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Posts Tagged ‘promotional’

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Now That’s What I Call A Fast Promotional USB Flash Drive

Friday, January 20th, 2012

OK, to be clear we’re not talking in the context of how quickly the promotional USB flash drives reads and writes data but more about how fast the raw, blank USB flash drive was turned into a stunning promotional product.

At 4pm yesterday we took an order from a customer who needed USB sticks in a hurry. They had their artwork ready and their credit card in hand ready to pay for them providing (and here’s the rub) they could be with them today!

Now at USB2U that’s the sort of challenge we like. So here’s what happened:

  • Order confirmed by customer at around 4pm
  • Artwork emailed over to their Account Manager
  • USB2U designer sets artwork, creates digital proof that is then emailed back to the customer for approval.
  • Customer give their approval
  • In anticipation of this the USB sticks are prepared ready for printing
  • Fifty USB sticks are printed as per the approved artwork, QA checked and signed off ready for despatch.
  • Overnight courier collects the printed USB flash drives at 5:15
  • The following day the promotional USB flash drives are delivered to a delighted customer who then dashed off to their event with them.

Now we’re not suggesting we can do this for every customer who calls us at 4pm in a panic but where we can help we’ll certainly go the extra mile.

Printed USB Memory Sticks

Printed USB Memory Sticks

Our normal rush service is 48hrs from order, we can often do 24hrs (if everything is ready in terms of artwork etc.) and very occasionally if the planets are in the right alignment and the team here are up for a collective challenge we can work minor miracles.

So, if you are looking for a supplier of promotional USB flash drives and a supplier that holds stock locally and can print the stock and get it to you quickly then give us a call. We like exceeding expectation whenever we can!

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Now That’s What I Call A Fast Promotional USB Flash Drive

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The Promise of USB 3.0 Looks More Certain in 2012

Friday, December 16th, 2011

USB 3.0 or SuperSpeed USB as it is often referred to has gotten off to a bit of a sluggish start but the announcement this week by the USB Implementers Forum that Intel’s new “Ivy Bridge” 7 Series Chipset has achieved USB 3.0 certification is likely give it a real shot in the arm in 2012.

Superspeed USB has been so named because it delivers a 10 fold increase in data transfer speeds compared to the current USB 2.0 standard but to achieve these speeds everything from the PC, to the cable to the peripheral or storage device connected to the PC must support the USB 3.0 standard.

Whilst we’ve seen a number of smaller PC manufacturers launch PC’s with USB 3.0 on-board the lack of any Intel based

USB 3.0

USB 3.0

solution has held the market back. The market needs Intel to deliver 3.0 support to drive competition and to bring USB 3.0 prices down.

Some sceptics have also suggested that the Intel has been dragging its heels to allow its own high-speed connection technology called Thunderbolt to get established. Thunderbolt is twice as fast of USB 3.0 and is a joint development with Apple on whose products it is already being shipped.

Mainstream PC’s with Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips onboard and support for Superspeed USB 3.0 are expected to start hitting the shops in May/June 2012. From this point on things will start to get interesting because all of a sudden USB 3.0 will be within reach of most people buying a PC, in fact within a few months it will be the de facto standard on any PC purchased.

With Intel’s support in 2012, USB 3.0 will move into the mainstream and the peripherals and cables that we use with our PC’s will also start to move over to the new Superspeed standard. It won’t happen overnight because un the short term USB 3.0 products will inevitably carry a price premium but within a couple of years USB 3.0 will just be the expected standard and referred to not as USB 3.0 but USB.

For the Promotional USB Flash Drive sector there is unlikely mass change to USB 3.0 flash drives simply because in the short term (next 12-18 mths) they will carry a price premium that most companies won’t want to pay for a “give-away” product. Equally, there is little point paying for a premium high-speed product until you are sure that most people you give them to are able to benefit from the higher speeds on offer. We’re some years away from the ubiquitous use of USB 3.0 and until that time or until the factories stop manufacturing USB 2.0 sticks the standard for promotional USB flash drives will be USB 2.0 – after all, these will still work on USB 3.0 PC’s they just won’t work at the high data transfer speeds.

