4 Ways Charitable Donations Sell Plastic Gift Cards

If the sales on your plastic gift cards have tapered off, or never really took off to begin with, it’s time to play hardball to get them moving off the shelves. You could try selling them at discount prices.

 

You could offer complimentary holders with each sale. If those haven’t quite got your card sales off the ground, perhaps it’s time to tie them to a noble cause. Besides, it’s a sign of good character to donate to charities. 

Charitable plastic gift cards can be eco-conscious, too.

 

 

Donations to charities are a great way to move merchandise while giving back to the community. There are several ways to do this. Whichever you choose, make sure that everyone who enters your store or website knows which charity you’re donating to, how much you intend to give, and how they, the customer, are involved.

 

Donate A Percentage of Plastic Gift Card Sales

 

A popular donation strategy is to pick one or two products and donate a percentage or monetary portion of sales on those items to a specific charity. One example of this technique is McDonalds’ drive for donations to The Ronald McDonald House.

 

This particular donation drive also serves as a cautionary tale for those who seek to increase sales on particular items by donating proceeds from those sales to charities:

 

• Many critics have pointed out that McDonald’s is not upfront about how much they are donating to Ronald McDonald House through this campaign.
• These same critics note that when you read the fine print, you see that McDonald’s donates a “miserly” 1 cent for every Happy Meal to Ronald McDonald House.
• Isn’t Ronald McDonald House Charities part of McDonald’s corporation, anyway?

 

Of course, if you dig a little deeper into McDonald’s relationship with Ronald McDonald House, you see that they are two separate business entities, and funds from this campaign represent only a fraction of the regular donations McDonald’s makes to RMHC.

 

Besides, McDonald’s sells a lot of Happy Meals. Regardless, the point is made. Don’t seem miserly, give full disclosure, and make sure there’s no question about your involvement with the charity in question.

 

Donation Through Card Purchases

 

This follows more or less the same model as donating through gift card sales, but this time, it is oriented toward purchases made with gift cards. This can increase gift card sales in a roundabout way—after all, some people would have to buy gift cards in order to spend them.

 

Whether more cards are sold or not, it at least increases the chance that people will be quicker to spend their gift card funds.

 

2 Voluntary Donation Types Made Through Plastic Gift Cards

 

Another way to increase gift card spending (and purchases by proxy) is to ask if they wish to make a donation to your chosen charity when they swipe or scan their gift card. By and large, gift card recipients spend gift cards more freely than they would their “hard-earned” money.

 

Simply put, these funds were given to them, so they aren’t “out any money” by going on a spending spree.

 

Another way to approach this same strategy is to offer a matched amount of your company’s money to what they spend for the charity. While a dollar-to-dollar match would be an incredibly noble offer, for most small businesses, it simply isn’t practical. A 5% or 10% match is probably more than enough to motivate most people into donating.

 

There are, of course, many other ways to move more plastic gift cards through charitable donations. What can you come up with?

Plastic Gift Cards for Office Gifts

The holiday season is scarcely behind us, so what better time to start planning for them again? For this coming year, why not make it easier on yourself and buy plastic gift cards for everyone? After all, even with a “discretionary budget” at your disposal, it’s not going to be easy choosing a specific gift item that everyone would be happy with otherwise. 

Plastic gift cards look great in any denomination.

 

 

Typical Office Gift Drawbacks Absent in Gift Cards

 

At many places of employment, the usual holiday gifts are fairly standard. Usually, employees are presented with their choice of gift certificates, a holiday meal centerpiece (ham or turkey), or cold hard cash. While all three are universally appealing gifts, especially with the freedom to choose between them, each of these gifts have their own individual downsides, either to you or the recipient, that are non-issues with preloaded money cards.

 

Gift certificates are the precursor of gift cards and effectively work the same way, at least for the most part. There are three main problems with them: The issuing business might not give change or credit if a purchase made with a gift cert is less than the value of the cert. Usually, they are made of paper, which is easily ruined. If they are ruined or lost, there may not be a record of the purchase, so they would be unredeemable.

 

Giving hams or turkeys as gifts is an old mainstay, provides a visual impression of generosity, and saves the employees the trouble of shopping for them during the holiday rush. On the other hand, it is probably the least practical for an employer. To accommodate 50 employees, 50 large slabs of meat have to be shipped frozen to the office, kept frozen until the collection time is over, and the rejected ones have to be shipped back, frozen, all on the company’s dime.

