“Where did I put my business card? Alamak, no more already?” said no digital name card user ever.
When it comes to business meetings, seminars, or a professional lunch, having a deck of business cards is usually par for the course. Considering this, it’s really no surprise that the world is gradually turning to digital business cards, and it’s easy to understand why.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, there’s this constant push to digitise our daily lives for ZERO contact or create hybrid working models. People are studying online, a lot of companies are advocating for remote work, virtual events are being organised, and the need for online networking is continuously increasing.
So, it’s quite natural to expect the need for a digital solution to exchange our personal and professional information with other people. A digital business card is the perfect way to network virtually. It contains key networking information such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media connections to give your customers an all-essential view of your brand and career.
With quick contact links that can instantly bring a potential lead to you, an electronic business card builds you bridges with people who want to work together or need your service.
Powerful Market Potential?
With just a tap on the screen, your recipients can access your social media, view your logo and video links, portfolios, websites and do much more. You’ll have the opportunity to share your information with your peers, potential clients, friends, and family via email, chat, SMS, etc. You can instantly boost your online networking from the comfort of your home.
Having a Teams meeting? Outplay your competitors; just flash your e business card and get everyone on your portfolio in seconds.
According to an in-depth research posted by MRFR (Market Research Future), the market for digital cards is expected to inflate to $242.3 million with a 11.2% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) by 2027.
The continually increasing use of smartphones is going to be the driving force for robust and lucrative opportunities in the digital card market. With quick accessibility, merged with the growing use of various social media platforms by both Gen Z and millennials, people will be able instantly share their personal and professional data via text messaging, WhatsApp, Facebook, QR codes, email, video calls and more. Use a smartphone? Have internet access? That means sharing a business name card will be a breeze.
Wondering what on earth has got big companies like NTUC and OCBC invested in digital name cards? Check out our other blog on why Singapore businesses are getting them now!
Should You Get a Digital Name Card?
Are you running a business? Checked. Do people run out of paper name cards? Of course. Have you found a typo on your business cards? Maybe not, but would you want to go through the time and cost of waiting? How about turnovers of staff? Which organisation doesn’t have turnovers? Do people shift within the infrastructure of the company? Naturally. Purchasing 100 name cards every time these happen will only overload your wallet.
In terms of marketing and branding, are you part of an organisation that values its customer relationships? Do you feel that it’s important to have an advanced digital presence that’s cost-effective, easy to modify and highly mobile? Undoubtedly. If you already have a digital presence, do you want to enhance it and market your brand further? Checked, checked and checked.
Businesses big and small have recognised the importance of an instant-access mobile portfolio in pandemic times. If you look hard enough, you may find your competitors already engaging digital name cards. Then it’s not a question of should, but when getting a digital name card falls into your roadmap in the near future.
As a bonus for your CSR, digital name cards are an eco-friendly solution, and you’d be massively contributing towards the well-being of our ecosystem. With digital cards, you don’t need to print anything; it’s completely paperless and will reduce your carbon footprint.
Of course, there are a ton more excellent business advantages of using a virtual name card. Let’s look at how e name cards can help you dominate your industry in detail.
Seamlessly Share Your Information
One of the best things about having a virtual name card is that you can share the link with anyone through social media, messaging apps, etc. Change or update your information in a short time for all your recipients at once, and it’ll be reflected for everyone you’ve ever sent it to! Your information, picture, logo, etc. have ever been so easily editable.
Unlike a traditional business card, you won’t need to have a brand new card printed each time someone runs out of name cards, notices a typo, gets promoted or leaves the company.
Add Media and Images
A conventional business card may only include some text and a logo. A digital card, however, enables you to share your information in audio, video, and graphical forms. Because it’s all digital, you can include anything you want. Check out what we’ve got packing in our demo cards!
Boundless Accessibility
A Dream Fox Design electronic business card can be used on a variety of devices, including Android & IOS. You can access your name card on a laptop, iPad, smartphone, etc. No need to download a digital business card app – because who’s going to just to see your business card? As long as you have a device with an Internet browser, it’s simple to use and even easier to share.
Contribute to a Greener Tomorrow
Global warming is a harrowing concern that not everybody takes seriously. Millions of trees are cut to produce paper. People discard truckloads of cards every week. It’s not helping anyone and it’s certainly not helping the environment. Up to 8 million trees are cut down each year just to make paper. It’s truly devastating and completely pointless in this day and age.
Paper-based business cards have been in use for the last four hundred years – in different forms. All that paper is cultivated by cutting trees, and what’s absolutely heartbreaking about this is the fact that over 88% of business cards are discarded each week – that’s 8 billion cards!