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The Promise of USB 3.0 Looks More Certain in 2012

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5 Reasons To Buy Promotional USB Memory Sticks

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

If you’re wondering why so many companies are buying promotional USB memory sticks at the moment here’s a few reason to help you understand what’s underpinning the demand for them:

  1. People like being given USB memory sticks – a recent BPMA (British Promotional Merchandise Association) survey found that people prefer to be given USB Sticks (45%). Next in the list came pens (39%) swiftly followed by mugs (36%). USB sticks were the clear winner because they were considered to be the most useful.
  2. They’re easy to uses – simply plug them into any PC and you can save data to the stick or retrieve saved information from the stick in a matter of seconds. They work on any PC equipped with a USB port (and that’s pretty much everything these days) and they work equally well on Macs.
  3. USB sticks pre-loaded with sales collateral, presentation files, media files and press release information are great at sales conferences, shows, seminars and press events. The cost of buying the USB sticks can be offset by the savings made not printing the brochures etc.
  4. They look great printed with a company logo or school crest. A wide range of different USB flash drives are available in all sorts of styles and shapes and made from lots of different materials. Popular models like the Twister USB stick can even have the body shell colour matched to help enhance the overall look of the printed disk.
  5. The price of Printed USB flash drives continues to fall and the minimum order quantities are now as low as 25 pieces – expect to pay around £2-£3 for an entry level USB stick printed with your logo (including printing on both sides and with a free lanyard or key ring).
Promotional USB Sticks

Promotional USB Sticks

This year thousands of companies will give away millions of promotional USB sticks printed with their logo on. USB sticks have moved from being a “techie” product to a mainstream promotional product in just a few years and they set to be with us for a more years yet.

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5 Reasons To Buy Promotional USB Memory Sticks

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Identity crisis – Is it a Promotional Pen or is it a Promotional USB Flash Drive

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

The cheap and cheerful promotional pen has long been one of the most popular products for companies looking to source giveaways for trade shows, trade fairs and seminars. Will the new hybrid USB pen challenge its dominance?

Promotional pens are popular because they’re cheap. Prices for printed pens start at below 20p per pen for the more basic versions (assuming your buys around 10-20,000) but you can go spend up to several £’s per pen if you choose some branded and more “up-market” versions.

Promotional USB Pens

Promotional USB Pens

Arguably everyone needs a pen albeit the growing use of products like Smart Phones, iPads, super lightweight PC’s and chip and pin cards is gradually reducing our reliance on the pen but realistically pens are going to be here for the foreseeable future. But, will people given a cheap promotional pen keep it and use it or will it just end up in the nearest bin?

If the objective of any promotional item you buy is not only to attract people to your stand or booth at a trade show but also to give them a product that they will value, they will use and will encourage them to do business with you then a cheap printed biro is unlikely to do it for you.

If you really want to give our Pens then better to consider a USB Pen. This is a standard pen (biro, rollerball or fountain pen) with a USB flash stick built into the body of the pen. The barrel of the body discretely hides the USB connector and the USB flash memory giving the user not only the ability to write with the pen but also to store thousands of documents on the built in flash memory.

Promotional USB Pen

Promotional USB Pen

Although the USB pens will cost more, pre-loading your sales brochures and sale material onto the flash drive rather than paying to get them printed can offset much of the increased cost and by giving your customers (and prospective customers) something with a high perceived value they are far more likely to keep it and use it.

The USB pens are available in a range of styles, colours and memory sizes, they look fabulous and they can be supplied in complimentary presentation tins or gift boxes.

So, next time you want promotional pens for an event you might want to consider USB writing pens rather than standard pens.

