Because I had a Realtor® gift me a short-lived, albeit memorable, promotional product (a ceramic house ornament), I am suggesting five other promotional items that I feel have longer market life and better logo placement: house dry erase boards, house cutting boards, house mint cards, drinkware and pens. This Part Five focuses on pens.

Like drinkware, no matter the industry, I would always recommend pens as a promotional item. They don’t get thrown away until their ink dries out (which takes a long time), there’s a pen for every budget, their imprint gets noticed every time someone writes with it, they often stay handy in drawers and coat pockets and if the pen is lost, the finder uses it and so the logo expands its usefulness.

Because there is so much paperwork signing in the Real Estate Industry, there’s a lot of opportunities to make sure an imprinted pen gets received and the Realtor’s® name get remembered.

When picking out a pen as a promotion, make sure it writes well. People use a pen that writes smoothly. I think roller ball pens write more smoothly than ball point pens and I think they feel more expensive even if they didn’t actually cost more.

I don’t think the differences of a click pen versus a pen with a lid versus a twisting pen matters as much as how it writes. Take into account, though, that pen lids get lost pretty easily, and so if you choose a pen with a lid, make sure you can print the logo on the body of the pen. Beyond that, there are so many choices.

A couple of my favorites are:

v                 Video Message pens—have a window that displays a line of text or  tiny image, changing every time the pen gets clicked (up to six different lines). This pen is perfect to display a company motto as well as company name and phone number. With an imprint on barrel as well, this pen gets double logo visibility points.

v                 A Mini Key Tag Pen—these are miniature pens on a key chain and if they get attached to a key chain, their marketing usefulness goes even higher. Because they are attached to keys, they aren’t as likely to get lost and they become enormously useful to their owner.

v                 A Stubby Buddy pen—these are short and fat pens, are fun to write with, and get noticed among a pile of pens as something different.

v                 A Metallic Light Up Pen—anything metallic is cool and if it lights up, that increases the cool factor, and cool factor reflects well on the logo the pen carries.

v                 A Beach Cruiser wooden pen—this is a more expensive pen and so would be better as a gift not a giveaway, but I still have one given to me over seven years ago (and I tend to lose pens). This one has the essence of the classic wood paneled automobiles. The imprint is engraved into the side of the pen and it looks and feels like an exceptional pen. This would be a good pen to use for the final paper signing, and then to hand it to the client with a gift box as a remembrance of when their new home ownership first began.

Although my other recommendations have been house shaped, I do not recommend the round stick pen shaped like a house on top. I think those look too much like the cheap pens you win at a carnival for throwing a dime into a cup, and round stick pens feel cheap anyway. If your company has a particular promotion that requires a house shaped pen, or it’s part of a basket of goodies, then go ahead, but otherwise, just give out a pen with your logo and let your logo advertise your services, not the pen shape.

Promotional pens have so many color and material options that fit all budgets that I think it is a great choice for Realtors® wanting to get noticed and remembered.