Ringers’ recruitment cards are an effective and inexpensive way of getting your tower’s recruitment message across to potential new recruits.
Here is a step by step guide to how to create your own cards which are simple and inexpensive to design and produce.
To be effective, good design practice tells us that any promotional material we use should follow some key principles:
- A clear proposition. What, actually, is it we are offering? Something that can be understood with the briefest of glances. We live in an age where people are inundated with marketing messages – we need something that gets our message across immediately.
- A call to action. What should someone do if they are attracted by our proposition? If it’s quick and simple they are more likely to respond but if it’s complicated or difficult they are more likely to prevaricate and put it off.
- KISS – Keep it Simple. There are loads of things we could add to our recruitment materials which could “sell” the benefits of ringing but each additional statement risks clouding the core message, potentially reducing the likelihood of action being taken. It’s also important to keep it visually simple and not use too many fonts as this can make the design look complicated and confusing.
The Pewsey Vale Ringers have produced a great example. They are a joint band led by Chris Wardell, Lesley Walford & Nigel Talbott who serve the towers of Pewsey, Milton Lilbourne, Upavon and Wootton Rivers and they have some of their cards in their local shop and pub and all the ringers always have them to hand.
“They are handed out at EVERY opportunity (ie, if anyone says ‘I’ve always thought I might try bellringing’ – or if anyone is daft enough to make eye contact with Chris!)” says Anne Wardell, adding, “They work a treat for recruiting!”
Although it would be possible to provide a guild-wide version such as the Gloucester and Bristol card, we decided it would be more likely to bring results if we kept it local just like the Pewsey Vale ringers. We considered several designs but decided that we liked the Pewsey Vale design so we took our inspiration from that.
We used a popular free online service called Canva which made producing and designing our printed cards very simple. You may well have used Canva yourself, or you probably know someone who does, but if not, it’s pretty quick to pick up.
There’s a business card blank template in Canva and it’s easy to add and position or text.
For our “Call to Action” we gave our mobile numbers giving people the option to call (or text) and also provided a QR code to our tower web page.
If you visit sdgr.org.uk/buckland-newton you’ll see that we have added a section at the top of the page aimed at visitors who are interested in learning. If this is something you would like you can ask Guild Webmaster, Ian Mozley or myself to add something for you. There is already a contact form on the page and we’ve also got a link to more general information on the website’s “Learn to Ring” section.
Canva creates the QR code for you – all you have to do is copy and paste the destination page address – and it places it on your design automatically, ready for you to size and position it.
The small cartoon of ringers on the face of the card is a royalty-free image downloaded from an internet service here: clipartmax.com/bellringers-church-bell-ringing-clipart
It’s free for non-commercial use.
To produce your physical card you can download your design as a graphics file or you can use Canva’s own print service.
There are many online printing services where you can upload a graphics file of your image and get cards produced but, as the Canva service was pretty cheap at £19 for 100 with free delivery, we decided to go with that.
As well as carrying cards on us and leaving some in the shop and pub, we’ll be putting one on the church and village notice boards as well as leaving a few in the church.
Andy Waring