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Identity crisis – Is it a Promotional Pen or is it a Promotional USB Flash Drive

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Promotional Launch Offer for 3 New USB Flash Drives

Friday, September 9th, 2011

We’ve been busy adding some exciting new USB flash drives to our product range over the last couple of weeks and to celebrate their launch we’ve got a cracking offer to tempt our customers with.

If you order 1,000 or more 1GB versions of our Retractor, Key Classic 3 or Mini Metal Twister USB drive we’ll discount the price down to £2.99 per unit. This includes all of the costs so there is no set-up, no print cost (or engraving) to pay for and we’ll even pre-load up to 100MB of data for you free of charge as well.

Retractor, Mini Metal Twister & Key Flash Drive

Retractor, Mini Metal Twister & Key Flash Drive

Added to this we’ll supply each one with a free lanyard or keyring and we’ll pop them into a standard plain gift box and we’ll deliver them to any address in the UK free of charge!

The offer is valid whilst stocks last and at this price we don’t expect it to be for very long. Remember, these are not “cheap and cheerful” promotional USB flash drives, they are all metal cased top quality products that use a combination of Grade A flash memory and branded controller chips. As you’d expect they come with a 100% guarantee and a 1-year warranty.

If these new USB flash drives are not quite what you’re looking for then check out our website because we have lots to choose from. If you have something particular in mind then don’t forget that we can make flash drives in any shape you want with our Custom USB service.

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Promotional Launch Offer for 3 New USB Flash Drives

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Feeling the Heat – Cool Down With A USB Fan

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The weather is glorious today but if you’re working in an office with no air-conditioning the warm weather outside can make life more than a little uncomfortable inside.

The amount of electrical equipment used in offices these days does not help because these all generate a heat output with PC’s being the worst culprit – normally the level of heat they produce is not an issue but as temperatures climb all of a sudden it can become unbearable.

As the temperatures climb some companies will lease or buy portable air-conditioning units (not always easy to use if you have sealed windows or its noisy with the windows open because you need to vent the air/moisture away), others will rush out and buy large “industrial” fans but these can be noisy and they’re difficult to moderate to keep everyone happy.

USB Fans

USB Fans

An alternative to using large fans or portable air-conditioning units is to hand out personal fans to every member of staff. These offer the give the greatest amount of personal flexibility because everyone can control when the fans are on/off and the direction of the air flow but hundreds of electric fans can be expensive, you have to consider where they are plugged in and you have to take into consideration the on-going PAT testing costs (there is a legal requirement on every company to have all electrical appliance tested every year and typically there is a charge for each appliance that is tested).

USB fans

USB fans

USB fans can be plugged into any spare USB port on a PC, they draw their power from the PC they are connected to, they don’t need any batteries and they don’t need PAT testing. They’re pretty compact and they can be supplied with a longer lead to reach USB ports on PC’s under desks. They’re ideal “personal” air-cooling solutions and a welcome addition to any warm/stuffy office.

At £1.99 each the fans are an inexpensive solution that’s worth the money in terms of staff morale alone! Better still the USB fans can be branded so they make an ideal giveaway – with the branded area of the fan pointed directly at the user you can be pretty much assured that any brand printed on them is going to be in the eye line of the user.

So if you’re looking for a solution to help you and your staff cool down or perhaps you’re looking for a giveaway that is a little bit different but is likely to be well received then these USB fans are certainly worth considering.

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Feeling the Heat – Cool Down With A USB Fan

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Check, Check, Check and Check Again

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

That’s exactly what we do before we send any order for promotional USB flash drives to our customers. It’s not glamorous, it’s certainly not exciting but it’s something we strongly believe should be done.

We know there are lots of different suppliers of promotional USB flash drives in the UK and in a crowded market its incredibly important to us and our customers that they are confident in buying from USB2U. After all, we want our customers to come back to us and we want them to be delighted with their order from USB2U.

