Traditional paper business cards have long been an expected part of most corporate budgets, but is your company seeing a good enough return on that investment? As businesses continue to evolve and seek more efficient ways to connect with clients and customers, the effectiveness of traditional paper cards is being re-evaluated. HiHello—the leading digital business card platform for enterprises, businesses, professionals, and personal users—researched the return on investment (ROI) of sharing traditional paper cards vs. digital business cards, highlighting why making the switch could be a strategic move for maximizing your networking efforts.
In this article, we will look at the ROI of a paper business card and why people are shifting to digital business cards to get more from their business card investments.
The Limitations of Paper Business Cards
Finding the direct monetary value of each business card you hand out isn’t a simple task. There are a number of variables that determine how effective a business card is, which in turn determines the ROI that can be achieved by that card.
It is estimated that for every 2,000 cards that are distributed, sales will increase by 2.5%. However, this increase of 2.5% in sales assumes perfect conditions: the right information delivered to the right contact at the right time. In the real world, many factors work against a strong paper business card ROI because paper cards have serious limitations. Those common limitations include:
- Over 63% of people throw business cards away because they don’t need the service right away and they don’t have a good way to store and catalog paper cards for the future.
- People expect compelling and dynamic experiences. On the other hand, colorless business cards are very common, but 10X more likely to be thrown away.
- Aesthetics and experience matter: 39% of people choose not to do business with a company that has cheap business cards. Do your cards pass the quality test?
- Quality control is incredibly important but lacking: 60% of people are less willing to do business with a company if there is a typo.
Because of these common issues, 88% of business cards will be thrown away within a week of being exchanged.
The Impact of Digital Business Cards on ROI
A digital business card adds many measurable ROI-generating features to increase sales efficiency, create compelling marketing, improve brand consistency, support event outreach, and more.
By going digital, companies can boost the ROI of every touchpoint they have with their contacts, clients, and customers. How? Digital business cards offer features that are only possible with a technology platform:
1. Unlimited, flexible card sharing
2. Tailored information exchange
3. Increased contact and lead generation
4. Driving traffic and engagement to sales and marketing materials
5. Optimizing your ROI with robust analytics
6. Cutting the costs of paper business cards
1. Unlimited, flexible card sharing
HiHello found that over 19 million digital business cards were shared in 2024 alone, which is equal to 1 card every two seconds. Handing out more cards helps increase your odds of bringing in sales through business cards. With digital business cards, your team isn’t limited to the number of cards ordered for them. Everyone can share unlimited cards and bring in an unlimited number of leads right to your customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
2. Tailored information exchange
With a paper business card, you’re sharing the same limited pieces of contact information with everyone you meet, digital business cards are scalable, interactive, information-rich, and customizable to every interaction. Companies can create multiple templates with elements personalized to every situation so your team can always share the right information with the right lead, customer, or connection. Organizations can further enable their teams to share any card from anywhere with multiple ways to share via QR code, email, text, virtual background, email signatures, and more.
3. Increased contact and lead generation
While it’s important to share your professional contact information, it’s even more important to get contact information in return. HiHello found that when a digital business card is received, 35% of people will send their contact information back to the sender, compared to about 5% of paper cards. This means that you are 700% more likely to receive contact information in return when sharing a digital card vs. paper.
4. Driving traffic and engagement to sales and marketing materials
With digital cards, you can drive customers to the right destination, whether it be a landing page, social channel, or e-book. HiHello found that when you share a digital business card:
- Over 50% of cards shared result in an action to interact or save the card
- Over 42% of card viewers will go to your website
- The fields that generate the most interaction are website, phone, email, Instagram, and Facebook
5. Optimizing your ROI with robust analytics
If you can’t measure it, then you can’t improve it. Want to know the exact ROI of using digital business cards? HiHello’s platform offers extensive analytics—both built-in and direct integrations with Google Analytics—to break down the data about your team’s business cards.
With HiHello, you can track how many cards your team is sharing and how effective they are. See card views, saves, and analyze contacts associated with each card. Use HiHello’s analytics to track which cards are performing better to adjust card messaging and perfect your sales outreach, customer engagement, lead generation, and more.
6. Cutting the costs of digital business cards
Digital business cards offer many features that help boost the return on your business card spend, but they also help lower the initial investment, making your ROI that much better. HiHello found that businesses can save as much as 50% on business card costs by switching to digital business cards. Read our full business card cost analysis to learn how much your company could be saving by going digital.
Learn more about how digital business cards compare to traditional paper business cards in our cost analysis and sustainability report.
About HiHello
HiHello is changing how everyone—from individuals to Fortune 500 companies—manages their most important relationships. It starts with a digital business card built from the ground up to be delightful, customizable, and secure. HiHello’s digital business cards unlock new opportunities, cut the costs of traditional cards, and have a positive environmental impact. Hundreds of thousands of professionals worldwide trust HiHello to amplify the power of their network, and we’re just getting started!
