Digital Business Card: Generate One for Smart & Contactless Networking

• Contents
• What is a digital business card?
• 3 key benefits
• How to make one
• Create 2K+ cards in under 5 min.
• Who can use it?
• Best practices
• Best digital business card
Buy Digital Business Cards

Digital Business Cards: The Complete Guide to Help You Network Better

A business card is an integral part of a brand’s identity as it is one of the first tangible aspects that stays with customers. The logo, typography, illustrations, and color schemes you use can help you establish a unique place in your customers’ minds.

There is no dearth of choices when it comes to choosing traditional business cards. You have probably seen one in all shapes, sizes, colors, and designs over the years.

However, in today’s digital-first and post-pandemic world, where contactless solutions are being widely adopted, isn’t it the time to upgrade traditional business cards to something more safe, engaging, and effective?

Enter: Digital business cards, a.k.a. electronic or e-business cards.

A digital business card can be created instantly and offers numerous other benefits over a physical business card. In this guide, we will learn how electronic business cards can help you network better, how to create them, and the best practices to keep in mind while using them.

But first, what exactly is a digital business card?

What is a digital business card?

A digital business card is a modern and safe way to share vital information about an individual or a business. These details can include a name, address, phone number, website, photo, location, user bio, social media links, and much more.

Digital or electronic business cards—powered by dynamic QR Codes—safely store your contact information in an online format known as .vcf (virtual contact file). This contact information card can be conveniently shared in numerous ways—via your Apple or Google Wallet, email signature, social media, etc. Alternatively, you can embed the business card QR Code on a physical paper-based card.

Your clients simply need to scan the QR Code on your card, view your contact information, and save it on their smartphones with a single click.

Now that you understand how digital business cards work, let’s learn about their key benefits.

Digital business cards can help you network better: 3 key benefits

A convenient and paperless way to network with your clients

Making it extremely convenient for your prospects to interact with you can go a long way. And, digital business cards can help you effectively achieve that.

All that is required of users is to scan the QR Code on your digital business card, view your contact details, and save that information on their mobile phones.

The benefit? This eliminates the time-consuming hassle of manually typing every contact detail and saving it on a smartphone.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed customer preferences—the demand for contactless experiences is constantly rising. With digital business cards, you can safely share your contact details with anyone, anywhere.

By sharing your digital business cards as an Apple or Google Wallet pass, you can get done with physical business cards to ensure a safe transfer of your contact information.

The flexibility to modify details, without reprinting or resharing your card

Suppose you have moved to a new website, email address, or office location. Would you need to recreate or reshare your digital business card to reflect the updated information?

Absolutely not.

Since a digital business card is powered by an editable QR Code (a.k.a. dynamic QR Code), you can update your contact information at the backend without the need for regenerating or resharing your e-business card.

Your prospects or customers can continue to scan the same card and view the latest details in real-time. This helps you eliminate reprinting, additional spending, and the time and effort required to redistribute the updated digital business card.

Get access to first-party card scan data and retarget users online

Another major advantage of using a digital business card is gaining access to first-party user data. Whenever someone scans the QR Code on your e-business card, you can leverage card analytics and metrics to better optimize your networking efforts.

This first-party analytics data includes the number of card scans and unique visitors, devices used to scan, top-performing e-business cards, and card scans by location and time of the day.

Here is one use-case of how you can use this data to fine-tune your networking efforts:

Suppose you have shared two digital business cards to A/B test and identify the one driving more scans and engagement. You can view the top-performing cards by the number of scans and unique visitors.

Based on this data, you can double down on the e-business card leading to higher scans, and optimize or discontinue the underperforming one.

Additionally, when you create digital business cards with Beaconstac, you can retarget users—on Facebook and Google—who have scanned the dynamic QR Code on your e-business card. This can help you nudge and follow up on prospects who have shown interest in your business but haven’t converted yet.

In addition to these benefits, e-business cards offer various other advantages over paper business cards. These include the ability to share an unlimited amount of information, shorter business card procurement timelines, significant cost savings, and much more. Learn more about the benefits of digital business cards.

How to make a digital business card in 6 quick steps

After learning about the above-mentioned benefits of e-business cards, you might be looking to create one. To do so, we recommend choosing a specialized and capable digital business card solution.

This ensures you get access to the entire suite of features and capabilities you need to generate the best possible digital business card for your use case.

Below, we will show you how to create a digital business card with Beaconstac’s digital business card solution. Read on.

How to generate a batch of up to 2,000 digital business cards in bulk

Let’s say you need to create digital business cards for hundreds or thousands of employees with a standardized card template. Do you need to manually create each business card?

