even if a person tosses your business card after they connect with you on social media, the card did its job in securing a valuable digital follow-up.

8. Create brand consistency.

Much like a sponsorship banner at an event, business cards offer a branding opportunity. Putting your logo on the card creates a consistent brand experience that becomes recognizable and easy to remember. Take your brand consistency up a notch by using the same color palette and fonts across all of your marketing materials…including your business card.

9. Give insight into your business.

Business cards say something about the vibe of your business. If you run a fine-dining restaurant, then a premium paper card featuring foil accents can underscore your establishment’s high-end feel. A wedding photographer specializing in a photojournalistic style, meanwhile, might feature their best spontaneous image on the back of their card to demonstrate their skill at capturing unscripted moments. Your font choice can also speak to your business’s style — are you whimsical, or scholarly? Feminine or masculine? Minimalist or maximalist? That fine-dining restaurant might opt for a sleek sans-serif font, while the photographer might choose typography that feels more free-spirited.

Modern business cards that can really work for you

Your business is one of a kind, and your business cards should reflect that. Fortunately, a diverse array of business cards are available to fit your vision, objectives and budget. Standard business cards usually come in glossy, matte and uncoated stock, and there are many potential upgrades to enhance them. You can also explore premium options, including unusual shapes and textures, such as rounded corner cards and eco-friendly papers. Specialty options like waterproof plastic cards or painted edges can further differentiate your business.

VistaPrint Tip

To create an especially distinctive, individualized look, commission VistaPrint’s design services and collaborate with a professional designer.

For small business owners who are looking to bridge the real and virtual worlds and stay ahead of the tech curve, consider digital cards. Business cards with QR codes can instantly bring smartphone and computer users to your web store, help them to make online appointments, prompt them to join a loyalty program and much more. You can even take it to the next level with near-field communication (NFC) business cards. With this tech, potential customers and partners can use their smartphones to scan a chip embedded in your card and transfer your information directly to their devices.

It’s worth noting that digital business cards are growing in popularity given their customization potential as well as their straightforward and contactless nature. In fact, the market size of digital business cards is expected to top $242 million by 2027, according to Market Research Future. The timeless benefits of traditional business cards coupled with the common usage of smartphones enhance the appeal of modern business cards and present new opportunities for engaging with customers and partners.

The evolution of the dependable business card

Whatever your industry, the age of your business and the services or products you offer, the tried-and-true business card remains an essential marketing tool.

Business cards empower a more personal introduction to a prospective customer, deliver a tangible invitation to further engagement and give your business credibility and polish. Even more, business cards present an opportunity to bring new customers into your world, spur ongoing relationships and ignite deeper interest in your business. And when combined with modern, tech-fueled features like QR codes and NFC chips, business cards construct a valuable bridge to the digital world.

Paper-based business cards have been around for centuries. But networking today isn’t the same as it once was. Digitalization has changed how we network, so the tools we use have to keep up. 

This is the reason why many businesses are now making the switch from paper-based cards to digital business cards, also known as e-business cards. The following data points prove this:

#1 The global market value for digital business cards is growing at a CAGR of 11.2%. This market size is forecasted to reach US$ 242.3 million by 2027. (Source)

#2 Demo inquiries and paid customers for Uniqode’s digital business card solution saw an increase of more than 300% in the last 6 months vs. the previous period.

Keeping in mind this growing adoption and usage of digital business cards, you might be wondering, are digital business cards really worth it? Should you use them to boost your networking efforts?

This article will help you understand the top 9 benefits of digital business cards. Knowing these benefits will give you a clear idea of why people are now switching to e-business cards to network in a smart and efficient manner.

Table of contents

The top 9 digital business card benefits: For maximized networking ROI

1. Share an unlimited amount of information via digital business cards

Traditional business cards typically force you to work inside a 3.5” x 2” content space. This means you must carefully choose which details to include on your business card.

If you wish to share multiple phone numbers, emails, web URLs, and social handles, it is unlikely you can pack them all together on this small piece of paper. 

A digital business card helps you effectively overcome this issue.

When you use an e-business card, you can share all the information you need, including ALL your contact numbers, website links, social media handles, Google Maps location, and much more.

LEARN: What information can you include on a digital business card

When you use paper business cards, you are required to share them face-to-face, which often involves physical contact.