 

Cash is often an option as a company holiday gift. It’s great for the employee’s freedom to choose how it’s spent, but it is easily lost, ruined or stolen, and there is no viable way for you to help with that loss.

 

3 Superior Gift Card Features: Compact, Durable and Traceable

 

With gift cards, not a single one of these problems are an issue. Leftover monetary value can be spent later. They are not easily destroyed, and can typically still be redeemed if they are destroyed, lost or stolen. Unlike the frozen food option, they do not need climate control, collectively weigh less and fill less space than a single turkey or ham, and do not have to be returned if they aren’t collected. The leftover cards take up very little space and obviously won’t spoil by next year, so that means savings in your discretionary budget next year.

 

Another great way gift cards are easy on your budget is that they are a “one size fits all” gift. The individual drawbacks of the other gifts mentioned here are nothing compared to their collective drawback. In order to provide the choice between three gifts, you either need to have three gifts for each employee—one of each kind—or handle the grumbling of the latecomers who couldn’t get the gift they wanted. Either way, someone loses, and this would not be a problem with gift cards.

 

Taking the savings a little further, if your business provides goods and services that your employees would enjoy, why not give gift cards redeemable for your offerings? Keep your ear to the ground this year—you might find the perfect holiday gift is the easiest one you can give.

Make Buying Your Barcode Key Tags Irresistable

Some time after scannable membership cards became a staple for many businesses, membership applications began to drop off everywhere. Membership offers hit the brick wall refusal of “I don’t need another card,” and barcode key tags came along and invalidated that refusal. Now many businesses offer both a membership card and a key tag for new members. 

Barcode key tags are great for memberships for clients of any income level.

 

 

While membership offers have yet to be refused with “I don’t need another key tag,” most business owners have gone through unnervingly long dry spells in membership applications. Many catch on that they need to offer more benefits for membership, but may not know how to strike a balance between incentives and their budget.

 

Offer Standard Membership Benefits from Using Barcode Tags

 

The first thing a potential new member will want to know about your business’ membership is what benefits they will have on a routine basis. Benefits such as gas stations offering lower gas prices at every fill up, turnpike pass members not having to stop and pay tolls, or theme parks offering fast lane access every visit are some examples of constant benefits.

 

Some other benefits that memberships provide are delivered when a certain dollar amount is spent, or after so many purchases are made. Often, this will result in a significant discount in the current purchase or the next one, or free goods or services.

 

Another major benefit people will want to know is if their account can be upgraded, and if so, what they will have to do to get the upgrade, and what those benefits are. If you decide to include upgraded accounts, it is a perfect opportunity to have a differently branded key tag. In fact…

 

Offer Different Membership Levels With Unique Bar Code Key Tags

 

Turning your key tags into status symbols can seriously drum up membership. Creating different membership levels with their own perks can liven things up, especially among existing account holders. Assuming that you’ve kept their contact information, you can endorse the new system to them first, tell them that you are letting them in on a secret, and they get first dibs. Show them shiny images of the exciting new key tags and watch them scramble for an upgraded membership!

 

In a similar way, you can turn your new barcode key tags into objects of envy for new membership applicants. Adding shades of gold and silver or using increasingly “refined” designs for each membership level, along with labels like “Preferred Membership” and “Elite Membership” can stir up the drive to “keep up with the Joneses” and breathe new life into your membership applications.

 

Some Membership Programs Still Flounder–How to Avoid It

 

If your membership program has all these things and still goes nowhere despite your promotions, it’s time to try something completely different. For instance, if you see that your series of limited-time offers quit working, you could try a game or competition promotion to breathe fresh life in the ranks of your key tag carriers.

 

What your new promotion actually offers is up to you—it may be a limited-time offer you’ve already used. It could be a completely new membership benefit or a grand prize. Only members can join in, but anyone can watch. It could be as complex as a tournament of some sort, or each member could take a shot at the prize from the start.

 

Let’s say that in order to claim the prize, the player has to pick a game-specific key tag from a group of identical tags and scan it to claim the prize. If the right tag was chosen, the member wins the prize. If one of the wrong ones were chosen, well—better luck next time.

 

How do you think such a change of strategy would affect your bar code key tag membership sales? Could using scannable key tags in this way change the way you use them?

The Plastic Card Carrier: How Your Business Can (& Should) Leverage It

Much has been said about how adding your business’ branding to a plastic card carrier can improve your business. But what happens in a hypothetical world where every business in your niche or industry is using them in much the same way you are? Let’s pretend that we are living in that world right now, and get the jump on your competitors. 

