Monthly Archives: July 2021

Custom Letterhead Printing: Is It Worth It for Your Small Business?

Building your small business, , ,

If you’re the owner of a small company, you’ll be well used to communicating with your clients, customers, and even your employees through the postal system. Although we’re bang in the middle of the digital age, sending paper mail is still a crucial part of running any business – not everyone has an email address, after all!

You might have considered investing in custom letterhead printing for your small business. But is it really worth the price, and how will it benefit your company? Let’s find out.

What are Custom Letterheads?

The letterhead refers to the header portion of a letter that typically includes a business’s logo, company name, address, and other identifying information. Its main function is to provide all the necessary information to the letter’s recipient (i.e. how to get in touch with the company).

But having a custom letterhead also helps your business appear more professional. It serves as the basic introduction to your business – your overall style and aesthetic, what your company stands for, who your customers are, and more. In fact, many of your clients will form their first impression of your business through your letterhead.

Creating a custom letterhead for your business is simple and straightforward with a site such as 123Print. Choose from thousands of pre-designed templates or use our editor to create your own letterhead design from scratch. You can even create a letterhead to match your business cards or other branded stationery.

What Goes Into a Custom Letterhead?

There are many different aspects to designing a custom letterhead, each of which plays a role in its final look and feel.

Graphics and Logo

The first major aspect is choosing which graphics to use on the letterhead. The most important graphic is your company’s logo, but other graphics can also be included, such as borders or stylistic elements that add a pop of colour.
The combination of graphics used will really be the face of the company. Choosing where to put the logo, how large it should be, and how it works together with other graphics on the page will all impact the overall look and feel of the letterhead.

Colour

Along with the graphics, colour also plays a major role. Consistency of colour-use across the company is crucial. Knowing and using the exact shade is necessary for this. Colour, along with the graphics, will speak volumes about the kind of company the letterhead belongs to and is one of a business’s best opportunities to give the right impression of their brand. Traditional blues, blacks, and browns speak to a more formal, professional business, while reds, oranges, yellows, and purples speak more to fun and fresh designs.

Shades of blue can be used to create a calm, relaxed feel, while vibrant shades of red and pink give an impression of excitement and vigour.
The colour scheme you choose for your letterhead is up to you, but ensure it ties in nicely with your logo and your business cards.

Font

Next, the font choice is also a big company branding decision. Serif fonts like Times New Roman tend to be more traditional, and project the image of a professional, established business. Sans serif fonts like Arial are more popular nowadays and are generally fairly neutral. They’ll give the impression of a modern, up-and-coming company, particularly associated with youth.

You’ll also want to think about the font size of the letterhead in relation to the main body of the letter. Sticking with a more traditional and easy-to-read font is best in most cases. Fancier fonts, such as script, can be left for the logo design.

Alignment

The alignment refers to the placement of the information in the header, which must be coordinated with the graphics. Traditional alignment is left-aligned but that is not necessarily standard in letterhead design today. Different designs will work better with different alignments, and different brands might want to experiment with different alignments to see what impact they have on their customer base.

Paper Stock

Choosing the right grade and style of paper can also help elevate your brand and your company’s reputation. Heavier stock is more expensive, but can feel much better. Similarly, having raised lettering can help create an impression of high quality and professionalism.

Should a Small Business Invest in Custom Letterheads?

In short: yes! Custom Letterheads are a great investment for any business, from the smallest of start-ups to large, multi-national corporations. A custom letterhead will especially help to bring legitimacy to a small, up-and-coming business that’s looking to grow its customer base.

Getting your brand story out there with a well-designed logo placed onto your company letterhead, business cards, and other stationery can really boost the success of your small business in the professional sphere. Here’s how:

Tying Together Your Brand Image

Establishing your brand across a variety of business tools is essential to building trust and recognition within your customer base. Showing that you have a coherent brand vision across your business materials will also give your customers something to remember you by, better painting the image of your brand in their heads. Getting customized letterhead is one of the best ways to make that step forward in brand coherence. Clients and partners alike will better appreciate and understand the brand while also taking the company more seriously (reducing the chance that they’ll visit a competitor next time they’re in the market for your goods and services).