In contrast, you can share a digital business card through the following quick and contactless methods—helping you network in a paperless and instant manner.

1. Share your digital business card via Apple Wallet (or Google Wallet)
2. Send your e-business card to your client using Apple’s Siri
3. Directly share your digital business card on social media
4. Send your business card as a QR Code
5. Forward your card’s URL on various channels, such as SMS and instant messaging apps
6. Add your e-business card to your email signature

Check out our complete guide on how to send a digital business card to maximize your networking efforts. 

You might want to know: What if you need to distribute hundreds or thousands of e-business cards? Do you need to manually send each card to its owner? Not if you use Uniqode’s digital business card solution.
By turning on the auto-send feature on Uniqode’s dashboard, you can automate the distribution of digital business cards as soon as they are created. Learn more here.

3. Digital business cards help you significantly cut down on card printing costs

The average annual cost to print paper business cards can go as high as $194 per employee. The more sophisticated your card design gets, the higher the printing costs you have to incur.

However, if you opt for digital business cards, you can significantly reduce this card printing expense.

Let’s see an example:

Suppose you need to generate and print business cards for 500 employees. As per the cost estimates mentioned above, your total expense can come up to $95,000 approximately. But when you opt for Uniqode’s digital business cards, you can generate and share 500 cards for $12,000 – $15,000 a year, depending on your chosen plan.

As a result, your organization can save as much as $83,000 or 87% on business card expenses per employee, per year.

4. Digital business cards help you avoid the tedious process of paper business card procurement

According to this study, nearly 90% of organizations are burdened with tedious and repetitive tasks that reduce productivity. The procurement of paper business cards is one such task.

This is how companies typically handle their traditional business card procurement process:

1. A new employee eligible for a business card raises a request to their team lead or HR. 
2. This request is forwarded to the company’s card procurement team—via email or an order management portal.
3. Once the request is approved, the card supplier will proceed with creating and printing the business card.
4. Once the business card is ready, the supplier delivers it to the company—the delivery time could take days or weeks, depending on various factors such as the number of cards requested, card design requirements, etc. 
5. If the business card is delivered with an error, the entire process starts all over again.

This process—from start to finish—takes an average of 30 days.

The good news is that you can cut it entirely by switching to e-business cards.  

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With a digital business card generator, each team in your organization can create and distribute e-business cards to all employees within minutes. Hence, you get to cut the lengthy business card procurement process discussed above.

Pro tip: With the Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) and Uniqode integration, you can automate the creation of digital business cards as soon as a new employee’s details are added to your Microsoft Azure AD.
Next, you can toggle on the auto-send feature on Uniqode’s dashboard to automate the distribution of digital business cards as soon as they are created.
This means the entire process of creation and distribution of digital business cards will be handled by Uniqode, so you shift your entire focus to other crucial employee onboarding tasks.

5. Interactivity turns your digital business card into a two-way communication channel

Physical business cards do not let your recipients conveniently respond to your shared details.

Yes, you can spur interest with an attractive card loaded with compelling profile information. But acting on that interest through a paper-based card can prove cumbersome for your audience. This is because they must manually search for shared information on their mobile devices.

With digital business cards, every piece of information becomes accessible via a single screen tap. 

For instance, if a client wants to contact you, they can instantly access your phone number in a click-to-call manner through your e-business card. Moreover, your location and social links are accessible in the same way. This turns your digital business card into an instant and two-way communication channel.

Digital business cards allow you to take advantage of two-way contact sharing. This helps you capture your client’s contact information directly from your digital business card. 

Let us look at a common networking scenario to understand the value of this capability. 

Suppose a field sales agent manages to pique a prospect’s interest in their product. At this point, the prospect turns warm, and the agent uses the opportunity to ask the prospect for their contact details.

With two-way contact-sharing, the prospect only needs to fill out and submit a contact form via the agent’s digital business card. Upon submission, the prospect’s details will be recorded in the agent’s digital address book as a new lead entry. 

From this address book, the agent can view and manage all the warm leads collected from their digital business card. They may also choose to export this list of leads to their organization’s CRM.

With Uniqode, you can integrate this list of leads directly into your company’s Salesforce. You can also connect it to 700+ CRM platforms using Zapier.
In addition to these integration capabilities, you can export your entire leads list into a CSV file, which you can manually import on your company’s CRM software.

