How To Choose a Digital Business Card Solution as per Your Business Size

The digital business card (e-business card) market is currently valued at $200 million. It is estimated to reach a whopping $6 billion by the end of 2030. 

You can attribute the growth projection to businesses increasingly opting for digital business cards due to the functional limitations of paper business cards. 

Case in point: 

1. Beaconstac saw a 70% rise in demo requests from businesses in the last six months
2. The number of small businesses switching to Beaconstac’s digital business cards alone increased by 50% in 2022 compared to 2021

As the demand for digital business cards unfurled, so did the number of solutions available in the market. So, how do you choose the right one? 

That will depend on your company’s size and its networking objectives.

Keep reading to find out the key factors you should consider while choosing the best digital business card solution for your business, be it small, mid-sized, or enterprise businesses.

But before diving into it, let’s learn the key factors that every business should consider while choosing an e-business card solution.

Table of contents

1. 4 Mandatory factors to look for in a digital business card solution irrespective of the business size
2. How to pick the right digital business card solution for your small business
3. What functionalities should your mid-sized business look for in an e-business card solution
4. Factors to consider while choosing an e-business card solution for your enterprise business
5. Supercharge your networking via Beaconstac’s all-rounder digital business card solution

4 Mandatory factors to look for in a digital business card solution irrespective of the business size

Here are four key functionalities that you should look for while choosing your e-business card solution, no matter your business size.

1. Ease of use
2. Ease of sharing
3. Two-way contact sharing
4. Tracking and analytics

1. Ease of use

Choose an intuitive digital business card solution with an easy learning curve. This will help simplify the transition from paper cards and accelerate the adoption process team-wide. 

It should let you create digital business cards in minutes, manage them seamlessly, analyze their engagement in a single click, and share them within seconds.

2. Ease of sharing

The digital business card solution you choose should offer contactless and paperless sharing options that fit every networking scenario. 

Apart from QR Codes and URLs, your solution should let you share your digital business card via Apple Wallet (or Google Wallet) for added convenience.

3. Two-way contact sharing

If you wish to share your contact with your recipients and also capture their details via an e-business card, ensure that your solution offers two-way contact sharing. 

This functionality lets your recipients submit a form with their contact details via the same digital business card you shared with them. Thus, acting as an efficient lead generation mechanism.

Additionally, the digital business card solution you choose should record and manage each warm lead in a digital address book and then transfer them into your organization’s CRM software if needed.

4. Tracking and analytics

Your team might have successfully shared many business cards with your prospects. 

But how do you know if your networking efforts engaged your recipients or piqued their curiosity about your business? By tracking card engagement.

Choose a digital business card solution that offers a comprehensive tracking functionality.  

This feature will help you analyze your team’s networking performance, irrespective of its size, via metrics such as—card views, contact saves, unique visitors, best and least-performing cards, and more.

You just saw the four mandatory functionalities that every business should have in their e-business card solution. Now, let’s uncover the additional factors specific to your business size.

How to choose the best digital business card solution for your small business

Being a small business, you need all the capabilities that can maximize your networking initiatives cost-effectively.

That being the case, your digital business card solution should have the two given functionalities:

1. Card design capabilities
2. Affordability

1. Card design capabilities

Your digital business card solution should help you customize your e-business cards as per your brand guidelines with design capabilities such as adding your company logo, brand colors, layout, and more. 

Apart from this, it should also let you create digital business cards with interactive elements such as social media handles, URLs, and your business location.

2. Affordability

Choose a cost-effective digital business card solution that falls within your budget. The solution should be able to maximize your ROI by balancing functionality and affordability.

To summarize, a small business should consider the following six factors while choosing a digital business card solution—two factors specific to small businesses along with the four mandatory factors mentioned earlier.

Here’s a table comparing the functionalities of the best digital business card solutions that most small businesses opt for. Let’s see if these solutions offer the mandatory functionalities for small business networking needs.

How to choose the best digital business card solution for mid-sized businesses

The networking requirements of a mid-sized business are different from those of small businesses. 

Here are four key factors to consider while choosing a digital business card solution for your mid-sized businesses:

1. Centralized management
2. Integrations and automation
3. Card design capabilities
4. Security

1. Centralized management

A centralized management system will be of great help as your team expands. 