Now just try to imagine the amount of trees that need to be cut to produce that much paper – only to be thrown out. It’s devastating to the environment and highly irresponsible.
It’s Cost-Effective
Having a business card made can cost hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of dollars. Having an electronic business card made is ridiculously cost-effective, quicker, and permanent. Think about it, you just need to have the card made once, and you can use it for the rest of your life.
Set a profile picture (or a company logo), integrate a contact form, include your social media profiles, and contact info like your email address and your digital profile is ready to be shared to the world!
Unlike physical business cards, these paper card alternative can be embedded into your email signature for your potential customers, and be viewed on all devices (desktop, tablet and mobile phones), and be mass sent to your contact list on your address books!
What to include on Your Online Business Card
Because digital name cards are a relatively newer concept, it can be quite perplexing to know what information to include on them apart from the necessary details such as your name, contact, address, social media, etc. Although you can just about add anything you want, you also need to ensure that your electronic business card design doesn’t have ‘too much’ information.
You’ll still need to keep things short, sweet, and precise, while advertising yourself in a confident yet informative way with all these new digital resources available. Since Dream Fox Design’s virtual name cards are made to be easily customisable, let’s talk about all the information that you could and should include on your digital card.
A Personalised and Captivating Design
The whole point of an electronic business card is to enhance your brand recognition. It needs to have a classy yet relevant logo design to make it more eye-catching. At Dream Fox Design, we’re all about merging creativity with proven design concepts, all to build an excellent hook on your digital name card from the get-go.
We recommend going for a corporate design across the board if you want to include your co-workers or your employees. Designations and departments can be personalised for every staff free of charge. Moreover, we can customise and add more creative features on your card to make it more elegant. All you have to do is send us your brand guide, highlight your brand values and a softcopy of your traditional name card, and we’ll take care of the rest of your custom card.
The Colour
The colour of your digital card must complement your logo design. For example, if you’re an affiliate blogger or a YouTuber, a vibrant and attractive colour palette is going to help enhance your brand recognition. On the other hand, if you’re a business owner, your electronic business card must reflect your core values and come off as professional and reliable – for instance, you can go with a darker and crisper theme.
At Dream Fox Design, we help develop streamlined and precision-based digital card designs in line with your business’ scope and vision. Moreover, all of our digital name cards are developed from scratch with a design of your choice for your business and your employees. Not sure what to expect? Here are some sample digital name cards we made for you to test out!
Integrate Images and Videos
Got videos of your brand or fun corporate videos? Send us pictures of your staff and brand videos to embed into your virtual name card! It’s a neat way to personalise your card, which helps to instil a sense of confidence and trust in your customer base.
A successful business is all about connecting with your customers on a deep level, proving to them that you have the solutions to their needs and your business is designed to support them. Having digital name card creates this very opportunity with brand values, social media, accreditations and portfolios. Plus, you can even add fun videos and images on the card to make it more personable. It’s all about being uniquely human in this age of automation and instant link ups.
Make it Easier for your Customers to Find You
Adding a precise location on your digital name card makes it easier for your customers to find you via a link which opens their Google Maps. Here’s one of our digital card samples we designed for a Marketing Director.
If you operate a brick-and-mortar business, we recommend leaving a Google Map location on your virtual electronic business card. We’ll even provide integration with Waze. All you have to do is send us your physical address and opening hours for us to display it on your digital name card.
Your Introduction
One of the best things about a virtual business card is that you can easily customise your name and introduction. We’ll place it anywhere you want on the card or you can let us know if you’d like your name displayed in multiple languages!
What’s more, there’s even the option of having a personalised message introducing yourself – for example, “Hello! My name is Alan. Drop me a text for coffee anytime.” You can also add a prefix or suffix with your name and even add your pronouns. It’s important to let your customer know how they should communicate with you.
Add Professional or Company Details
Besides your essential contact details such as your name, address, contact number and email, you can even share your LinkedIn, personal social media or corporate social media. This includes but isn’t limited to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts.
Want to highlight your career or your company if you run a business? Tell us which information you want to add; your website, subsidiary’s websites, media kits, and even your client testimonials! Anything goes.
We encourage you to provide as much relevant information as you can and we’ll integrate all the information in line with your digital card layout. Make it easy for your clients to choose your business.
How Much Does Everything Cost?
This primarily depends on the amount of cards you need designed. Dream Fox Design offers three main 1-year membership packages you can choose from on our website. These three packages are based on the type and scale of your business and the cost below is only a one-time fee for setup.
