Gift cards are a great way to show appreciation to your audience but they’re also a great way to boost your sales and upscale your business and brand’s value awareness. Originally designed as a gifting solution, gift cards have evolved into a strategic marketing asset that can attract new customers, boost sales and elevate brand perception.
We’ll learn how gift cards can help you upscale your business. While most businesses invest heavily in advertising, marketing and loyalty programs, there are often some tools that are not utilized to their full potential.
What does Brand value awareness mean?
Brand Value Awareness means the degree to which consumers can identify and recall a brand, it shows how well can consumers differentiate a brand from its rivals or competitors.
In simple terms, it’s about how consumers perceive the quality, trustworthiness, affordability, and overall benefit of your brand compared to other rivals or competitors, which will eventually lead to increased customer trust and loyalty, higher conversion rates, greater word-of-mouth referral,s and a strong competitive edge. For example, let’s take Apple, it doesn’t just have name recognition, it is also associated with innovation, design, and premium quality, that is brand value awareness in action.
How do Gift cards help your business?
Gift cards help businesses in a lot of ways that make a significant impact, from boosting revenue to expanding your customer base. Here are some ways gift cards can contribute to your growth and long-term success:
1) Encouraging trial with minimal risk
One of the advantages of gift cards is that they encourage new customers to try out new brands and products without customers feeling financial hesitation.
Gift cards have that “risk-free trial” effect, which will eventually convince hesitant customers into loyal ones.
It works because customers are being given free opportunities to experience without putting or using their money.
2) Upsell and cross-sell opportunities
Gift cards are a great way to increase the value of every transaction through upselling and cross-selling, as upselling encourages a customer to purchase a higher-end or upgraded version of a product they need or might be considering. Similarly, cross-selling recommends related products to what the customer is already buying.
3) Increased customer lifetime value
If the customers have a positive first experience, they are more likely to become regulars and make repeated purchases, with each return visit leading to better brand recognition and value perception.
4) Data collection and personalization
Gift cards can also be digital and they can have even more benefits as they can be tracked, businesses can have insights on customer behavior and that data can be used to deliver personalized offers that let customers feel valued and seen.
5) Gift card users tend to spend more
According to research, the majority of the time gift card users spend more than the card’s value when they are buying something, this behavior has few benefits like increased average order value, and more opportunities for cross-selling and upselling.
6) Seasonal and promotional visibility
During the holiday season, birthdays, festivals, and events, gift cards hold significant value as they are highly preferred and distributed. Launching a seasonal gift card campaign can drive traffic, increase conversions, and keep your brand in the limelight.
How to track and measure the performance of your gift card program
- ROI Analysis-
- Feedback-
Feedbacks help businesses focus on the ease of use, satisfaction with the redemption experience, and gift card design and delivery.
- Repeated purchase rate-
Tracking how many gift card recipients became returning customers after the redemption.
- Redemption rate
By measuring the percentage of issued gift cards that are actually redeemed, you can see if your engagement is strong or not.
- Monitoring gift card sales
Track the volume and frequency of gift card purchases over a course of time to observe customer behaviour that can help you plan marketing and inventory.
- Customer acquisition
Determine how many new customers come from the existing gift cards as they are a great customer acquisition tool.
- Setting clear objectives
Have a specific, measurable goals for your gift card program as they can guide your campaign decisions and allow for performance benchmarking.
- Segment analysis
Analyze your gift card metrics by considering demographics, geographics location, purchase behaviour and first-time v/s returning users.
Conclusion
Gift cards are more than just a gifting option, they are strategic tools that can dramatically influence how your brand is perceived, experienced, and remembered. By using gift cards the right and effective way you can easily increase brand exposure, build trust through gifting, encourage trials and repeated purchases, create meaningful customer journeys and boost long-term brand value awareness, implement gift cards into your marketing strategy, and see how it helps your business upscale.
