Gift card printing

Within the previous few years, gift card printing and loyalty cards have exploded on to the American market. They have turn out to be outrageously well-liked with millions of patrons of eating places, retail stores, spas & salons, movie theaters, grocery stores, etc., etc. If you are a merchant and want to make a good, educated decision on what kinds of plastic cards are best to purchase for your business, read on.

First, you have to decide what's most important to you. For example, is looks and durability of utmost importance to you or is price? What is your application for using the playing cards... as gift playing cards, loyalty playing cards, cash playing cards, promotional playing cards or all the above?

If your answer is present playing cards and a great looking, eye-catching card is a must, then you better be looking for a card printer who can print you customized, 30 mil thick, laminated PVC gift card printing. They are noticeably the best looking and best feeling playing cards on the market. Consequently, they are the most well-liked. Because of their popularity over the past few years, the prices have come down. So you don't have to pay too much of a premium for them either... and sometimes none at all! But if your budget is extremely tight, you might see if you can get by with laminated paper core playing cards or styrene playing cards. Although cheaper, they have their down sides. Laminated paper playing cards don't have as good of an appearance and feel as laminated PVC gift card printing. Styrene playing cards are going to become a little more expensive, but have a closer look and feel to PVC cards. Unfortunately, since they usually are not laminated, they don't have that nice shiny look and feel like laminated PVC playing cards do.

If your answer is loyalty playing cards, you better stick with laminated PVC. Not only do they look the best, but they also have the durability you need for a loyalty card. It will keep looking nice in your patron's wallet or purse swipe after swipe after swipe for years to come. UV (ultra-violet) coated playing cards and styrene playing cards can look pretty nasty in a short time since they are not protected with a laminate. But it's not just the lamination that counts. It's what's inside too. For example, paper core playing cards, while laminated, still don't hold up and feel anywhere near as good as laminated PVC cards. Their edges aren't as smooth and they fray after repeated use. You can even pry apart the edges of the lamination. And if you ever wanted to switch card processing vendors, laminated paper core playing cards cannot be re-encoded like all other plastic cards.

If your answer is gift card printing, see "If your answer is loyalty cards" section. The same applies.

Finally, if your answer is promotional cards, you have a lot more freedom here. If you have a good present & loyalty card system which allows you to hand out or mail out promotional playing cards to your patrons, you can use pretty much whatever you want. If you want to "wow" your customers, use the laminated PVC cards mentioned above tipped to a great looking mailer. If you want to keep your costs as low as possible, you can get away with either styrene mailers where you can snap off the bar-coded or magstriped card. Cheaper yet, you can print paper mailers that have a bar-coded or magstriped paper card that can be ripped off of the mailer and brought into your store(s). Whichever medium you use, promotional playing cards are a real money maker! If your current card system does not allow for the processing of promotional playing cards, go find one that does... preferably a pc-based system that allows you to own and control your own database of patron information. That way, you can do card promotions as often as you like to whomever you like.