Measure Your Networking with Digital Business Cards.

Digitalization has taken the world by storm, and the relevance of manual and paper-based processes is slowly fading. From signing contracts to completing payments, businesses just prefer an efficient, digital alternative.

This applies to networking, too. Digital business cards exhibit a continuous market growth rate of 9.18% CAGR—an industry's average annual growth rate. They’re rapidly replacing expensive, environmentally harmful paper business cards for all the right reasons.

If you’re planning to switch to a digital business card or are simply curious about it and how it works, this extensive guide covers everything you need to know.

What is a digital business card?

A digital business card (or a virtual business card) is a modern and paperless way to share your professional and company contact details. These details include your basic contact details such as name, professional summary, phone number, headshot, and business address.

Unlike paper cards, though, you can insert interactive elements such as web URLs, social media links, and other resources in a digital business card.

What sets digital business cards apart from other networking tools? You can exchange contact information, gather first-party data on card interaction (clicks, saves, viewing location, time), and collect your prospects' voluntarily submitted data (zero-party).

How does a digital business card work?

A digital or electronic business card safely stores your contact information in an online format called .vcf (virtual contact file).

You can create a digital business card in less than five minutes and share it as an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass, QR Code, or URL.

⚙️ Here’s how a digital business card works:

1. The recipient scans a QR Code or taps a card URL
2. A digital business card with all your contact details pops up on their phone
3. If auto-download is off, they click it to save the contact details in their phonebook
4. If two-way contact-sharing is on, your card nudges recipients to share their details using a form
5. The recipient interacts with your card, clicks website URLs, social icons, YouTube links, or whatever you share

A digital business card isn’t just a good-to-have networking tool; it’s much more than that. It can transform how you interact with clients and benefit your business in multiple ways.

Why should you move from paper to digital business cards

1. Share as much information as you want

1. 🔥Helpful for: Creating a solid first impression and providing action-oriented resources
2. Unlike paper business cards, digital business cards do not have space restrictions. You can include as many phone numbers, URLs, social media accounts, and other details on your card as possible.

2. Update your card content as required

1. 🔥Helpful for: Tweaking the digital business cards for different audiences
2. Need to update your paper business card? You’ll have to recreate and reprint. With e-business cards, you can update your card’s content on the backend in real time—without reprinting. You can customize the templates and background colors to improve the esthetic appeal and make your card memorable to your audience.

3. Instantly create and share digital business cards

1. 🔥Helpful for: Generating a business card in under five minutes for an important meeting or networking event
2. On average, physical business cards take 30 days to procure. However, you can create digital business cards for yourself or your team within five minutes. Each card is ready for sharing as soon as you create it. The best part is that you can bulk-create up to 2,000 cards and automatically assign them to respective team members.

4. Eliminate physical card-sharing

1. 🔥Helpful for: Integrating your business cards in your digital outreach programs
2. Get rid of physical and paper-based card sharing with virtual business cards. Share your cards as an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass, QR Code, or web URL. This gives you the flexibility to include them in email signatures, virtual conferencing backgrounds, and digital marketing collateral—the opportunities are endless.

5. Cut down on card printing costs

1. 🔥Helpful for: Cutting down on unnecessary costs without impacting the team’s performance
2. The average annual cost to print paper business cards in the US is $194 per team member. E-business cards only cost $48 – $72 annually per person. When you apply this to multiple team members, you save a lot of money that otherwise goes into printing paper cards.

6. A truly eco-friendly alternative to paper business cards

1. 🔥Helpful for: Supporting green initiatives to promote corporate social responsibility
2. Nearly all alternatives to paper business cards (even NFCs) involve physical elements. You can create digital business cards virtually, making them 100% paperless and sustainable. Phasing out paper cards from multiple team members will significantly reduce paper and the ensuing environmental footprint.

7. Simplify the transition from paper to digital business cards

1. 🔥Helpful for: Deploying digital business cards for teams
2. Moving to a digital alternative can be challenging for your business because it involves completely changing an ongoing process. The technological aspect of any tool is the primary obstacle you need to overcome.
3. But, with a digital business card solution, creating a business card requires zero technical expertise and is as simple as filling up a form with your contact details. In the next section, you’ll learn how to create your first virtual business card in five easy steps.