 

A simple, elegant way to take advantage of the space on your plastic card carrier.

 

 

The True Value of Card Carriers—More Branding Real Estate!

 

One major argument that business owners often have for not supplying customers with card carriers is that it’s just a larger piece of material with the business’ image, and the customers either would not buy them, or would simply throw them away. They would be right, too—if that was all the value that plastic card carriers provided.

 

The reality of the situation is that with the card holder being (usually) much larger than the card, that means that there is a lot of extra space for the business owner to play with. It’s kind of like the difference between simply having your phone number in the phone book and having a ½ or full page ad. Two things that make this better than a phone book ad: You have a lot more freedom in how you can use this space and you’re not stuck with just this one ad for the next year or two.

 

A Few Ideas to Take Advantage of Card Carriers’ Extra Space

 

Let’s say you’re a restaurant owner and you offer gift cards. For the sake of argument, let’s say you also offer carryout and delivery services, as well as dine-in services. Aside from the small packets of sugar and condiments, what is probably the most common thing that people take home with them from a restaurant—either by theft or by request? Your restaurant’s menus, and how convenient would it be to include your takeout/delivery menu with one of your gift cards?

 

From time to time, you could use the extra space on your business’ card carriers to announce dinner specials, margarita nights, your new karaoke machine or whatever other temporary promotion you like. These ideas are not limited to restaurants, either. Most businesses have some kind of list or “menu” of merchandise or services, and we all have special promotions from time to time.

 

How This Affects How People View Card Holders

 

Maybe it’s true that card holders have been traditionally destined for the recycle bin long before the cards they came with. It’s also possible that some are “good enough” to be placed in a scrapbook. Now that we are using up the extra space on the holders more creatively, their fate is quite different.

 

Back to the restaurant analogy: Why do people take a restaurant’s menu home with them, and what do they do with it? By and large, menus get brought home with the intent of using them in the future, perhaps regularly. Sometimes, they get filed away in a kitchen drawer with other menus, but often enough, they have found themselves prominently displayed on refrigerator doors.

 

Are your services or products not menu friendly? Calendars and dry-erase to-do lists have been an effective way to put a business’ brand on a customer’s refrigerator. With the goal of making your card carriers non-disposable, what else can you think of to make your business a household word? 

4 Sneaky Disguises for Gift Card Holders

As we all know, a huge part of the fun of getting gifts on our birthdays and holidays is in the mystery and discovery of what we got—perhaps even more than getting “what we always wanted.” Gift cards can give us “what we always wanted,” by by themselves, gift card holders don’t lend much to the mystery part. 

They may not be that “sneaky”, but Starbucks gift card holders have got the right idea.

 

 

Typically, if there is any question of what’s in that flat envelope with your name on it, it’s whether it’s a holiday card or a gift card in a holder. The letter disguise is for amateurs, let’s play in the big leagues.

 

The Jewel Case Heist

 

As long as you know their favorite bands and music genres, it’s hard to go wrong with giving someone a CD as a birthday or holiday gift. In this case, it doesn’t actually matter, and it may actually be more fun to use a CD jewel case from a band or genre they patently don’t like.

 

Simply use a razor to cut a slit in the protective wrapping along the bottom edge of the lid and slip the gift card into the case under the liner notes. This could take some effort, so make sure the card carrier is on the gift card to protect it from damage. Seal with clear tape.

 

If you want to add a “cheap gift” element to your prank, buy the CD from a used CD seller. If there is no protective wrapping and there’s a super-cheap price tag directly on the jewel case, so much the better.

 

Sweating Over the Sweater Box

 

How many of us actually like getting sweaters as gifts? How many of us were practically in tears when we got sweaters when we were kids? We can visit this same trauma on the younger members of our families just before they get the most perfect gift anyone can get.

 

All you need is a sweater box from a department store, a hideous holiday sweater, and some clear tape. Tape the card in its carrier in the bottom and neatly fold the sweater and put it in the box. Wrap as normal.

 

To enhance the experience, you could use one of your old sweaters and spin a yarn about how your father gave you that sweater, and his father gave it to him. They both had this sweater while they were stationed overseas during “The War” and went to great lengths to bring it home…

 

Microwave Popcorn Gift Card Holders

 

What kind of unthoughtful, miserly cheapskate would give microwave popcorn as a gift? The kind that might give a movie theater or video rental gift card.

