Membership Cards

Membership cards are growing in popularity. As it happens the American economy is spiraling down right now and this creates a fantastic opportunity for those that are open to it. While some companies are scrambling to find new customers, the smart money is on the businesses that spend a small amount of money retaining the customers they've already got.

It costs a fortune to advertise, and market to, and convince new people to spend money at your place of business. And while everyone wants to grow their business, if all you're doing is replacing lost business with new business, you aren't growing at all.

Adding a membership card to your business model is one of the most cost-effective ways to add customer loyalty and if you throw in a few inconsequential benefits, you'll have an extremely pleased customer base as well. You can also advertise the benefits of using your membership program to new customers, too.

So what kind of membership card should you get?

Membership cards themselves can take many forms. It depends on whether you want to have customers fill out an application, then somehow assign a card number to that application. There are generally three ways to accomplish this task.

1. Have your plastic card manufacturer build a card with a barcode on it and apply a removable label to the card. Then they run this card through a second piece of equipment that scans the barcode on the card and prints the same barcode on the removable label - MOST RISK
2. Have your plastic card manufacturer build a card with a barcode on it and have them affix (or tip) the card  directly to an application. During the application process, the barcode on the card is scanned and instantly printed on the application. - LESS RISK
3. Have your plastic card manufacturer build a card with a barcode on it BUT also with a Teslin label built right into the card. Then you simply peel the label from the card and manually affix it to your application. - ZERO RISK

This third option is clearly the safest option. However only Teslin card manufacturers can offer this feature. In fact, only one company in particular offers it, but that's topic for another day.

Another benefit of the Teslin membership card is the ability cut the card into virtually any shape. If you want to stand out from your competition with a unique shape, Telslin is probably the way to go.

It occurs to me that many of you probably don't know the difference between PVC and Teslin cards. I'll discuss that in the next post.