How to share a digital business card with your prospects

There are three primary ways to share a digital business card: QR Code, URL, or a digital wallet pass. These methods depend on your choice and the recipients’ convenience.

Here are a couple of ways to share your digital business card over various channels:

1. Email

1. Email is an excellent channel for sales outreach via cold emails; marketing teams also use it for their email campaigns.
2. Now, if a prospect is genuinely interested, they can email you and wait for a reply or look for more details on your website. But it still carries the risk of potential drop-offs.
3. Adding a digital business card to your email signature via a QR Code or URL gives your email extra context about who you are and what your business stands for.
4. Prospects can contact you directly or browse through the materials you shortlist and link in your virtual business card. This method works exceptionally well if you seek partnerships with another business or hire new employees.

2. LinkedIn

1. LinkedIn is the most prominent professional networking platform for most business connections.
2. If you’re a freelancer or someone looking for a job, adding a digital business card to your LinkedIn profile can make it easy for prospective employers to reach out to you.

💡 Pro tip: Consider including your digital business card, which has your portfolio linked to it, in your InMail messages.

3. Social media

1. If you’re a creative professional, especially a designer or an influencer, social media is where your audience interacts with you.
2. While your profile is probably optimized, creating a digital business card with social media links can make it easier for brands to contact you for deals and collaborations.

4. Messaging platforms

Thanks to the digital business card URL, you can share a digital business card on any messaging platform just like any other URL. You can also share it as a QR Code (helpful when viewing on a desktop) or a digital wallet pass.

For example, you can also create a digital business card for WhatsApp to share your status or forward it as a message to your prospects. Whoever receives the card can quickly find your contact information.

5. Virtual events

1. Webinars, demo days, and product overviews are great channels to market your business and capture high-intent leads. A digital business card can help you bridge the gap and convert the audience into these leads.
2. For virtual events, you can use digital business cards at the following touchpoints:
3. • In your registration and post-event feedback emails
   • To your presentation for the webinar or at the end of the panel discussion as a QR Code
   • On the landing page for event registration as a QR Code

6. Networking events

1. If you ask us, paper business cards are an absolute no-go at professional networking events.
2. After a great presentation, you wouldn’t want to fumble around for your paper business cards, find them abandoned at events, or, worse, run out of printed copies.
3. On the other hand, you can use digital business cards in multiple ways at in-person events:
4. • On your marketing collaterals (booth, brochures, name tags) as QR Codes
   • To share your digital business card via an Apple Wallet or Google Wallet pass
   • To share your business details from presentations as a QR Code
   • To capture event leads using two-way contact sharing
5. So far, we’ve talked about creating and sharing a digital business card, but you can only do that if you sign up for a digital business card solution.
6. Buying any new tool for your tech stack could be challenging. You need to understand all the features, how they work, and if you really need them.
7. Here’s a breakdown of the most essential features of a digital business card solution.

9 Key features to seek in a digital business card solution

1. Card design capabilities

Your digital business card is a reflection of your professional image. It’s essential that the design is clean and the card displays all the required information.

Shortlist a platform with ready-to-use templates, custom colors, font styles, and the ability to add brand logos—to fine-tune design elements per your brand. The tool should be easy to use and have a preview that reflects your real-time changes.

Interactive digital business cards can work wonders at a networking event. So, opt for one that incorporates multimedia elements such as videos, animations, or audioclips to make your digital business card more engaging.

You must be able to rearrange the contents of your virtual business card to prioritize the most critical information for different platforms or audiences.

For example, suppose you want to improve your social media presence and encourage card recipients to visit your Instagram or LinkedIn. In that case, you can move the social media buttons to the first fold of the virtual business card on Uniqode.

2. Ease of sharing

This is one of the most essential features to consider before investing in a digital business card.

Check to see if your solution offers the most convenient sharing options for an e-business card: URLs, QR Codes, Google Wallet, and Apple Wallet. Also, remember to check other sharing capabilities, such as messaging apps, social media, and email.

