13 October, 2021

What To Look For When Buying Promotional Pens

We get asked a lot about what is our best-selling promotional pen, or what pen would we recommend, so we thought it would be good to list the different qualities you should be looking for to get the best value out of your promotional pen purchase.

Pens are easily one of the most popular promotional products purchased by all types of businesses, and there is a good reason for that. They are used every day, they are functional, they are cheap to purchase and usually there is a large enough branding area to get a company name, logo and perhaps a phone number or website printed. So what should you be looking for – below are some tips.

Style Of Pen

This is important as most people have a preference when it comes to the way a pen writes. The most popular is the ballpoint pen. Usually, they have a tungsten carbide ball that allows ink to flow through, and over the years, this style is probably about 80% of all sales.

Next option, you have rollerball pens, which are water-based inks. They tend to dry out if you do not keep the cap on, and they are usually more expensive to purchase.

Stylus pens have become very popular. They are usually a ballpoint pen at one end with a stylus at the other end. The advent of mobile phones and tablets has made this style a lot more popular in the past five years.

After these you can go into specialty items such as gel pens, marker pens and highlighter pens, though all of these you will generally find at a higher price point.

Pricing

Let us look at a scenario first. You have found a pen on one website and then found what you think is the identical pen on another website yet there is a large discrepancy in price between the two. Why is this? Sometimes it can just be that one company charges more than another, but you may want to dig a little deeper.

One factor is the refill being used. Some companies find the cheapest refill they can buy. It doesn’t mean there will be anything wrong in using it to write with, but it could mean the amount of ink in the refill. Most extremely cheap plastic pens have a refill under 1000m of ink. They have a purpose, but if you want a client to be able to use the pen for a long time, we do not recommend this. Most have a capacity of between 1000m to 2500m of ink.

This is what you should target for value for money, along with the longevity of writing. If you are looking at a metal pen, the consideration needs to be whether you want the pen to be solid and heavy or lightweight. For solid and heavy, you want to look for brass pens that have been coated and for lightweight, you want aluminium.

Many pens look the same, but if one is brass and the other is aluminium, the price difference can be upwards of 100%. Lastly, what is the demographic and purpose of this pen. If it is a trade show and you are potentially going to give out 100’s or 1000’s, then a budget plastic pen is what you should target, however, if it is a gift for corporate clients, then a more upscale metal pen would be appropriate.

Branding Area

Many people look at pens for the shape and are attracted to curves. What you need to consider, though is what you want branded on the pen. Curved or narrow barrel pens have very restricted print areas.

The best is to look for a pen that has a minimum 7mm of height for printing. This means you will get two lines of text instead of one. The other part is to look at the width.

If you want a company name, phone number, website, you need a pen that has a good long straight length. Look for a pen that has a minimum 50mm wide print area. This will accommodate most websites.

Branding Method

When it comes to promotional pens, we usually associate it with plastic pens. The most common form of branding has always been pad printing. The restriction to this is the print needs to be solid colours.

In the past ten years, there have been many developments with digital printing. This is directly printed onto the pen and gives you full-colour prints, including tonals. When this type of printer first came out, the quality was not good, but nowadays the machines are amazing.

If you have more than one colour to print, often a digital print will work out cheaper than the older method of pad printing, so if you are looking to print multiple colours, look for a pen that advertises as being able to be digitally printed.

Gift Packaging

This is one of those things that can really enhance the gift giving of a pen. Firstly though, consider the value of the pen compared to the type of packaging. For example, you don’t want to put a $0.40 plastic pen into a velvet case, so the packaging needs to be appropriate to the pen.

The cheapest options are for either a cardboard sleeve that can be digitally printed or a simple velvet sleeve that will stop your pen from getting scratched. Then you move up to cardboard gift boxes and then luxurious styles such as velvet cases, which are usually reserved for high-end pens.

Branding Method

So, summing up, the major factors you want to consider are what style of pen you want - ballpoint, rollerball, stylus, etc, - pricing, does the shape of the pen allow for the branding you wish to, the type of branding you want and whether you want gift packaging.

We have over 1000 styles of pen on offer, so if you need assistance in choosing the right promotional pen for your needs, please don't hesitate to contact us either by email or phone.

The Pens Only Team