Selling the Product

Custom letterheads can also act as a kind of salesperson for your business. Many customers are interested in being sold an aesthetic and a way of life. The letterhead, along with the logo, colours, and design choices that come along with it, can provide your customers a way to connect with the brand that makes them want to integrate it into their everyday life.

Think about the Apple, Tiffany’s, or Starbucks customer – these companies create an amazing, branded customer experience that makes their clients want to keep and show off their products. In part, this is due to great design choices for getting recognition for their products.

You’ll only be able to get that level of specific, branded experience with a custom letterhead design.

Projecting Professionalism

A custom letterhead immediately projects an air of legitimacy and professionalism. Even if you’ve just started this business out of your living room or garage, you’ll be showing commitment to the brand through the effort to present a specific, coherent image of yourself as a company.

The formal character of a custom letterhead will also increase your perceived competency as a business for those hesitant about working with a less-established organisation. Company size may not matter as much if your correspondence with partners and customers comes off as professional and legitimate.

Offering a Personal Customer Experience

Finally, customers are looking for that personal connection these days from the small businesses that they choose to patronise. One of the greatest charms you have as a small business is your personal, unique brand.

If your business letterhead, cards, and promotional products use run-of-the-mill, unedited templates (or if you don’t have a letterhead at all), customers will not be able to distinguish what makes you different from the big brands. You’ve got to embrace your niche and what makes you special in order to attract customers who want a more personalized, unique experience.

Where to Order Professionally Printed Custom Letterheads

Today, with the rise of so many small companies selling products locally and online, the power of professional and recognisable branding cannot be overestimated. People want to both trust and connect with the small businesses they support, and investing in customised letterheads is of the simplest and most affordable ways you can achieve this relationship with your clients.

Head to 123Print to browse our extensive range of over 2,000 custom letterhead templates. When you’ve found a design that speaks to you, simply to go our easy-to-use template editor to fully customise your letterhead. Upload your business’s logo with the click of a button, and tailor the font to your business’s tone and style.

We aim to dispatch all orders within 2 working days. And if you’re not satisfied, you can send your stationery back for a full no-quibble refund. Start designing your custom letterheads today – and why not invest in some matching business cards while you’re there?

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What Are Loyalty Cards and Could They Benefit Your Business?

Building your small business, , ,

Are you thinking about starting up a loyalty card scheme for your small business? If so, we don’t blame you! Loyalty cards are powerful marketing tools, providing customers with an obvious incentive for returning to your company after they’ve made their first purchase.
On today’s high street, you’ll struggle to find a single café, book shop, dog groomer or other small business which doesn’t have some sort of loyalty scheme in place. By promising a deal, discount or freebie for returning customers, you ensure that members of your target audience will choose your business over a competing establishment when they’re next in need of the product or service that you offer.
Read on to discover exactly how loyalty cards work, and how they can work wonders for a business like yours.

What Are Loyalty Cards and How Do They Work?

Loyalty cards are designed for the all-important purpose of customer retention. All business owners know that, as important as it is to attract new customers, retaining existing customers is even more crucial.
Many marketing studies have shown that the longer someone has been a customer of a particular brand, the more money they’re likely to spend there. They’re also more likely to keep coming back to this particular company again. Loyalty cards give customers a tangible, clear reason to keep shopping with you, rather than trying out a competitor – hence their name.

Most loyalty cards work on the basis of offering a free gift once the customer has made a certain number of purchases. For example, a hairdresser may offer the 10th cut free. With each haircut, the customer receives one stamp on their loyalty card. Once they’ve collected 9 stamps, they can hand the card over for a free snip. Loyalty cards can also be points-based, with points awarded depending on the amount of money spent; this is a common scheme at supermarkets.

Any kind of business can implement a loyalty card scheme, no matter your target audience, and regardless of whether you sell products or services. Small and large companies alike all benefit from customer retention!

What Types of Loyalty Cards Are There?

There are many different variations of loyalty card schemes. They can be divided into three main types: punch/stamp loyalty cards, points-based loyalty cards, and VIP membership cards.

Punch/Stamp Loyalty Cards

The simplest and most straightforward type of loyalty card is the classic punch/stamp loyalty card. These cards are printed on disposable cardstock and are designed to be hole-punched or stamped when the customer makes a purchase.
For example, a coffee shop may offer each customer their 10th coffee free. For each coffee the customer purchases, they get one stamp on their loyalty card (or one hole is punched out of it). When the customer has collected 9 stamps/holes, they can present the card for a free beverage.