 

Much like the CD Case, you would cut a slit in the protective plastic on the bottom, slide the gift card inside (especially with butter-flavored popcorn, the plastic card carrier is mandatory), and tape it shut.

 

Picture Frame Job

 

This bit of camouflage is probably a bit less puckish than the rest. They may like the frame, they may not, but a gift card is not what they’ll be expecting, especially if you painstakingly wrapped it so there was no mistake that it was a picture frame. It’s actually kind of neat seeing a framed gift card when you were dreading the sight of that horrible family portrait where everyone was wearing the same tacky shirt with your names in iron on letters.

3 Great Key Tag Printing Projects

When most people think of key tag printing, they think either of key fobs (corporately branded or with some clever quote) or scannable membership tags. Of course, these are great ideas, that’s why they are so often used. On the other hand, here’s nothing saying that you have to stick with those ideas, and in fact, there are plenty of useful ways you can create and profit from making key tags. 

 

Make Key Chain “Dog Tags”

 

Let’s face it, if there’s one item we need when we leave the house that is lost most often, it’s our keys. We don’t think much of them as a general rule, but when they’re missing, we get the stark reminder that we can’t hardly live without them. This especially strikes home if we lose our keys while we’re away from home. 

Key tag printing: are these the dog tags you’re looking for?

 

 

As much as we love our pets and would be heartbroken if they came up missing, they aren’t nearly as necessary to our lives on a practical level as our keys. Yet we wouldn’t dream of taking or letting them outside without their ID tags, and think nothing of going out with our keys unmarked. The perfect solution would be to have a key tag that’s printed with “If Found, Please Call (insert phone number here.”

 

Just so it’s said, you probably should not put your name and address on this tag. Nothing says “Open invitation” to a burglar like a set of keys giving full access to the house and car at the address conveniently written on the key tag.

 

Use Key Tag Printing to Make Key Dividers

 

Many of us simply have too many keys on our key chains to keep up with. Multiple house keys, several office keys, maybe 2 or 3 car keys, mailbox keys, and even keys to doors that no longer exist clatter around and weigh down our pockets. While old, unused keys should be disposed of, there are all too often plenty left to keep up with.

 

Since we don’t always divide up our massive key sets into different key chains, a great solution would be to have each kind of key grouped together with other related keys and divided up by key tags labeling each group…perhaps have them color-coded. This way, it’s a small matter to flip to a small group of keys on the chain and sort through 2 or 3 keys to find the right one.

 

Key Tags Make Great Event Tickets and Backstage Passes

 

Whether you’re an event coordinator, venue owner or manager of a rock band, key tags are have a great, virtually unlocked potential for your next event. A source of great frustration to your customers (and sometimes a loss of income for you) is when they lose their tickets, or they somehow get ruined. The cure: sell your tickets as key chain tags! Once linked on the keychain, no one has to ever lose their tickets again—unless they lose their car keys.

 

While on the subject of entertainment, key tags also make great “Special Access” or “Backstage” passes. Things can get pretty crazy at rock concerts, and it’s not unheard of that a backstage pass thrown to the audience suddenly finds itself divided among several people, unable to give any of them access to the back.

 

These are just a few ideas for key chain printing. Can you think of more?

Taking Custom Gift Cards Beyond The Register

You’ve designed how your branding will look on your custom gift cards. You’ve decided what features you want on them. You’ve ordered them and received them. Now, are you really just going to set up a display at the cash register and leave it at that?

Custom gift cards come in any design you can imagine, to best suit your needs.

It’s not that this is the worst place to set up your gift card display, but all the same—if you do this on your trial run with gift cards, don’t let the outcome determine whether or not gift cards are a good idea for your business. Having only one display at the register, even if you use flashing neon signs to point it out, does not demonstrate the full potential benefit of gift cards for your business.

The Pros and Cons of Custom Gift Cards at Register Displays

Whoever discovered that the best place in a grocery store to display candy is in the checkout line is a genius. It truly was a stroke of marketing brilliance to make the connection that:

• Kids love candy.
• Kids have to ask their parents to buy it.
• Parents prefer their kids to not make a scene in public.
• Kids tend to “make scenes” if they don’t get what they want.
• Parents prefer to not publicly chastise their children if they do.
• Getting through checkout lines can take a long time.
• No one wants to give up their spot in a line, even for a private “talking-to.”

Therefore…

• In a checkout line, kids are more likely to get what they want, as long as they keep quiet.
• Put our candy in a checkout line and a kid will want it.

And…

• The parents will pretty much have to buy our candy.