So, in addition to the QA checks that our factory make during the manufacturing process our own operations and fulfilment team carry out the following additional checks before any order leaves our hands:

  1. As the shipments from our factory arrive at our warehouse we carefully unpack every carton to make sure
    USB2U Checks

    USB2U Checks

    nothing has been damaged in transit from China. Any crushed boxes are paid particular attention to and photographs taken of any issues. If anything is found to be damaged or missing (it does happen albeit rarely) then we’ll alert the factory and ask them to prepare and ship replacements and we’ll notify the customer of any potential shortfall in their order.

  2. Every USB stick is checked visually to make sure it’s the right colour, that the print or engraving is correct (the right colour, in the right place and spelt correctly) and that any key rings or lanyards that have been ordered are attached.
  3. A sample of each order is checked for viruses using the latest Trend Micro anti-virus software – this is particularly important where we have been provided with data to pre-load onto the USB sticks.
  4. A sample of each order is checked to ensure that the internal flash memory is the correct size. If a customer has ordered a 1GB USB flash drive we double check here to make sure they drives have been assembled by our factory using 1GB flash memory chips.
  5. Assuming all of the above tests and checks are passed we then carefully box up the order in a robust USB2U box ensuring when we do this that we count every USB stick to make sure the number sent is exactly the number ordered.

All of the above information is recorded and stored for every job to provide our customers (and us) with peace of mind. We’ve been supplying branded and promotional USB flash drives since 2002 and these processes have been put in place and refined over the last 9 years to ensure that our customers can be confident that they get exactly what they have paid for every time.

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Check, Check, Check and Check Again

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Should You Data Load Your Promotional USB Flash Drives

Friday, May 27th, 2011

USB flash drives do an excellent job of promoting a company’s brand, generating brand loyalty and brand recall but you can get much more “bang for your buck” if you pre-load them with data files.

The fundamental function of a USB flash drive is, after all, to store and transport data so it make sense when handing out any promotional USB flash drives to make sure your own data files are pre-loaded onto the USB sticks

USB Data Loading Service

USB Data Loading Service

The type of files you can load onto a USB flash drive can be anything you would normally save onto your PC so the obvious candidates are PowerPoint presentations, PDF’s, Word Documents, media files (video and audio clips) and links to your web site. Pretty much anything that informs prospective customers about your company, your products and the services you offer are ideal.

Pre-loading data files will mean you have to factor this step into your project plan. Data loading can be done during the manufacture of your USB sticks or just prior to delivery so you don’t have to have your finalised files ready when placing your order.

The best option (if you can get organised in time) is to supply the data you want loading so it can be added as your drives are manufactured. This way the data loading is typically free or it’s charged for at a negligible rate (charges depend on the size of the data files to be loaded).

If you want the data pre-loaded a little later in the order cycle, i.e. just before delivery, then be prepared to pay a little more for it because it’s a much more manual process and will typically involve more expensive UK labour.

Given the relatively small incremental cost for data loading you’d be daft not to do it because the more information you can put on the drive about your company, your products or your announcements the less you have to print and the less transportation costs you’ll have for any printed material. So, not only will you save a small fortune on printed material but you’ll make life easier for anyone you’re giving the USB flash drives to because they won’t have to carry around huge sales brochures, presentation files and notes.

If you take advantage of data loading offers it’s possible to build a cost benefit case that shows you can offset all of the costs of buying promotional USB flash drives by pre-loading them with data and reducing your print, storage and transport costs.

At USB2U we are seeing a significant increase in the number of customers now asking for data loading onto their USB flash drives. Fortunately we’re well geared up to handle these requests in our factory during production or at our secure offices/warehouse in Northampton where we have our own professional data loading machines which are capable of handling up to 2,000 USB flash drives an hour.

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Should You Data Load Your Promotional USB Flash Drives

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From Potato Chips to Flash Memory Chips

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

USB flash drives printed with a company logo on them are proving popular with companies who have something new to say or announce. One of the reasons for their popularity is that its easy for companies to pre-load the flash drives with tons of information about their announcement.

