Want to promote your business and be environmentally friendly? ABS Recycled plastic would be the way to go. With the same look and feel of a regular plastic card, with the recycled symbol on your cards, your clients will know that you care about the environment and are willing to go the extra mile in helping to preserve our planet. There is no dull or discoloration in the plastic because it is recycled. You can put whatever you would like on the card and the card can be in any color, we will print exactly how we print on a regular plastic card, the only difference is that this card will be ABS recycled plastic.

Clear plastic business cards are a unique way to elevate your company’s image to the next level while making a lasting impression. Today’s competition in the job market is fierce, clear or frosted business cards are the means to get recognized. Utilizing the transparency of the cards our clients are able to pull off unique effects that would be impossible on a traditional plastic or paper card. Clear or transparent cards give a modern day look for any type of business. Some of the leading companies today such as Starbucks, Victoria Secret, American Express all now have clear cards as part of their gift card or credit card programs. The cards give an extra WOW to your image which the image of your company is what stands out to the everyday consumer.

Companies have long used branded merchandise such as mugs, caps, pens and other items in attempts to keep their names in front of current as well as potential customers. But promotional pieces have more often than not been considered throwaway items of low quality, and not much use to the people receiving them.

You don’t want to spend your valuable marketing dollars on promotional items that are here today and gone tomorrow, so why not give away something that will be used and appreciated. Prepaid minutes on high quality printed plastic phone cards are a great way to do just that.

When your prospects receive a plastic card with free phone time already on it, they feel like they have been given a gift with actual monetary value. Unlike a pen or a Frisbee, or other cheap promotional merchandise, this card will go straight into a wallet or purse where it will be kept and not thrown away or forgotten. And every time the recipient pulls that phone card out to make a call, you have a chance to present your company to them, again and again.

Here are a few tips for setting up your plastic phone cards to be an effective marketing tool.

• Make sure the front of your card is eye-catching and delivers the message of what your company is about in a clear and memorable way. Since plastic card printing allows you to cover your card with full four-color printing, the sky is the limit for what you want to put there. Include the number of minutes on the card, of course, but save the majority of the front side of the card for a great first impression that makes the prospect want to learn more about you.
• On the back of the card, include the call-in number for your phone card, but very close to that put your website address in a bold, bright color such as red or bright blue. If you don’t have a website for your business, put your primary telephone number here. By putting this information right by the call-in number, you will remind the prospect of your contact information every time they look at the back of the card.
• Also on the back of the card, you can benefit by printing a special offer that will entice the prospect to either go online or come to your store. You could offer a 10% discount or similar loss leader to prompt the prospect to take action, and they will be reminded of it every single time they use the card. Better yet, by including the special offer on your card you increase the chances that they will hold on to that plastic card long after they use up their prepaid minutes.

When you plan your next promotional giveaway, don’t settle for trinkets with a high novelty factor but no long-term value. Keep your company, your message and your products in front of your prospects every time they reach for the phone, and start building your sales today. Click here to learn more about prepaid phone cards.

Membership cards are a staple of many businesses these days – with plastic cards of all colors and varieties filling the wallets and pocketbooks of America. For many consumers, keeping a membership card can be a hassle – it’s just one more thing to carry around, and there’s not much value attached to it.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your business’ membership cards become something that your customers love to carry around and bring to your cash register again and again? You can – all you have to do is get a little creative when it comes time to get your plastic membership card printing done. Here are a few tips to help you along.

• Spice up your membership cards by making it a special offer card, with a different discount or bonus for every day of the week. Little perks like “5% Off Fridays” or “Double Coupon Weekends” can encourage shoppers to come by your store over and over during the week. Place your deepest discounts on the days where you do the least business and you can get business flowing on what otherwise would be a dry day.
• Use your plastic membership cards as a way to trigger customer visits via a loss leader. For example, if you are a gas station, consider printing an offer on your membership card like “Present this card to get a free 2 liter soda with every purchase of 8 or more gallons of gas.” If you are a grocery store, offer a free magazine of the customer’s choice every visit. Since customers who come in for something “free” tend to make significant impulse purchases at the same time, giving away a low-value item can reap a bevy of increased sales.
• Take advantage of thermal printing technology and create a barcoded plastic card that is tied to your customer’s member account. Have it scanned each time that they make a purchase and store their customer data for marketing purposes. As your customer database grows, you can get a feel for what kind of products sell best, as well as what kinds of products tend to be bought at the same time. You can use that data to craft special offers for combinations of products, tempting your customers to come in for an irresistible deal (and naturally, buy plenty of other items while they’re around).

