Every business card should contain some basic, essential information to be sure that your customers and clients can find you when they need you. For whatever reason, a trend has been growing towards minimalism with business cards. While you do not want to clutter a card, why would you only make your email address available? This tells your customers and clients that you just do not care.

So here is a list of the essential business card information that you should be sure is on your cards. With few exceptions, each of these items is essential.

Your Name

Of course, your name should be on the card. You might think that this is a no brainer, but many businesses have been printing business cards for everyone in the company and expect either their employees to write their names on the card or the customer to remember at some later point. Big mistake.

Organization Name

Even if you have a logo, you should include the name of your business in print. Sometimes logos are not readable due to the size constraints of a business card. Make sure that the company name is readable somewhere on the card, ideally close to the name of the individual.

Your Title

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This is a big piece of information that businesses have been omitting. While people tend to be “title shy,” titles are for other people to understand your role, not necessarily for the individual to wear as a badge. If a customer has cards from multiple employees and no titles are available, how should they know who to call if they cannot remember who does what?

Phone Numbers

In the age of email, the phone number has been slowly disappearing off of business cards. Make sure you have an office line listed as well as a business cell phone.

Email Address

This is pretty common-place and expected. Ideally you should have an email address from the domain name where you work. For example, joe@mybusiness.com is far better than joe@yahoo.com, as the first version gives some measure of proof that Joe actually works at “My Business.”

Street Address

Again, this has been disappearing off of business cards for awhile now. Keep a street address when applicable and at minimum a shipping address. This is so important documents or shipments can be sent to you without a phone call needing to be made.

Logo

Any chance you can get to reinforce your brand, you should. Try to put a logo on your card, even if it is small. Business card printing with full color can further enhance your brand, just so long as you use colors that are part of your brand’s color scheme.