They don’t necessarily replace printed press releases and product sheets entirely but they do give lots of scope to provide customers, partners and journalists with much more information in a format that is easy to carry and use.

The sort of information typically loaded on USB flash drives these days before they are handed out tends to include; video clips, media files, previews of TV or web banner adverts, user product reviews, executive briefings and loads more besides.

Most suppliers of branded and promotional USB flash drives offer a data pre-loading service and some will even throw in data-loading free of charge (subject to minimum order quantities and a maximum amount of data) so anyone thinking of loading data onto flash drives should shop around. You should only expect to pay for a data-load if it’s a last minute thing or you’ve got a particularly large amount of data you need loading!

All sorts of companies from the very large to small start-ups are now using USB flash drives to get their message out and to supplement other communication channels.

Printed USB Flash Drive

Printed USB Flash Drive

Tyrrells who make fantastic hand cooked English chips from locally sourced ingredients have recently undergone a bit of a makeover that included renaming their chips and calling them “crisps”. They’ve also launched a new website and have given their bags a bit of a “spruce up” – the results are fab – a bit like their crisps really!

If like Tyrrells you’ve got a fantastic product that you want to shout about you’re keen to let the world know about then you might also want to consider using a USB stick as part of your promotional or PR campaign. If you do then don’t forget to pre-load them with your data files before you hand them out!

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From Potato Chips to Flash Memory Chips

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Do You Know What A USB Web Key Is?

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Web Keys are not USB Flash Drives. Pretty much everyone knows what a USB flash drive is and most people will use one on a regular basis. USB flash drives are brilliant for storing and carrying large amounts of data around; they’re small, portable, attractive and easy to use and it’s for these reasons that they have become a particularly “hot” promotional item.

Companies love them because they know when they print their brand or logo on them that they will almost always get used not just once but time and time again. By pre-loading files onto them like sales brochures, presentations, media files, price lists etc. they are able to deliver significant amounts of useful information to their prospective customers in a highly cost effective manner – and of course the on-going usage of the flash drive gives them long term brand exposure.

Whilst the price of USB flash drives continues to fall with some now costing below £2 per unit (printed and data loaded) this is still too expensive for some companies. A cheaper alternative, and a solution some companies are opting for is a USB Web Key.

USB web keys look just like a regular USB flash drive – they have a USB connector on the end and they come in the same range of body styles and shapes that USB flash drives are available in. The primary difference between them is a USB flash drive has internal flash memory that you can read/write data to and from whereas a USB web key has no memory so you cannot store files/data on it.

USB Web Keys

USB Web Keys

Although Web Keys have no accessible memory they can store a single website address. So, when you connect the Web Key to your PC or Mac it will automatically start the default browser used on the PC and load up the webpage that is stored on the web key. The web page it starts could be a company website home page, a competition page, a Facebook page or it could deep link to a particular product page on a web site.

As an example if a company was launching a new product then they could distribute USB web keys in the shape of the product or printed up with details of the product and embed a web link to a landing page on the product – this landing page could supply details of the product, links to media files, links to pricing and tech sheets, links to Twitter and Facebook to allow the customer to follow further updates on the product and so on.

Whilst a USB web key does not have a compelling reason to keep it and reuse it on a regular basis it is a great way to get prospective customers to visit your web site where you can then get them to register and sign-up for further (on-going) information on your company and its products and services.

They are also relatively inexpensive and if you choose a small, thin design then they can be posted out using standard “Letter Post” rates rather than much more expensive “Packet Post” rates.

If you’ve been given a web key curiosity is likely to mean you are going to use it and you are going to visit the web site pre-loaded onto it. With web tracking and analytics in place its also pretty easy to track the click-thru’s and work out the effectiveness of any campaign that uses a USB web key.

All of designs and styles supplied by USB2U can be sold as Web Keys.

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Do You Know What A USB Web Key Is?

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