- Team – $599 (one-time)
- Agency – $1299 (one-time)
- Enterprise – $2549 (one-time)
If you run a small business, opt for Agency or Team subscriptions. If you represent a company with more than 50 employees, go for the Enterprise subscription. No matter which you choose, you can rest assured every subscription tier comes with top-notch customised designs, flexible adjustments and revisions, premium functionality and encryption-grade cybersecurity.
Don’t see what you need? We’ve got your back. Contact us and we’ll quickly set up a proposal personalised for you and your business.
Renewal and Maintenance Charges
We follow a frontloading business model which means our setup fees above may seem a bit hefty, mainly because we’ve pumped in so much cybersecurity into our online cards!
Because we’re competitive, you can breathe a sigh of relief because our yearly renewal fees are a huge plunge from our setup fees. All to ensure the sustainability of your name cards as you use them for many, many years to come.
The annual renewal fees is priced from $8/digital name card onwards, depending on your price plan.
Cost of Amendments
Design & Functionality
Oops, made a mistake or got an urgent update? The features and functionality of your digital name card can be changed easily. We’ll apply the visual changes on the necessary cards for a one-time fee.
Cost: $299 (Design Charge) + ($1 x total no. of cards)
With this, it’s a $299 payment and an additional $1 for each card that needs to be changed.
Basic Information
For every card, it costs $20 per card to change the basic information, regardless of how many changes there are. For example, if you change your designation, it’ll cost $20. If you change your designation, your contact number and email, it’ll still cost $20. However, if you’ve ordered more than 100 cards, we charge $10 per card instead.
Requesting Additional Cards
There are extra charges for ordering additional cards, depending on how many cards you need for an increasing headcount. This is the same tier pricing we apply to our packages and anything else we’ll quote you as well.
To make it fair and convenient for you, we’ll prorate the cost per card for each new card to your current yearly renewal date.
Costs of Paper Business/Name Cards
Now, we know the importance of formality in business, especially if you’re working with towkays. It’s still a gesture of good business sense to present a handheld name card. While you have the choice of switching over to a digital name card completely, digital name cards can in fact increase the value of your paper name cards.
If you still value paper name cards, we’re able to integrate a QR code into the design of your physical name card. This works to bridge paper to digital, bringing your customers to important brand information you couldn’t fit in your name card before! And now, your physical name card is free of clutter, leaving you free to focus on its design, which is the most important part of first impression. As a bonus, your QR code can also be inserted into your email signature, products or marketing collateral.
How to Order a Virtual Business Card?
The first stage of the process is to fill up our contact form. We’ll work together with you to finalise and pay for your order.
Kickoff!
Kicking off is really simple. Once we’ve discussed your specifications and requirements, we’ll just need three things from you to start:
- Brand guide or branding requirements in terms of visuals, graphic design, logo, colour schemes, font types, etc. You can even throw in your own mock-ups or a softcopy of your paper name card for us to recreate a brand-precise design.
- Working files for the above assets in point 1. All of our digital name cards are developed from scratch and thus need to be programmed and conditioned accordingly using codes and adapting your assets into a mobile screen dimension.
- Staff Particulars. You won’t have to worry much because we’ll send over a template or a form for you to either fill up or circulate – in case you’ve got a ton of staff! There’ll be columns indicating choices for touchpoints, profile pictures and social media accounts, so the information of each staff can be personalised.
Design Concept
Once this is done, we’ll create an initial design concept or what most of us know as the ‘look and feel’ of the digital name card, using one of your staff names for this mock-up.
On your review of this layout, we provide up to 2x design revisions if you require. For example, you may switch the sections, change the colour scheme or request more information fields. One of our clients had decided to go with names but then later on wanted to add on a ‘Department’ field to display the brands and subsidiaries they work with.
After the design concept(s) is approved, we’ll use the design plan for all your staff and deploy their information on the virtual cards respectively.
Deployment
And voila! You’ll receive your brand new timeless digital name cards in an excel sheet with clear columns indicating names, designations and URL links to the corresponding online business cards. These online name cards are already live and can be used immediately. Within the next week, we’ll work on any relevant information revisions/updates free of charge.
At this point, our salesperson should have highlighted to you and you would have already noticed that the domain has a unique structure albeit straightforward:
- brand name.df2.me/card/836-73/
- dreamfoxdesign.df2.me/card/836-73/
- sgtowkay.df2.me/card/836-73/
To break it down, the front part of the URL is customised to your brand. df2.me is a basically a play on words referring to “Dream Fox Design to Me”. The numbers in the URL are randomly generated. The numbers are part of our security protocol which prevent anyone from tracing a member of your staff sequentially. And every additional URL you need costs an extra $399.
