Our appetite for immediate gratification knows no bounds, just attend an event hosted by a local networking group, and you’ll see what I mean. What passes for networking these days might better be described as “card bombing.”

People are laser-focused on how many business cards they can drop and pick up per 90 minute session. They have forgotten the cardinal rule of networking: it’s about quality, not quantity.

Stay Away from 52 Card Pick-up

The “card bombing” strategy is particularly popular with businesses that rely on memberships to survive. It has long been thought that the more people who get membership cards the better. Why? It’s really a game of percentages.

As in, if I have to give membership cards to 100 people in order to get 10 takers, than the more people I find at one time or in one spot, the better. This is actually the opposite of what you should be doing. To generate quality leads, sales or quotas you need to develop a new mantra: exclusivity sells.

The right team of designers and distributors can back you up and create membership mystique.

The Golden Ticket Complex

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, let me tell you a story.

Flashback to Minneapolis, MN late 2002.

I was at a local electronics store picking up a birthday gift. I had arrived with a small group of friends and we were milling about looking at merchandise. Well, they were milling about; I was on a mission. In addition to the birthday present, I had to find a film for a class project.

 We had been to a couple of video stores already and had no luck finding the sought-after title. In my frustration, I had decided to cough up the extra cash and just buy the film.

I happened to be complaining; rather loudly to a friend about how annoying it was that video stores carried such a small selection of films. She heartily agreed and offered to help me find it in the store. As she left, I suddenly saw a store employee step out from the shelves behind me and wave me over. I headed in his direction with skeptical caution.

The harried conversation that followed revealed that he had heard my plight and had a solution. Before I knew it, I was the lucky winner of one of five over-sized red movie tickets. It gave me access to something called Netflix. As if that wasn’t cool enough, the ticket came with a free three month membership.

To this day, I can say, I got in on the ground floor of a media-defining trend. You can’t buy that kind of publicity, and that’s how you need to treat membership cards now.

The Secret Password Is...

Employ mobile marketing, QR (Quick Response) Codes, and Plastic Printers in the right balance, and you have a recipe for sales success. Here’s how it works:

Plastic Printers can help you design and create limited edition membership cards. During the process, they will incorporate a QR Code into that design. The QR Code holds an exclusive offer from your business, but there’s a limited number of the cards available.

Come up with an idea for how people can get the membership cards while they last. Make it fun; make it buzz-worthy. Promote your membership campaign online and “leak” images of the cards. To add an extra layer of competitive fun, post people at random locations to physically hand-out some of the limited edition cards.

Have a pre-set time limit or card counter graphic on your website. Once either of these runs out, the promotion is over.

Plastic printers is here to help you test the idea out. Contact us at www.plasticprinters.com to toss around ideas. If the campaign is a success, it’s always repeatable.