7. Track engagement and ascertain interest through e-business cards

One of the biggest downsides of traditional business cards is their inability to offer performance metrics based on card-scan tracking. Once distributed, you won’t be able to track and analyze the engagement your cards get from your audience.

Digital business cards, in contrast, are completely trackable. They let you obtain the following meaningful metrics: 

1. The total number of card scans received.
2. The number of times your contact details were saved
3. The number of total and unique clients reached via your cards.
4. The best- and worst-performing digital business cards—based on the total number of scans each card gets.
5. The card engagement by location, time of day, and device—you can monitor when and where your team members engage with clients.

We recommend choosing a capable digital business card solution that can help you monitor the above metrics in real-time. This way, you can easily determine card engagement metrics and optimize your networking efforts.

Pro tip: In addition to capturing and monitoring first-party data, you can retarget users on Facebook and Google through Uniqode. This gives you a second chance to convert people who have shown interest in your business but haven’t converted yet.

It is no secret that even the slightest information update can make your existing paper business card outdated. If you want to update the details on your card, you’ll have to reprint the card, resulting in additional costs and extended card procurement turnaround time.

This is one of the reasons why the switch to e-business cards is more efficient.

Digital business cards let you update your contact information instantly, and whenever required. You can change any piece of information—be it a contact number, web link, or Google Maps location. You can even change your business card’s design elements. 

The best part? These updates can be made at the backend—on your digital business card provider’s dashboard. As a result, your clients can view your updated e-business card in real-time—without you having to share the card again.

9. Digital business cards are an eco-friendly alternative to traditional business cards

As we learned above, paper business cards incur high annual printing costs. But printing costs might not be the only reason to switch to digital business cards.

Over 7 million trees are cut down each year to accommodate the demands for paper-based business cards. So it might be no surprise that 82% of consumers prefer companies that put people and the planet first before their bottom line.

If your audience is inclined to prefer companies that adopt sustainable solutions, switching to e-business cards can benefit your brand. Not only do you get to save significant amounts of paper, but also massive printing costs—simply by going digital with your business cards.

Check out our guide on why digital business cards are also known as eco-friendly business cards to learn more.

Next step? Make an e-business card with the best digital business card solution

There you have it, the 9 top benefits of digital business cards that make your networking more effective and eco-friendly.

Now, if you truly wish to capitalize on these benefits, it’s essential to choose the best digital business card solution. This way, you will be able to create a digital business card that best represents your value and services.

In addition to offering the above-mentioned benefits, Uniqode’s digital business card solution boosts your networking endeavors through enterprise-grade security standards—without the need to download any app.

Related: 5 Features that make Uniqode the best digital business card solution

Frequently asked questions

Physical vs. digital business cards: What’s the difference?

Physical and digital business cards aim to achieve the same purpose—to convey contact information about a professional or a business. But, to understand the differences, we must look at the factors influencing networking success through business cards.

These factors are shareability, interactivity, information sharing, and printing costs.

1. Shareability – The only way to share paper business cards is in person. Meanwhile, you can share e-business cards through various digital means such as Apple or Google Wallet, QR Code, etc.
2. Interactivity – Physical cards require your recipients to search for shared details manually. Whereas e-business cards provide instant information access with a single screen tap.
3. Information sharing – Physical cards bind you to a limited content space. With digital business cards, you can include as much information as you want.
4. Printing costs – The average cost of physical business cards for a single employee is $194 a year. Alternatively, you can create a customizable and trackable e-business card at a 98% lesser cost.

Are digital business cards worth it for your networking?

For your networking ROI, yes. These virtual networking tools can help you maximize your networking efforts in a contactless, cost-effective, and eco-friendly manner. Check out our post on why digital business cards are the best paper business card alternative.

How much does it cost to create a digital business card?

With Uniqode, you can create a digital business card for as low as $6 a month. As you scale to higher-tiered plans, the more cost-savings you get per card.

Check out Uniqode’s digital business card pricing.

• Author Details

Author Details

Reuben Isidoro

Reuben is a Content Marketer who helps businesses drive audience engagement and conversions through compelling content narratives. Currently, he explores the impact of simple yet innovative business tools, such as digital business cards, on organizational ROI.