Membership cards don’t have to be boring or inconvenient – it isn’t too difficult to come up with unique and effective ways of turning them into marketing tools that call out to your customers every time they reach into their pockets.

All it takes is a little creativity, some knowledge of your customers’ needs, and access to plastic card supplier to create a sales tool that transforms an occasional customer into a steady source of revenue. Add a dash of marketing know-how to your plastic membership cards and see how much it can improve your sales year-round.

If you are planning a fundraiser for your organization, using plastic fundraising cards can help you raise money faster and more easily than traditional methods. Selling wrapping paper, magazines and chocolates worked well in the past, but today’s consumer is looking for convenience and immediate gratification, which cannot be accomplished by waiting for product to arrive in the mail. Using plastic cards gives your organization a chance to give buyers a practical item they can use immediately, which will significantly increase the rate at which they buy your cards. Here are a few ideas you should consider when using a plastic card printing service to help set up your next fundraiser.

• Create fundraising cards that have an ongoing benefit. A good example of this is the “buy one get one free card.” Businesses love these offers because it brings them a steady stream of repeat customers without any upfront expenses. Your buyers love them because they are getting a deal. If a business expresses interested in making it a limited offer, you can order plastic cards with scratch off squares on the back to indicate how many times it has been used.
• Create a “double your money” fundraising card, where a buyer pays a certain amount for the card, which is worth double the purchase price when brought to the business. Businesses know that getting customers in the door is a costly process. If a local shop spends $25 in upfront advertising to get a customer in the door, you could offer a double-your-money $10 fundraising card. You raise $10 for your organization, the buyer takes home a card with a $20 value, and the business saves $5 in customer acquisition costs. It becomes a win-win situation for everyone.
• Create a fundraising card that offers an increasingly attractive deal with multiple visits. For example, the card can give 10% off of the first visit, 20% off of the second visit, 30% off of the third visit, all the way up to a free offer. This is an attractive way for businesses to encourage customers to return again and again in a short period of time for essentially the same overall cost of a “buy one get one free” offer. Again, you can use scratch-off squares to show which discounts have been used by the buyer.

Fundraising is a highly effective way to keep money flowing into your organization all throughout the year, and to do it right requires that you come up with creative ways of attracting customers for the businesses who offer the discounts. People are more likely to buy when offers are unique and original rather than the “same old things” that they are presented with every year. Because plastic fundraising cards can be printed in a variety of attractive ways, they give you the opportunity to make customized offers that you can change as often as you like, helping you make your next fundraising effort the best one ever.

In the plastic card industry there is a different form of terminology used for different things. Sometimes during the process of ordering you might know exactly what you want but do not exactly know what the product is called or the representative who is helping you is using these terms and you have no idea what they are referring to. Below you will find a list of terminology used in the plastic card printing industry.

Coercivity –

This is a measure of the strength of a magnetic field. Fields that are generally used are low or high by the terms of LoCo and HiCo.

Encoding –

Recording electronic information on to a magnetic stripe.

Degaussing –

Magnetic stripe data erasing.

Digitizing –

Conversion of non-textual data to digital form.

Embossing –

This is the raised letters or numbers that can be put on a card that looks like the letters and numbers on a credit card. Letters have to be capitalized and can only be in small embossing and numbers can be small or large, however the space can only be 19 characters across including spaces.

ISO –

International Standards Organization, central body for formation and dissemination of industry standards for all national standard bodies.

Lithography or Offset Printing –

Most common process for plastic card printing based on the concept that oil and water is not compatible. The ink is the oil and the alkaline fountain solution represents the water. These are the two main components which must interact during the printing process, allowing the ink to adhere to the image area of a printing plate while the fountain solution repels the ink from the non-image area.

