Digital Business Cards Vs Physical Cards: Which One Should I Use

A business card is considered essential for business promotion in all countries of the world. This is continuing for generations together. However, a new trend has emerged in this regard. Now, business people use digital business cards more than traditional visiting cards. 

The US-based global business analyst and business consultancy firm Adroit Market Research say that the e-card market size is now growing faster than paper cards. The report says the global digital card market size will touch USD 242.3 million by 2027.

A business card, whether physical or digital, always serves as a business instrument to introduce you to another party, who could be your prospective business associate, future client, or any other person related to your line of business. 

But these two types of cards have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it completely depends on which one you choose for your networking purposes.

For your help, here are the top points of differences that you should keep in mind while comparing these two formats of cards:  

1. Chance of Physical Damage:

Digital cards cannot be damaged or destroyed, but paper cards are vulnerable to physical damage. E-cards are usually integrated into your smartphone and stored on the cloud, so your digital cards won’t get lost even if your device gets lost or damaged. But physical cards are always vulnerable to water, dust, and moisture. So even due to simple mishandling, physical cards can get damaged. 

2. Cost Benefit:

You can save a minimum of 26% of the cost by going digital. This is a one-time cost as you don’t need to reprint the card (as in the case of paper cards) every year to accommodate any changes or update any information on the card. 

If your business concern has 50 members, you are saving a large amount through this cost-cutting of 26%. The average per piece cost of designing and printing a bulk of 500 paper business cards of 3.5” x 2” (size) comes to about $0.06-$0.24. You can save this amount by 26% by going for a digital card. Getting your digital card printed at a low cost without compromising quality is quite affordable.

3. Ecology Factor:

Paper cards are not eco-friendly and sustainable. The use of paper on a larger scale means the destruction of trees. You are contributing to a sustainable planet by switching to digital cards. Thus, digital cards are eco-friendly and ideal.

4. Ease of Updates:

One of the disadvantages of paper cards is the fact that if your telephone number, website address, email ID, office address, or designation of a corporate entity has changed, you have to throw away the paper cards. This is not the case with digital cards. You can incorporate these changes into your card digitally using the edit option from settings.

5. Optical Character Reader:

Image source: medium.com

Digital cards give you the benefit of corporate accessibility. Unlike yesteryears, business cards have become quite scientific now, matching the digital revolution in relation to corporate contact management. 

These cards come with an OCR (Optical Character Reader) facility called a business card scanner. Using this feature, you can convert all corporate contact info into simple digital text, which you can then save on your device. You can’t get this facility on paper cards.

Pros of using Digital Cards

• The supply of premium business cards is unlimited. You can frequently design and format your cards online using various apps and card makers.
• You don’t incur recurring costs for printing like the paper card. 
• You don’t need to carry digital cards as it is stored in your mobile phone.
• You can mail or send them electronically to thousands of people (which is not possible with paper cards)
• If you are using e-cards, you are following the modern business technique.

Wrapping Up

This is the era of digital marketing. As a result, you can reap more mileage in branding your product, services, and company through e-cards than physical printed cards. However, paper-printed visiting cards or business cards have some limitations that digitally printed cards don’t have. For example, you can give a physical card to someone only when you meet the person face to face. But you can email or WhatsApp hundreds of e-cards to hundreds of people. 

Your paper-made cards, at a given point in time, are limited by their supplies as you cannot carry a whole box of them. Your cardholder can contain only a few cards. This is not the case with digital business cards. You don’t need to carry it. You can simply send such cards digitally. Thus you don’t run the fear of exhaustion of the supply of such cards at a given point. Besides, exchanging e-cards allows you to go by modernity in business.