These types of cards are designed to be thrown away after the customer has collected a sufficient number of stamps and collected their reward. Once the customer makes their next purchase, they’re given a new card to start collecting stamps again.
Stamp loyalty cards are perfect for small businesses just starting to experiment with different marketing techniques. You don’t need to have an app or a website to use these cards, and you don’t need to take your customers’ details.

Points-Based Loyalty Cards

Points-based loyalty cards are like a step up from punch or stamp loyalty cards. Instead of getting a stamp when purchasing an item, the customer can earn ‘points’ for each purchase made. The number of points given out is usually based on how much money the customer spends.

Accrued points can then be used as cash (to be spent exclusively in your shop, of course). Alternatively, points may add up to rewards such as a free gift or special offer.
A well-known example of a points-based loyalty card system is Nectar. At Sainsbury’s, customers earn 1 Nectar point for each £1 they spend in-store. Once a certain number of nectar points have been accrued, customers can spend them on shopping, as they would a gift card. 100 Nectar points are currently worth 50p.

Points-based loyalty cards are, obviously, a lot more convoluted and trickier to implement than classic stamp loyalty cards. You’ll need to obtain your customers’ details to set up their account, and you’ll generally need an app or a website so that your customers can see how many points they have.

VIP Member Cards

VIP member cards are similar to points-based loyalty systems, but taken up a notch. These are special cards that give the customer “VIP status”. The possession of a card might grant them exclusive promotions, benefits, products or discounts that non-members don’t have access to.

These member cards may also involve a points system, or they may simply offer incentives for signing up and being a member, regardless of how much money is spent. An example of such a scheme is Tesco’s Clubcard. Clubcard members are offered special discounted prices on products. For example, a pack of sausages may cost £3 for normal shoppers, while Clubcard holders only have to pay £1.50.

VIP member cards can also be tiered. This means that you can climb a tier system depending on how much money you’ve spent with the company overall. Higher tiers of membership unlock better benefits.
Most VIP programs are free, but some cost a fee to enter (e.g. Costco membership or Amazon Prime).

Are Loyalty Cards Worth It for My Business?

Loyalty schemes can work magic for any business, whether you run a small, independent company or a multi-national corporation. Studies have proven time and time again that retaining customers is crucial for any business’s success, and that loyalty schemes are a great tool in this.

75% of consumers claim they’d be more likely to make another purchase with a company if they’d received an incentive of some kind. This makes sense – after all, if you’ve already got 3 stamps towards a free coffee at your local café, why would you go anywhere else?
Yes, it will cost to implement a loyalty card scheme – but as it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than it does to keep an existing one, it’s absolutely worth it. It’s up to you what kind of reward you offer – it doesn’t need to be a particularly expensive ‘prize’, just as long as it’s attractive enough to keep your customers coming back. And you’ll easily make back any money you spend on a loyalty card scheme, as your customers will spend more money with you than they would have otherwise.

Offering a loyalty card scheme means that your past and existing customers are motivated to keep coming back to you, rather than visiting a competitor. Whether you’re a café, a hairdresser, an MOT centre or an airline, a loyalty card scheme will help you retain your long-standing clients.

Where Can I Buy Cheap Loyalty Cards?

If you’re looking to start up a loyalty card scheme for your small business, we’d recommend starting out with a simple hole-punch or stamp loyalty card. At 123Print, we stock a huge range of loyalty card designs, so you’re bound to find one that will suit your company’s aesthetic.
We also offer a blank loyalty card template, so you can create your own design entirely from scratch. Feel free to upload your own logo or artwork, and edit the text, font and colour to your liking.

Our straightforward pricing means the more you order, the more you save. Our loyalty cards are printed to the highest quality on sturdy cardstock cardstock, and are designed to be stamped or hole-punched with each purchase. When the card is spent and the customer wants to redeem their freebie, you can simply dispose of the used card with your paper recycling.

We also sell rubber stamps, perfect for marking your customers’ loyalty cards when they make a purchase. Choose from one of our designs or upload your business’s logo for a truly personalised stamp!