3. Security

Security becomes critical because the digital business card solution will capture and store team members’ details and zero and first-party data from your prospects. The virtual business card solution must comply with all the enterprise-grade security parameters for a secure exchange of information.

Here’s a list of the most important digital business card security features to look out for:

• Single Sign-on (SSO) Login
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• GDPR compliance SOC® 2 Type 2 compliance
• Role-based access
• Password-protected digital business cards

4. Ability to exchange contact information (with mutual consent)

Using two-way contact sharing, you can capture high-intent leads while sharing your contact information at events. Once enabled on your digital business card’s dashboard, users see a button that opens a form on their screen.

Not every tool allows you to customize the lead collection form, so choose one where you can alter the information fields for efficient lead collection. Once the recipient shares these details, you can view all the leads collected in an organized manner as a digital address book.

Digital business cards help you collect contact information that your prospects have shared voluntarily (zero-party data). Essentially, all the leads are interested in your product/service, have a higher buying intent, and would be receptive to retargeting campaigns.

5. Bulk card

If you’re an enterprise or manage large teams, you need a digital business card solution with a bulk-card creation feature.

Using a standard template helps you deploy digital business cards for your entire organization (up to 2000+). If you use a solution like Uniqode, you can deploy these cards in bulk by sharing them via email or digital wallet passes.

6. API and integrations

A digital business card solution must seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack and improve the automated processes instead of hindering them.

Opt for a tool that offers direct and third-party integrations with CRMs, marketing automation systems, and cloud-based identity platforms (for example, Microsoft Entra ID for automated team member onboarding).

Uniqode, for example, can integrate with thousands of your existing tools via Zapier and natively with Salesforce.

7. Central management

When managing large teams and their digital business cards, you need a unified dashboard to maintain consistency with their design and usage. This is where central management comes into the picture. It gives you cockpit control of your organization's active digital business cards and their use.

For example, features like “Admin Access” on Uniqode help you create cohesive organization-wide templates with mandatory fields for your employees to fill (such as name, designation, and contact numbers) while relinquishing some access as required.

Moreover, you can set up an organizational structure with role-based access for resource management. For example, only the administrators can add or remove users, while an editor can change their digital business card.

8. Multi-language digital business cards

Most businesses have customers (existing and potential) in various countries. With multilingual business cards, you can build meaningful relationships with these customers in their local language and dialect.

Your recipients must be able to choose which language they want to view your contact information in. By setting the grounds for effective communication, multi-language business builds customer trust and credibility towards your business at the first stage of interaction.

A digital business card solution like Uniqode lets you create cards in multiple languages. The card automatically appears in the recipient's language based on their device's settings.

9. Tracking and analytics

As a networking tool, a digital business card should help you understand your audience, their preferences, and the effectiveness of your networking initiatives.

A digital business card tool with tracking and analytics information can give you detailed insights into card views, the number of unique users, card downloads, and more. And you cannot trade this feature with anything else.

It also helps you analyze team performance across the organization by giving you specific metrics related to each card. By tracking these analytics, you’ll realize the ROI the digital business card offers over time to evaluate if it is a worthwhile investment for your organization.

The features we discussed are extremely important while investing in a digital business card solution. But, simultaneously, different solutions cater to different business sizes and use cases. You can ask the following questions during a discovery call to find a good fit for your business:

• Is the tool easy to use and implement?
• How do your customers rate the tool? What do they like and dislike about the tool?
• Which plan would be the most affordable for your business?
• Is the digital business card solution scalable?
• It’s always better to opt for a digital business card solution that offers a free trial to test each feature out for yourself. You can use review platforms such as G2 and Capterra to read up unbiased user experiences and compare ratings.

Digital business card buying guide

We have developed a buying guide for digital business cards based on our interactions with businesses and enterprises. Feel free to download it and share it with your colleagues while making this critical decision.

Want to see a digital business card in action? Uniqode offers a 14-day free trial, which includes access to all the features across every plan—no credit cards needed to sign up. Get started by creating your first digital business card.