You can manage your organization’s digital business cards as an admin with a robust centralized management system, among other things:

1. Set user permissions
2. Create sub-accounts for your team
3. Effectuate branding guidelines for every card, and more 

2. Integrations and automation

A good digital business card solution should support integrations with third-party tools—either directly or through automation platforms like Zapier or Integromat. 

Instead of manually exporting data to a third-party application, integration capabilities will help you automate the process — such as transferring captured leads to your CRM software. This helps you save a good chunk of your precious time.

3. Card design capabilities

Your digital business card solution should help you customize your e-business cards as per your brand guidelines with design capabilities such as including a company logo, brand colors, layout, and more. 

Furthermore, it should also let you create digital business cards with interactive elements such as social media handles, URLs, and your business location.

4. Security

Ensure that your digital business card solutions offer powerful security capabilities to secure your data as you exchange it with your recipients. 

A secure solution should be GDPR and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. It should also provide: 

1. Strong data encryption 
2. URL-based phishing detection
3. SSO login
4. Multi-factor authentication
5. Custom domain 

In a nutshell, mid-sized businesses should consider the following eight factors while considering a digital business card solution—four mandatory factors common for all businesses along with the four factors specific to mid-sized businesses.

Let’s compare the best digital business card solutions for mid-sized businesses and see if these solutions meet the required functionalities.

How to choose the best digital business card solution for enterprise businesses

Here are four functionalities that an enterprise should look for in their e-business card solution to efficate networking at scale.

1. Centralized and role-based management
2. Integration and automation
3. Enterprise-level security
4. Bulk creation and distribution

1. Centralized and role-based management

A capable enterprise digital business card solution should help you centrally manage thousands of digital business cards as an admin. 

It should help you add multiple team members, configure their access, create sub-accounts for role-based management, and enforce branding guidelines on all digital business cards in your company.

2. Integration and automation

Choose a digital business card solution that supports integration to various third-party tools such as Active Directory, Zapier, Salesforce, Hubspot, and other CRM platforms. 

It should support both direct integration and integration via automation platforms like Integromat (Make) or Zapier.

3. Enterprise-level security

As your team exchanges digital business cards with recipients, they also share confidential information about your enterprise. 

Therefore, your digital business card solution must have powerful enterprise-grade security capabilities such as:

1. GDPR and SOC® 2 Type 2 compliance
2. Strong data encryption
3. URL-based phishing detection
4. SSO login
5. Multi-factor authentication
6. Custom domain

4. Bulk creation and distribution

Creating digital business cards manually is not feasible for enterprises. Hence, you need to choose a solution that lets you instantly create and distribute thousands of e-business cards in a single batch. 

Ensure your digital business card solution has a bulk creation and distribution capability. It will help you manage your team’s digital business cards better and save oodles of time.

Overall, there are eight factors that an enterprise should consider while choosing a digital business card solution—four mandatory factors irrespective of your business size and four factors specific to enterprise businesses.

Let’s compare the best digital business card solutions for enterprises and see if these solutions meet the required functionalities.

Supercharge your networking via Beaconstac’s all-rounder digital business card solution

Now that you know how to choose a digital business card solution as per your business size, it’s time to pick the right solution. Give Beaconstac a try.

Beaconstac is an intuitive digital business card solution built to meet the networking goals of all kinds of businesses: small, mid-sized, or enterprise.

Create customized digital business cards at scale, manage them as an admin, and share them via multiple mediums such as QR Code, URL, Apple Wallet, and Google Wallet.

The solution lets you track card engagement and capture prospect information via Two-Way Contact Sharing and export it to your CRM.

Furthermore, Beaconstac protects all your networking activities with enterprise-grade security. And the best part? You pay as per your company size and get all the required features accordingly. 

All the functionalities without downloading an additional application.

• Author Details

Author Details

Athira Unnikrishnan

A passionate writer with an inquisitive eye for marketing, Athira comes with over 5 years of experience researching and writing about B2B SaaS products. Presently, she helps people understand the benefits of a digital business card and how they help modernize networking & lead generation. To know more about her work, and her published work around digital business cards, click here.

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