Outsourcing your membership card printing to a third-party supplier has many benefits and not just for your organisation: members can experience a better service too.
If you’re printing cards in large numbers, getting someone else to take care of the fulfilment and mailing could significantly improve your business operations.
We look at 5 key benefits of outsourcing your membership card printing and fulfilment to a specialist.
1. Free up your resources to focus on other core business areas
Is card printing and fulfilment a yearly task that everyone in the organisation dreads? Or is it a weekly action that drains resource?
One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing is freeing up your staff to focus on core business activities such as member engagement, customer service and marketing.
If they’re not having to spend hours printing out cards and letters by hand, matching them up, fulfilling and mailing them – they can spend their time on the member activities that drive value and revenue.
2. Achieve operational and cost efficiencies
Sophisticated automated printing and fulfilment machines eliminate the risk of human error.
They match up membership cards, letters and items automatically, reject duplicates and provide a time stamped record of successful completion.
Outsourcing can save you money. There’s no need to invest in expensive card printers, repeat consumables or the overheads of staff to operate them.
You will also realise a lower cost-per-card as specialist card printing companies benefit from economies of scale, so they can produce a card at a lower rate.
They usually have access to keener postage rates too, which means you often save money on delivery costs.
3. Scale up and down easily
Outsourcing your membership card printing allows you to scale up or down easily, making it ideal for organisations with fluctuating or seasonal membership volumes.
A specialist provider can expand card production easily to meet increased demand, whereas in-house operations may struggle to keep up with sudden changes in volumes.
4. Streamline your operations
Most membership card printing organisations will work with you to receive membership data in a streamlined way.
It can be difficult to get lots of internal processes matching up together when you’re managing the printing yourself.
If you work with a card fulfilment services provider, they can manage the whole process for you and provide you with records of successful printing and mailing at the end.
Using API integrations to connect different operating systems
Getting different systems to ‘talk’ to each other is often one of the biggest challenges. Choose a provider that can set up an API connection directly with their system and your own, and all card requests will happen automatically, without any need for manual input or intervention.
5. Benefit from more sophisticated card functionality and materials
Working with a membership card printing supplier gives you access to a range of features and technologies such as RFID technology, encoding, specialist print finishes, and more.
Together, these can lift the impact of your card and its member benefits to a different level.
The sustainable argument
For those concerned about the environmental impact of more PVC cards on the planet (and rightly so), there are a lot more sustainable options now available, like durable and waterproof paperboard, or Bamboo and Wood cards.
For those who still need the durability of PVC, there are Recycled and Biodegradable PVC alternatives. Your debit and credit cards are likely made from 100% recycled PVC for example.
Talk to us about card fulfilment services
The Card Network has been providing card fulfilment services to our customers for nearly 20 years. We do weekly print batches to agreed service level agreements, and one-off or scheduled project runs.
To request a quote or get more information, email hello@thecardnetwork.co.uk
