More and more people and organizations continue to make the shift from analogue to digital. Now we see the development of paperless offices. One of the major driving forces of this is the internet technology.
Thanks to the internet now invitations to events such as weddings and business meetings are taking place online. While it has been proven convenient, there’s still a place for paper invitations.
Which between online invites and paper invites is the ideal? Well, it depends on the situation. Let’s take a look at the benefits of each of them on the basis of following factors:
Eco-Friendliness
One of the major benefits of online invites is that it’s environment-friendly. If you are conscious about environmental protection and you want to play your part in conserving, then you can simply switch to online invites.
Imagine a situation where you need to send 200 paper invites to guests. This would require plenty of paper. However, with online invites, you simply need to create the invite and send it to your guests through various social media platforms and digital communication channels.
You can make use of online services such as greenvelope.com to create the perfect online invites.
Convenience and Efficiency
Another major benefit the online invites provide is their convenience in delivery. Imagine the hassle involved in creating invites, printing them and mailing the invites to your guests. All this takes a lot of time and effort and there is no guarantee that all the guests will receive the invites.
However, with online invites, all you’re require to do is just create the invite and then share it on social media or through digital communication channels such as WhatsApp. There is no time wasted and the guests receives the invite immediately with a simple click.
Easy Changes in Updates
One of the main advantages with online invites is it’s easy to update. For example, if there’s a change in the schedule of the event, it can easily be communicated to the guests. You just need to send a follow up message describing any changes or updates and what the guests can expect.
Furthermore, with online invites you can easily see who got your messages.
On the other hand, you will not be able to do this with traditional invites. While you can send messages through mail, you won’t be able to tell if everyone got the updates and if they received them on time.
Cost-Effectiveness
Compared to the traditional invites, online invites are cheaper to send because you don’t need postage stamps or return address stamps! All you need is an internet connection. With a simple click you can forward the invites to all your guests. The only cost that you may incur is on creating the invites. If you aren’t very artsy, you can always hire professional services to design and create the invite for you.
Compare this with incurring the costs of hiring a professional to design a paper invite for you. You will also need to set cash side to send individual invites to your guests. This can prove rather costly. If you are planning a wedding, this guide will teach you how much you should spend on invitations.
Adding Links
With online invites, you don’t need to provide all the information to your guests through the invite. You can reserve this for your website which may include the details about the venue, mapped location with necessary landmarks, and date and time of the event.
And the best way to have the guests go to your website for more information, is to add links on the invites. This is quite simple with digital invites but not so much with traditional invites. Moreover, in case of traditional paper invites, such detailing would cause the cost to increase.
Better Event Management
Digital invites allow for better event management. Since you’ll be notified who received the invite, you can also ask for a confirmation of attendance at the event. It’s also easy for the guest to send a confirmation message through a wide range of social media channels.
Now that you know who will attend, you can plan the event with the confirmed figures in mind such as the area of the venue, the size of the tent as well as the amount of food to serve to the required number of guests. This is something that you won’t be able to do precisely with the traditional invites.
In case of traditional invites, you would have to hope that all your guests received the invitation and at least a majority of them would attend. Hence, there’s a chance of wastage of the resources and energy as the traditional invites have more uncertain factors involved in it.
Now that we’ve accounted for the factors that favor digital invites, it’s important to also note that traditional invites aren’t entirely negative. The traditional invites also have their fair share of advantages. Let’s find out the factors that make the paper invites a preferred choice.
Sense of Exclusivity
One of the main advantages of traditional invites is that they impart a sense of importance. The party and the event will be perceived exclusive. Once guests receive a stylish paper invite, they feel honored to be specifically chosen as the invited guests. This may imply there’ll be maximum attendants at the event.
The same can’t be said for online invites. Since the online invites are sent either by email or social media, many people won’t feel much obligated to attend the event. There’s still a general perception that online invites aren’t exclusive with regards to the guests, but this may change overtime considering the busyness of the modern world.
Better Receptiveness
Granted there’s a huge number of people on social media. However, it’s important to consider that most of the people are old school or not tech-savvy and still prefer the traditional methods. Think of your grandmother or your old aunt or even that friend who prefers paper over digital items.
Traditional invites can reach these individuals through mail. This is something that won’t be possible with the online invitations. Furthermore, the traditional methods ensure that almost everyone is going to check their mail box. Therefore, if the invitation wasn’t lost in transit, there’s a high chance to reach its destination.
Invites Management
The traditional invites clearly state invited guests’ names on the invite. There’s no ambiguity about the invited persons for the event. However, the online invitation can be circulated among the friends easily. This would get extremely difficult and uncomfortable if more than the planned number of people turn up at the event day.
What’s more, some people may not be available and could ask their friends or other family members to attend the event on their behalf.
This isn’t something that you would need to worry about with the traditional type of invitations.
Keep-Sake Purposes
Another advantage of traditional invites is that they are physical and thus memorable. When they come in a stylish and elegant design and are for an exclusive event, the guests may keep them as fond memories. They may frame it or keep as their journal/scrapbook entry.
However due to the ease of preparing and sending digital invites, people may not receive them with the same level of respect and value. Furthermore, since they aren’t physical, it isn’t easily possible to show them off as souvenirs or reminders.
Larger Impact
People tend to regard traditional invites with more value compared to the digital invites. This is because in case of the traditional invites the guests feel special, someone took the time to consider them. Guests understand the time and effort it takes to create a stylish physical invite.
On the other hand, the guests are also aware how easy it is to send an online invite through social media. Furthermore, they could also forward these invites to their friends. Because of this, they don’t place as much value to the digital invites.
Therefore, it’s likely that an event could have better turnout from traditional invites than digital invites.
Ideal for Formal Events
If you are hosting a formal event, then the last thing you would want to do is have your guests attend the event dressed casually. Often formal events also have limited number of guests. Therefore, it makes sense to send a traditional invite.
The invite itself shouts formality and will provide the guest with the right idea even before they open the invite.
With the online event, the first idea that would come to list is that the event is not formal and therefore anyone can attend. What’s more, traditional invites can be used as passes to the formal event.
Fewer Tussles
Planning an event can not only elevate your stress levels but also keep you on edge. There are often many things to buy, clothes to pick, and other vital decisions during the last minutes.
When you’re under such enormous pressure to meet the event deadlines, always avoid unnecessary conflict. As opposed to cards, scheduling digital invites is an excellent online anger management strategy that saves you from the headache of having to deal with a host of people involved in design and delivery process.
Including links to your invitations (with every detail) helps avoid too many repetitive questions about the start and ending time, or location details.
While an event always costs money, sending online invites is cost-efficient. The money you use designing, printing, and sending manual invites can cause future problems mostly if it’s debt.
Send online cards and safeguard your peace of mind.
Final Thoughts
Both digital invites and traditional invites have their own set of pros and cons. While more and more people are moving into the digital era, there’s no denying the fact that there’s still a place for the traditional wedding invitations. The one that works for you will depend on your personal preference. Hence, the traditional invite would work great when holding an exclusive event while the digital invite would be ideal when targeting a specific demographic such as millennials.