After this discovery, tons of other merchandise capitalized on this idea. Cheap toys, baseball cards, and, yes, gift cards, line the shelves at the checkout line, ultimately based on the idea that people were going to be stuck there for a while.

There is one downside to this idea, though. People often start thinking about how much money they are about to spend on the merchandise they have already. After a little bit of simple accounting, the things they are forced to stare at often don’t look so appealing after all. This is especially true if the kids aren’t screaming to have them, and gift cards aren’t nearly as enticing to a four year old as a Snickers bar.

Islands and Islands of Gift Cards

Maybe gift cards caught on and became a popular gift idea or maybe some team of marketers realized the shortcomings of selling them in checkout lines. Either way, someone realized that more gift cards could be sold if they were displayed on islands placed strategically in the middle of the major aisles in a store.

Later still, the advantages of placing small merchandise on hook displays outside of their section were realized. Suddenly, we see rows of chip clips hanging around potato chip displays, bottle openers in the soda or beer sections, and so on. Both items “technically” belong in the kitchenware section, but the beauty of this strategy is that when people buy a six pack of soda, they don’t always consider that they might want a bottle opener. By putting bottle openers next to the soda, you’ve brought that question to mind and maybe sold a six pack AND a bottle opener.

Both of these ideas are great for custom gift card placement strategies for one very important reason. Most of the time, people save the checkbook balancing for the checkout line—after all, they’re going to be there a while, right? While they’re shopping, they aren’t thinking about budgets. Quite often, they will “splurge” and buy things that weren’t on their shopping lists. Things like custom gift cards!

Protect Your Confidential Information with Pressure Seal Mailers

In any business, we sometimes have to send items through the mail that could be disastrous to our business or ourselves personally if they fell into the wrong hands. Pressure seal mailers provide an extra level of security for our confidential documents or sensitive information when this has to be done. 

Pressure seal forms make for great, secure mailings.

 

 

Payroll to Employee Pressure Seal Applications

 

Pressure sealed documents are must-haves in many items that payroll departments have to mail to employees. Mailed payroll checks, tax documents such as W-4s and W-2s, notices of pay raises and promotions, and many other documents from payroll departments contain sensitive information about the employee that could be exploited without extra security measures.

 

Human Resources and Drug Testing Require Pressure Seal Forms

 

For many industries, background checks are necessary for hiring new employees. For your business, it may simply be an option that you choose to ensure the safety of your staff and equipment.

 

In either case, the information passed between the human resources department and the parties keeping keeping these records involves the HR department sending sensitive information such as Social Security Numbers, Drivers License Numbers, fingerprints and more. In return, they receive more sensitive information such as employment history, criminal background, past residences, and credit reports in some cases.

 

Random drug testing has become a standard feature in the workplace. The tests are often administered by a third party testing lab. When the results are returned, they include confidential information about the person’s identity, not to mention the fact that the results of the drug test are confidential.

 

Pressure Seal Mailers for Worker’s Comp and Disability Claims

 

Every so often an employee will get injured on the job or try to claim that they were injured on the job. The process of worker’s compensation and disability claims involves a lot of paperwork, and both the employer and the employee are entitled to copies of almost every part of it.

 

This mountain of documentation includes:

• incident reports
• witness statements
• medical examinations
• drug tests
• legal consultations
• requests for worker’s compensation or disability pay
• the business’ approval or denial of the request
• any court documents that ensue
• and finally, the compensation checks, if awarded.

 

Nearly every document that was just listed is going to be confidential between the parties involved by its nature. By and large, these documents will also involve personal information such as Social Security, Driver’s License, and/or Employee ID numbers. If these documents have to be sent through the mail or even “inter-office,” pressure seal forms can provide the assurance that only the people who need to see them actually do.

 

Pressure Seals and Sensitive Inter-Office Mailings

 

Quite often, sensitive information—either about an individual or the business itself—has to be mailed inter-office. While it’s true that the documents don’t leave the facility to reach their destination, too many things can happen along the way to compromise the security of the documents. Corporate espionage may not be a concern for you, but all businesses have the occasional disgruntled employee. The Internet is an ugly place to find confidential information about you, your employees or your company.

Draw More Customers through Your Door with Magnets

Magnets have to be one of the most useful tools in business branding ever used. Besides the fact that nearly every potential customer needs and wants magnets, you can use them to promote your business while slashing expenses in many other ways. Essentially, if there is a steel surface that you want to place your brand on, a magnet is the way to do it. 

