7 Habits of Highly Effective Pens
Pens are an extremely popular giveaway promotional product for a couple of reasons. First, they can be inexpensive to purchase. Second, they are useful—everyone can use another pen. Third, they are small, so they’re easy to hand out and to transport to tradeshows. And fourth, they are easy to imprint with your company information.
Two types of pens are used as promotional products: the giveaway pen and the gift pen. Generally a giveaway pen will be made of plastic and the cost per pen will range from $0.30 to around $3.00. Gift pens, usually made of metal, range from $3.00 each to $90.00. Both the giveaway pen and the gift pen can be effective in your marketing program if they are used correctly. Today, I’m going to focus on giveaway pens.
How do you hand out giveaway pens? Freely, even lavishly. Hand them out at networking breakfasts, business After Fives, trade shows. Use them as leave behinds with clients and prospects. Give several to each secretary and administrative assistant you meet—they might be the ones placing orders, and you want them to have plenty of ways to remember your company’s name!
Because the pen does bear your company name, you want to be sure that any pen you select not only fits your budget but reflects the image you want to convey. Here are seven features to look for when considering a giveaway pen.
Writing Ability
You want a pen that writes consistently and lasts for a reasonable amount of time. A lot of inexpensive pens either dry up right away or have cheap ball mechanisms that leave clots of ink on the paper, which then gets on the user’s hands and clothes. Be sure to get a pen that will last.
Ink Cartridge
The most popular point size is medium, but fine point is available in certain models. Gel ink is a popular option but is a bit more expensive. Most pens come with black ink cartridges, but blue and red ink is available for some models.
Functionality
You want the pen to remain functional for a long time. If it’s a click pen, you want the mechanism to work consistently without breaking. You want the clip to be durable enough to grip the pocket of a wool suit without snapping.
Grip
A comfort grip is a popular option, and comes in many materials, styles, and colors, including rubber or plastic, ergonomic, and triangular.
Styling
Styling is very important because a distinctive pen stands out from the many others on the user’s desk, improving the odds that the user will pick your pen more often and thus be reminded about your company more often as well. There are literally thousands of pen designs and colors to choose from, including pens with translucent barrels, hourglass shapes, chrome accents, rubber grips, and metal clips.
Thickness
Thicker, heavier pens have become more popular in recent years, but some people find them top-heavy and we’re finding that most of our clients still choose thinner pens, often ones that include a grip. So we do not believe that there is a strong consensus on thick pens and continue to offer a wide range of styles in thin and medium-sized pens as well as the thicker, heavier versions.
Multifunction
Handing out a product that can perform multiple functions makes the pen unique and dramatically increases the chance of your company’s pen becoming the user’s favorite. Some of the options are three-way pens (pen, pencil, stylus), carabiner pens, Post-It-style flag pens, and pen/highlighter combos.
As you can see, there are multiple decisions to make when choosing a giveaway pen. We’d love to learn about your needs and help you select a pen that would work well for your specific business. Please contact us at www.identity-promo.com to arrange to “test drive” some samples before having your logo and image imprinted!