On-Line –

A transaction on a terminal permanently connected to a network that is on-line to the card account.

Off-Line –

A transaction via paper or reader not connected to a central system.

Personalization –

Printing, encoding and programming a card with data specific to an individual.

PVC –

Polyvinyl chloride, the most widely used plastic material.

Radio Frequency Card (RFID)

A proximity card in which the coupling between the card and the interface device is by radio.

These are some of the terms that are used in the plastic card printing industry. There are many more, but these are the most common ones that people have questions on.

There’s a certain simplicity in letting friends and loved ones choose the gift he or she wants rather than just guessing at a particular person’s tastes. Gift certificates and plastic gift cards are becoming a more popular purchase for people who aren’t quite sure what to get for the ones they are shopping for. You may already be offering gift certificates or gift cards to your customers, but are you using them to your best advantage?

Gift cards can actually be used to increase your sales, not just as a way for customers to redeem a pre-paid purchase. Here are three ways to use plastic gift cards bring in more money than ever this year.

1. Use your plastic gift cards as a way to give back to the purchaser and not just the recipient. For example, it’s a common practice to have sales of ten or twenty percent from time to time, so why not treat the card as a sale purchase in itself? In other words, advertise that when any gift card is purchased for someone, the buyer gets a “bonus” gift card worth 10-15% of the amount the original card. The buyer will have a greater incentive to buy a gift card since he or she will be getting one to keep as well. In fact, buyers will have a desire to buy gift cards with higher amounts on them because they will be getting something back in return. And as far as your profits are concerned, it’s the same as if you had run a sale for the bonus amount.
2. Print a special offer on the gift card itself as a way to entice a larger purchase when the recipient comes in to redeem it. If you set up your gift card printing so that cards have specific amounts appearing on them, you could arrange that the special offer is valid when an amount higher than the face value is spent at your business. For example, a $50 gift card may offer a 10% discount when $100 or more is spent in your store at one visit. Your customer will be enticed to spend the extra $50 just to get the $10 discount – but will in all likelihood spend even more.
3. Make your gift cards reloadable. By purchasing cards with a magnetic stripe on the backing, you can give customers the option to add money onto them when they bring them back into the store to be redeemed. You’ll want to make sure to give them a compelling reason to do so, such as a 5% cash bonus on the card or a special gift of a low-margin item from your inventory. Customers love the idea of getting something as a bonus, even if they have to spend more to get it.

These three tips can take an ordinary paper gift certificate offering and turn it into something that adds more to your bottom line every year. Consider using any or all of these tips and create a powerful sales tool that puts more money into your pocket. Using your business gift cards strategically will keep customers coming through your doors long after they receive their gift cards.

Plastic cards and plastic card printing services are getting so popular. When you are standing in any retail store line, you will see plastic gift cards, plastic phone cards, plastic poker cards, and all other kinds.

You will notice the many different kinds of designs and styles there are and every year you will see different ones.  Some plastic cards will look better then others and some are just very unique.

You will see some cards are printed over the edge and some have a white border on them? Most of the time you can see the difference in quality between the two. Quality matters mosts in printing. Plastek Cards print the highest quality cards with our Heidelberg printers. Full bleeds all around. I would make sure you check the quality of the plastic card printing Company before you place your order. Ask them for samples. I always urge our clients to compare the quality of our cards with others to make sure they are satisfied before choosing.

We know how everyone is talking about our ozone and environment of our earth. The plastic card industry came out recycling ideas which we can now reuse plastic cards and reduce making new everyday. Since the plastic card industry is growing very strong and wont be going anywhere anytime soon. We have have offering our new line the ABS Recycled Cards as our green line in reducing the pollution of the earth.

What is the best way in showing off your plastic card? Definitely the more color you use the better in most cases. At Plastek Cards we do not charge extra if you are doing 2 colors or 4 colors on one or both sides. This gives you unlimited design ideas so that you don’t have to watch your budget just because you don’t want to spend more on your custom plastic card design.