Magnets turn any car or truck into an instant fleet vehicle.

 

 

Branded Magnets in the Home

 

It may be the oldest way to use magnets for brand promotion, but businesses still use it because it works. People love being able to post shopping lists, children’s art and A+ tests, to-do lists, emergency numbers and family pictures on their refrigerators. Simply put, aside from the TV, it is probably the most used appliance in the house. To do this without damaging or dirtying their fridges, they have to use magnets.

 

If your business is an emergency service, your magnets will naturally have a permanent place on the refrigerator. If your business isn’t an emergency service or hotline, it may still have a permanent spot, depending on your services—electricians and plumbers are usually secure in this position.

 

Magnet “swag” is easily customizable. Custom shapes are available with die-cutting, and extra features can be added to create family photo frames, tear-away calendars, goggle-eyed animals, and many other things. This can help keep your magnets at home on the refrigerator whether or not your business could be needed by a babysitter.

 

Other businesses may have to make the magnet more useful than simply providing a logo, slogan and contact information. One typical strategy is to provide a tear-away calendar, though that only guarantees a magnet’s residence on the fridge for a year. Something to guarantee a permanent spot (and a regular impression of your brand) would be to include a kitchen measurement conversion chart.

 

Magnet Branding at the Office

 

Magnetic boards are a great way to mark off different sections of your business space with a professional flair. They are also extremely convenient for when you need to rearrange the sections. Say you own a grocery store and need to move the pet food away from the housecleaning section. Instead of trying to heft a huge sign from one side of the store to another, you would only have to move the letters.

 

Using large sheet magnets enables virtually any business owner to turn their personal vehicle into a branded fleet vehicle during the course of the work day. Pizza delivery restaurants, home health agencies, courier services and many other businesses extensively use magnetic signage on personal vehicles to promote their businesses without the expense of a dedicated fleet.

 

Magnets are also extremely useful in the workplace for dispatch boards, scheduling boards, applying temporary signage such as “Out of Order” signs, and much more. “Swag” magnets make great prizes for Employee Appreciation Day, and make great point markers for in office competitions and tournaments.

 

These are just a few ideas for printed magnets. What ideas do you have?

Branded Envelopes—Bootstrap Yourself to Success

Using envelopes and stationery branded with your business’ image is a powerful but inexpensive way to promote your business. There is an old saying about someone’s image that definitely applies to brand promotion: “If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck.” Let’s look at this statement and see how that applies to your letterhead and envelopes. 

Branded envelopes make you look great!

Branded Stationary (Including Envelopes) Shows Success Regardless of Your Pocketbook

Having a professional looking brand on your envelopes and letters is inexpensive and the return on that investment is immeasurable. Your business may be in an awkward state financially—it may even teeter on the fine line between closing down and mere survival. This kind of uncertainty will not generate regular customers.

Naturally, you will want your customers to think your business is rock-solid. This is where professionally branded envelopes come into play. Handwritten return addresses only show a business who does not have branded stationery in their budget, but a printed return address, complete with your company logo, tells a story of your business having “made it.”

While your business may not actually be a “duck” financially or in the operational scale at this point, people get the impression that you are. This will draw customers in your storefront to check you out. Banks will take your loan applications more seriously. Even more importantly, your price tags will be taken more seriously.

Printed Envelopes Can Make “Success Breed Success”

If your service meets the unspoken claim of professionalism that your envelopes portrayed, you can expect more business in the future. Your finances are stabilized and you don’t have to worry about closing your doors. Your business is actually starting to net profits. Taking the lesson of the printed envelopes versus handwritten envelopes to heart, you can build on this image by exposing your business’ brand in every way possible to reach a larger audience.

If you do it right, you will get even more customers. You may also take on employees and partners, move to a larger business space, make your business model more organized, and maybe even switch from a sole proprietorship to a corporation and claim those tax benefits.

You’ve talked like a duck, now you’re walking like a duck.

At Last, Success! Your Business is What Your Envelopes Suggested

After having put that initial seed image of professionalism and success on the return address of your envelopes, you have become what you showed the world you were. You learned how the simple gesture of having more professional-looking envelopes and stationery improved your business. Then you ran with it and became what you wanted to be.

Does all this sound too good to be true? The road to success is in all likelihood not paved in printed envelopes. The road to success starts with a small step like this one, and added with other small steps, can lead to larger steps until your business is in full stride to the promised land. When you budget for your business promotion, the smallest things count as much as the largest things.