Member Organizations
A membership card usually arrives in an envelope. Nobody hands it across a counter. It goes out in a renewal mailing, one per member, with that member’s name and number already printed on it.
So the first question is not artwork. It is whether the card will ever be read by a machine. Plenty of membership cards never are. They get checked by eye at a door or shown at a partner business for a discount, which means the member number has to be legible and the card has to be hard to fake casually. A signature panel does more work here than any encoding would. If the card does get scanned at a facility desk, it needs a barcode or magnetic stripe in the format your membership system already issues.
The second question is the renewal cycle. Printing an expiration date on the card means a new run every year for the whole roster. Leaving the date off and letting your database carry the expiration means one artwork and smaller reorders as members join. The dated card puts the renewal in front of the member. The undated card is more economical across a few years. Which one fits depends on how your renewals actually run.
Plastek manufactures membership cards in house, along with keychain cards, fundraising and discount cards, and ID badges. Names, member numbers, and dates are variable data, printed per card rather than per run. Plastek can also handle the mailing and lettershop work, so personalized cards go out to your roster as part of the same job instead of landing back on your desk in boxes.
Before committing to a full run, ask for a sample built to your specification. If the card gets scanned, scan it. If it gets checked by eye, carry it in a wallet for a week and look at it again. If it holds up, run the job. If it does not, you spent one card instead of a run.
Request a quote on custom membership cards or call the Plastek production team at 1-888-762-2737.
