How To Take Your Gift Card Programme To The Next Level

Gift cards are simple little products that hold a huge wealth of value for brands. From increased revenue, customer loyalty, diverse offerings and enhanced brand awareness, gift cards allow brands to reach new audiences and incentivise existing customers to return to make future purchases. How can a gift card programme benefit your business?

Today, most brands will understand that offering a gift card option is pretty essential to keeping up with the competition. However, there could be a lot of untapped value and potential hiding within your gift cards that you haven’t yet unlocked.

In this article, we discuss how to take your gift card programme to the next level.

Explore New Sales Channels

So, you’re selling your gift card in your stores and probably on your website too. However, there are additional sales channels that you can tap into in order to sell more gift cards and in turn, raise your brand awareness.

One of the most influential and fastest-rising of these avenues is the B2B & B2C rewards market. The B2C rewards market refers to businesses using gift cards to reward or incentivise consumers. For instance, have you ever been offered a gift card from a new bank as a thank you for opening a bank account with them over a competitor? Perhaps an insurance company offers you a gift card as an incentive to choose their insurance policy.

The B2B rewards market works in a very similar way. Let’s say for instance that an organisation rewards their workforce with points each month that can be built up and exchanged for a gift card via an employee benefits platform. Perkbox is a good example of this.

By integrating your gift card with these platforms, you put your name amongst the brands that employees can choose from when investing their points, putting your gift card in front of customers who may not have ordinarily chosen to purchase.

Boost Your Gift Card Marketing

Taking your gift card programme to the next level could be as simple as levelling up the way in which you market your gift card. Is there more you could be doing to shout about your gift cards and put them in the forefront of your customer’s minds?

Perhaps the easiest win of all here is to assess how you are currently displaying your gift card within your stores. It’s no longer enough to make your gift card display an afterthought, pushed to the corner of the store or by the tills. Pull your customer’s attention as soon as they step foot into your store with attraction visuals and POS materials and taglines that sell your gift cards. Always ensure designs are up to date and keep the display fresh and relevant. No one wants to see Christmas-themed gift cards still hanging around in January!

It might be time to start marketing your gift cards a little differently. Gift cards can inspire customers to spend more when used the right way as incentives. Think about promotions. Perhaps you could offer a £20 gift card to those who purchase to a particular threshold, such as £100, either in-store or online. It might just be enough to encourage a customer to purchase that extra item they were struggling to decide on.

You can also use gift cards as a way to reward loyalty. Once a customer purchases 10 coffees with you, perhaps they receive a pre-loaded gift card for their next visit as a thank you. You strengthen a relationship with a customer whilst more or less securing a return visit. Win-win!

Dedicate Resource

Again, gift cards aren’t a part of your offering to be overlooked or simply just a box to tick. In order to maximise their value, you need to dedicate resources to making success happen. If you have gift card displays in-store, educate your team and assign someone in each of your stores to be in charge of monitoring and managing the gift card display to ensure it is always well-stocked, up to date and being utilised to the best of its ability.

Do you have a gift card manager within your organisation? If not, it might be time to start thinking about hiring one – particularly if you are serious about taking your gift card programme to the next level. If you’re not quite there yet, start incorporating core roles and responsibilities around gift cards (such as gift card marketing and gift card data analytics) to your current team members who may be able to start growing this area.

Analyse and Optimise Performance

If you aren’t tracking the performance of your gift card programme, how can you optimise it and push it forward in the right direction? Gaining access to the data is key to optimising your strategy. This can help you identify trends such as peak redemption periods, best-performing stores for gift card sales or popular gift card denominations and allow you to adjust your offerings accordingly.

You can gain access to your gift card analytics by partnering with a reputable gift card processor that offers this service. Unlocking the power of data will help you make the decisions and investments that are sure to propel your gift card forwards and ensure you are always making improvements and optimisations to ensure continuous growth.

The world of gift cards is always changing, but many brands aren’t utilising their power to their full potential. Get ahead and understand the additional revenue and value that a comprehensive and strong gift card programme can bring to your business.