Not if you use Beaconstac’s digital business card solution.

Here’s how you can generate a batch of up to 2,000 digital business cards in less than 5 minutes:

Who can use digital business cards?

Individuals and businesses across industries can use digital business cards to share their contact information and network better with their clients or audiences. Check out some use-cases below:

Sales professionals

Quite often, sales professionals—representatives, managers, directors—meet with prospective customers to showcase their products or services. To stay connected and/or follow up with clients, these professionals can share electronic business cards.

By scanning a digital business card, prospects can easily save a sales professional’s contact details on their smartphones and instantly connect with them.

For example, sales professionals at Snap Finance use Beaconstac’s digital business cards to network better with their target customers.

Real estate agents

When purchasing a home or any property, a strong connection with a realtor goes a long way in closing the deal. In fact, nearly 90% of US buyers purchase homes via a real estate agent or broker.

As there are multiple meetings involved during the purchase of a property, real estate agents can share their digital business cards to stay in touch with buyers. In addition to sharing contact details, realtors can provide prospects with more information by linking these e-cards to their websites or available properties’ locations.

Healthcare professionals

Medical professionals—staff members, doctors—can use digital business cards not only for sharing contact information but also for verifying their credentials whenever required.

Wondering which healthcare companies already use electronic business cards? Novartis, Mubadala Healthcare, Medical Card System, and Qualitas Health are some of the leading healthcare-based firms that use Beaconstac’s digital business cards to accomplish their business goals.

Moreover, healthcare marketing companies can use electronic business cards instead of traditional ones to instantly connect with sponsors and establish partnerships—just as the US-based healthcare marketing firm, PatientPoint utilizes Beaconstac to achieve so.

Job applicants

Individuals who are looking for a new job can use digital business cards on their resumes to stand out. Adding an e-business card on a resume helps job seekers in two ways:

• Lets hiring managers quickly connect with them, and

• Provides recruiters with instant access to their digital portfolio.

All hiring managers need to do is open their smartphones, scan the QR Code, and connect with applicants through a single click.

Artists and creators

Lastly, artists—photographers, actors, musicians—can also utilize digital business cards to find and capture new opportunities. Whenever an artist meets with a potential client, they can share an e-business card that has their complete contact details and links to their popular work.

Whenever someone scans the QR on the card, they can view that artist’s work, and if interested, they can contact the creator for further conversations.

Best practices to leverage digital business cards

Customize and personalize as per your brand identity

Make sure to design your digital business cards in a way that helps customers easily recognize your brand. Add your company logo, use brand colors, include a relevant CTA, and experiment with circular QR Codes for your e-business cards.

The goal is to create a digital business card that stands out and prompts the user to scan it to get in touch with you.

Here is a list of standout digital business card designs to inspire you.

Use them to include more than just contact information

Go beyond sharing just your contact details via digital business cards. You can increase their effectiveness by linking them to a customized landing page that can consist of your ongoing campaign details or social media handles.

The best part? You can create these mobile-friendly and beautiful landing pages right within the Beaconstac platform and link them to your digital business cards.

Related: Create a digital business card with 20+ social media links

Additionally, you can add your office location to the card, making it extremely convenient for people to navigate to your address.

Leverage dynamic QR Codes on digital business cards for flexibility

As mentioned in the ‘Top 5 benefits’ section, we highly recommend using dynamic QR Codes for your digital business cards. With this category of QR Codes, you get the flexibility to edit contact details as and when required, without the need for recreating and resharing your cards.

This can result in significant cost savings and eliminate the hassle your business would have to go through to reshare your electronic business cards.

Share your digital business cards in a contactless manner

We recommend going completely paperless and contactless with your business card sharing. When you use Beaconstac’s digital business card solution, you get the option to add your digital business card to your Apple Wallet (or Google Wallet).

This allows you to share your e-business card with your clients directly from your mobile device. Whenever you meet a prospective customer, you need to simply open your Apple or Google Wallet and present the card. The recipient can quickly scan it and save your contact information on their smartphone.

Not only does this let you eliminate card printing costs, but it also helps you network in a completely safe and contactless manner.

RELATED: Contactless Business Card for a Completely Paperless Networking

How to choose the best digital business card solution

Now that you understand the benefits of using a digital business card and how to make one, you need to pick an e-business card generator suitable for your specific requirements.

While evaluating a digital business card generator, consider the following parameters:

Check out our guide on the best digital business card makers available today to learn which solution performs the best on all of the above-mentioned parameters.