3 Ways To Make Gift Card Shopping Fun For Customers

Welcome to gift card season! The busy holiday rush is most definitely upon us and with less than two weeks to go until Christmas, shoppers from all over Canada are scurrying through the malls looking to find the perfect gifts for their loved ones. It is quite often said that gift cards make the perfect gifts. As we pointed out in our last blog, there’s no longer any reason to think that gift cards make poor choices because they are “impersonal”.

In fact, it can be argued that gift cads are quite the opposite! They offer their recipients the freedom to choose exactly what they like. Often, people ask for gift cards, knowing that when they are received, a shopping spree is in front of them. “Gift cards make getting gifts fun,” mentioned a colleague of ours last week, “It basically means I get to go shopping for free. Who doesn’t love that?”

Here are three ways to make gift card shopping fun for customers:

1. Reward the buyer. The customers who buy your gift cards deserve a little gift of their own. Come up with an incentive that will encourage gift card sales to make it all the more worthwhile for the gift givers. For example, perhaps you can provide a discount on any purchase the customer makes for any other product in your store during the same transaction where the gift card is sold.

On MindBodyOnline.com, Valorie Sherman writes that “creating promotions to encourage gift card sales can be a win-win strategy for your business. Give consumers a reason to buy gift cards from you and not your competitors using coupons or free products as incentives. For example, a coupon for 15% off your next visit with the purchase of a gift card will promote holiday gift sales as well as future business, marketing your services to both the recipient and the purchaser.”

2. Display signage. “I ate at a fantastic restaurant earlier this week and wanted to recommend it to my sister because I knew she would love it too,” a colleague of ours shared last week, “I noticed several signs at the entrance of the restaurant, when I was leaving that said ‘Gift Cards Available’. I thought, ‘oh perfect’ and I bought one for $150. If they didn’t have the sign, I may not have thought to get a gift card as a present for my sister.”

“Most customers won\’t think of you as a place to buy gift cards unless you put that information out in every part of your business presence,” says Tamara Schweitzer on Inc.com, “One of the easiest ways to let customers know that you offer gift cards is by using signage. The sign could say something as simple as ‘Ask about our luxury salon gift card package,’ or just ‘Buy a gift certificate today.’

3. Promote your gift cards online. In our last blog, we pointed out that selling your gift cards on your website is a great idea. Don’t forget to use all of your social media platforms to promote the fact that your gift cards are available through both your website and your physical store. It’s no secret that people use the internet to discover news about pretty much everything. Make sure news about your gift cards is widespread online.

Schweitzer reminds us that a big part of any gift card campaign involves the internet. “No campaign can succeed these days without announcements made via your website, email newsletters, and through your social media networks,” she insists. To order gift cards to sell in your store, call Canadian POS Corporation at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.