It is important to stick to this URL structure because in the near future, we want to open up the possibility of developing a URL-based portal for our users to view and exchange digital name cards with others. This directory will be a stand-alone portal and you can still use the name cards with all the privileges you paid for without signing on. If you join this portal, you’ll be able to choose which of your name cards you want displayed and if you’d like to exchange contact details with other businesses.
The result is basically an ecosystem of online name card users exchanging expertise and contact information seamlessly by tapping into our resources and network, like social media for electronic name card users.
Lead Time
How long do we need? Well, everything from your initial enquiry onwards takes about 4 weeks for a batch of, say, 50 cards. This includes everything: from enquiry to discussion, contract signing and quotation approval and then to design execution, revisions and deployment.
If you need subsequent electronic name cards of the same design(s), here’s the additional turnaround you can expect:
- +50 additional cards = +7 days
Simple, isn’t it? For a few name cards, it easily takes just 1 day. Of course, if you’re a bigger enterprise that would like to purchase thousands of name cards, we have an express route to put you on, no extra charge! Depending on the number of virtual business cards you need, the timeline may take half or even a quarter of the time stated here.
Follow-Up Support
At Dream Fox Design, we strive to transcend our client’s expectations. Even after we complete your order, we’ll always be there for you when it comes to making the necessary changes or reminding you to renew your membership. All you need to do is give us a call or email us and we’ll get back to you within 1-2 working days to support your new requirements or concerns.
Crucial Cybersecurity Protocols
Dream Fox Design digital name cards are highly secure. Your personal information is protected by multi-layer encryption protocols. Moreover, your cards are safeguarded by our Cloudflare-backed (ISO 27001 certified) hosting servers. Cloudflare is AI integrated, which means it will continually upgrade its security with each new URL.
Cloudflare, our international network partner possesses these certifications/compliances:
- ISO 27001:2013
- ISO 27701:2019
- SOC 2 Type II
- PCI DSS 1.1.1.1
- Public DNS Resolver Privacy Examination
- BSI Qualification
- GDPR and HIPAA compliant
- SSL/TSL protection
While Cloudflare works as both an external gatekeeper and seamless connection for your digital name card to reach a device from across borders, we store your information securely stored in our Singapore data centre.
Our data centre in Singapore is certified based on the below accreditations:
- ISO 27001
- ISO 9001
- PCI DSS
- Tier 3 Rating Compliant as a concurrently maintainable facility with multiple distribution paths for power and cooling (99.982% uptime/year)
- Round the clock 24/7 physical security
- Leading comprehensive security software
- Automatic backup of all data from dedicated servers to remote backup servers periodically
Not enough? In addition to ensuring your login URL will also be hidden and are Captcha-secured, here are some additional cybersecurity measures we offer:
- AI and reputation based threat protection
- 404 detection + Non-sequential URLs
- Hardened access to backend
- Personal information protection
- Plugin protection
- DDoS Mitigation
- Local, network & XML-RPC brute force protection
- DNSSEC-secured – all web traffic will be diverted to their adequate servers
- Regular automated site scanning for malware and errors, with logs constantly monitored for reference in primary investigations
- Strong password enforcement
- Two factor authentication
- Full SSL encryption and forced SSL
Best Digital Name Card in Singapore with Free Resources
In all, it’s well-worth opting for a digital name card. They provide streamlined flexibility, are highly customisable, easy to use, easy to edit, save a lot of time and money, and can be shared through various digital means securely.
If you’re looking for something unique and truly captivating, Dream Fox Design can help you develop feature-packed virtual name cards with empowering functionalities and distinctive design layouts of your choosing.
Our early slots for 2022 are booking up, so before you’re too late to the party, we’re offering a 100% full breakdown and demonstration of our digital name cards, including live video call briefings by our directors, free quotations and product decks listing our established clientele, cybersecurity protocols, at 0% of the cost! Some of these premium services have only been provided for customers who have signed on with us.
So, I’d like to end off with this – even if you don’t end up getting a digital name card, you’ll know why big companies such as Clarins, Inchcape and NTUC have signed on, and be prepared to tackle your competitors who also have. Once you make your decision, our team of robust, forward-thinking graphic designers and managers are ready to help you with your branding and engagement goals.
From on-brand design customisation to functionality development and enterprise-wide engagement, we’re ready to kick off a chat with you. Just contact us and let us know what you need, and we’ll get back to you with a proposal. It’s time for a New Year and digital business cards for everyone.
*All prices quoted are in SGD.
