While the gift card industry is all too easily overlooked, this boasts considerable value and has continued to follow a similar course to other markets since the beginning of 2020.
More specifically, the sale of physical gift cards declined year-on-year in December, while digital and eVoucher sales increased by a marked 49.7% during the same period. Because of this, the total market share for digital products increased to 30.2% in the first half of 2020, up from 17.1% during the previous year.
But what are the benefits of offering and selling gift cards from the perspective of businesses? Here are some important advantages to keep in mind:
#1. Build Your Brand Awareness
While it’s easy to create a great deal of noise and synthetic buzz around your brand, nothing beats organic marketing and the type of promotional efforts that drive familiarity and recognition over time.
Gift cards can help in this respect, particularly if you issue physical and digital products that feature strong and consistent branding and your company logo upfront and centre.
This drives the type of subtle awareness and recognition that ensures your brand remains fresh in the minds of consumers, whether they’re in the market for themselves or looking to procure gifts on behalf of loved ones.
#2. Increase Revenues
We live in an age of increasingly open banking solutions and payment options, with billions of pounds now transacted annually through secure, scalable and independent platforms.
Gift cards play a seminal role in this type of evolving and increasingly decentralised digital economy, so issuing them to customers creates another payment option and may help to optimise revenues directly over time.
Even on a fundamental level, issuing gift cards can often connect you with new customers, who may come back to make further purchases and spend considerably more in the future.
It’s also thought that some 72% of people who head in store to purchase a gift card end up spending more money on themselves, which means that this type of product can create increased offline turnover for brands.
#3. Run Appealing Holiday Promotions
Gift cards tend to work as highly effective and engaging marketing verticals, which means that it’s relatively easy to build real-time promotions and ad campaigns around them.
Certainly, creating non-specific and branded holiday gift cards represents an excellent way of capturing a diverse range of consumer demographics, while developing urgent and active campaigns that encourage customers to spend their cash within a limited time period.
Timing these campaigns to coincide with the holiday period is highly recommended too, as this targets customers at a time when they’re more willing to part with their hard-earned cash.
Christmas is obviously the ideal time to administer gift cards, while it makes sense to combine this with discounted prices on selected items.
