06-19-2012Hybrid Plastic Cards: Top Reasons to go Plastic

Most retail businesses know that returning customers are the bread and butter of their ongoing success. And most businesses find consistent advertising expensive yet necessary component of their marketing campaign. But what if there was a much less costly way to bring in more customers, more often, without spending a fortune on advertising?

Well, there is a way, and it involves acquiring a plastic gift card printer, typically an acrylic gift card printer, then designing great looking store gift or loyalty cards, and selling them to customers in store, possibly at a discount! There are many advantages of doing so, and in this article I will go over top three of them: No additional advertising costs, Increased presence and brand awareness with the customers, Lost loyalty cards, and, finally, Lower transaction fees. Let me explain.

No additional advertising costs

Sure, there is an initial cost of purchasing a plastic or PVC card printer, and the cost of designing great looking cards. But beyond that, you are essentially marketing to your most loyal customers, and, unlike marketing to new customers, plastic loyalty/gift card marketing comes completely free of advertising charges.

Increased brand awareness

Here’s where the quality of the graphics design comes in. The higher the quality, the more likely is it that the customer will keep the card on top of the other cards. This will keep the brand awareness high, and will likely incite the customer to come visit your store more often. Plus, there is a chance of viral marketing with the loyalty cards. No one knows any better about what a friend wants for Christmas, so popularity of giving loyalty cards as Christmas gifts is soaring.

Lost gift/loyalty cards

One major reason for gift card popularity among businesses is the curious fact that 10% of all gift/loyalty cards never gets used. That is a huge percentage, and will definitely offset your costs of producing the cards all by itself. Knowing that, you can offer discounted gift/loyalty cards right off the bat.

Lower transaction costs

Especially for stores that typically generate large number of small-dollar transactions, like coffee shops for instance, but also for other stores, the transaction fees imposed by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AMEX, can be significant. Imagine then that you would only incur one fixed transaction fee when the customer purchases the gift/loyalty card, instead of paying the fixed transaction fee over and over again every time the customer uses a credit card. There are absolutely no transaction fees when using gift cards. And gift cards are easily added to all point-of-sale systems that accept credit cards.

‹ Back