Gift cards offer your business a way to boost revenue and encourage repeat customer visits. About 75% of customers reported purchasing a gift card in the last year. While some give the card to loved ones, others may use it themselves.
Gift cards invite customers to engage with your brand from another angle, strengthening their relationship with your business. They can stretch each dollar further when using a gift card to cover a part of their purchase. Additionally, you can loop gift cards into your loyalty programs to prompt return visits and enhance the customer experience.
To maximize the use of gift cards for your business, it’s important to effectively market them. Strategic marketing campaigns make sure customers are aware. This article outlines the best strategies for your gift card program to make sure you maximize their potential and drive sales year-round.
5 Steps of Effective Gift Card Marketing Strategies
For every gift card promotion strategy, there are a few core steps that can help make it as successful as possible. You need to understand consumer behavior, advertise compelling offers to these customers, and uncover creative techniques to keep them engaged.
Before you kick off your gift card strategy, cover these five bases:
- Set your goals: Be as precise as possible as you create your gift card marketing goals. At the same time, maintain some flexibility. You may find one tactic that works where another doesn’t, so switch up your strategy to accommodate it.
- Know your target audience: By understanding who your audience is and what drives them, you can cater your strategy to resonate with them.
- Identify what makes your business unique: Try to emphasize your brand in your strategy. Define how you set yourself apart from the competition and work that narrative into promoting your gift cards.
- Design a gift card that matches your brand: Capture your brand’s fonts, images, and colors on the gift card. Even if your business’ name isn’t front and center on the card, customers should still be able to recognize it.
- Choose your marketing channels: Note where your customers are most active. If they regularly interact with your emails, prioritize advertising your gift cards there. Alternatively, if you engage with customers on social media, consider spending more time promoting on these platforms.
Pro tip: Gift card sales show no sign of slowing down. Our latest Gift Card Sales Report captures the current state of customers’ enthusiasm for gift cards.
Once you have the foundations covered, it’s time to explore the core strategies and tactics you’ll use to promote your gift cards successfully.
5 Core Strategies for Gift Card Marketing
As a general rule of thumb, it’s worth diversifying your gift card marketing strategies and orienting them around your target demographic. Doing so allows you to connect with the right people across several different platforms. Consider these five factors for when, how, and to whom you should market your gift cards:
- Seasonal events like holidays, anniversaries, or sales that engage customers more than usual: You can link these special events with gift card promotions to increase customer spending and drive revenue.
- Ensure you’re familiar with your target audience: These individuals will most likely engage with your business based on their purchasing habits and preferences.
- Get active on social media: These platforms are the perfect way to interact with customers, announce big sales, and promote gift cards. Additionally, you can use social media to build brand awareness.
- Build campaigns that cross-promote with other products: Consider bundling gift cards with popular products for big events or yearly sales. The gift card is a unique product addition, enhancing value perception.
- Integrate gift cards into your loyalty program: Gift cards could be rewards for repeat customers who cross a loyalty program threshold. They can help encourage repeat business and boost customer retention.
Ready to get started on your gift card strategy? Our Marketer's Guide to Gift Card Strategy covers all things related to promoting gift cards, connecting with customers, and ensuring satisfaction that invites customers back again and again.
The Difference Between Strategies and Tactics
Both strategies and tactics are crucial in successfully executing your gift card marketing strategy. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they’re different and serve distinct purposes in your overall marketing approach.
- Strategy: Your strategy is your overall plan for marketing gift cards. It includes the broad framework and long-term goals of your gift card initiatives. It focuses on the end goal and its importance.
- Tactic: These are the individual steps that make up your strategy. Tactics are specific individual actions that help you accomplish strategies. You carefully construct them to be as efficient and effective as possible when helping you move toward accomplishing your gift card marketing goals.
8 Tactics to Elevate Gift Card Appeal and Visibility
Once you have a strategy for marketing gift cards to your customers, it’s time to break it down into tactics. You want to make your gift card program eye-catching, too. Maybe the cards’ physical design is appealing or it’s connected with an exciting rewards program. Here are eight of the best tactics to boost gift card visibility and appeal:
- Compelling design and packaging: Eye-catching and on-brand gift card designs can be a considerable asset for boosting awareness of gift cards. Bright colors, readable fonts, and fun graphics that align with your brand help the card stand out at your point of sale (POS) or on your website.
- Strategic social media engagement: Social media platforms offer effective mediums for spreading the word about your gift cards. Use targeted ads, posts, and shares. You can even include customer testimonials to boost your credibility.
- Placement of online and in-store cards: When you place a gift card prominently in the store, customers are more likely to see it. Additionally, a gift card should be easy to find on your website.
- Email marketing campaign: Create a series of emails illustrating your gift cards’ conveniences and benefits. If you’ve newly integrated them into your rewards program, emphasize that, too. Add a linked button at the end of each email where customers can click and purchase the card.
- Host giveaways: Giveaways are compelling because customers earn free items from your business. All within one campaign, you’re spreading brand awareness, boosting engagement, and advertising your gift cards.
- Share user-generated content: If customers engage with your content online, you can share their posts on your platform through licensing their user-generated content (UGC). This helps increase brand authority. You can even work with a specific customer to promote gift cards if both parties are interested.
- Optimize local SEO campaign: Local SEO allows your business to appear higher in the organic search results of customers looking for restaurants like yours in your area. The better your SEO, the more likely you will be recommended to these customers.
- Leverage promotions and discounts: If promotions and discounts are naturally built into your overall marketing strategy, it could be helpful to attach your gift cards to them. This offers a seamless way to spread the word about your gift cards.
It’s best to choose two or three tactics to start. You can always adjust and iterate your gift card marketing strategy later. By using a handful of tactics at first, you can more easily measure which ones work. This way, you can remove the tactics that aren’t helpful and prioritize those that have the most significant impact on your sales and revenue.
Pro tip: Did you know that the average digital gift card was loaded with $83.95? According to a 2023 report from Bank of America, the average sum on a digital gift card outweighs the average amount of $63.86 on physical gift cards. A digital-first approach to gift card marketing could help boost your revenue.
9 Tips to Use Promotions and Discounts Effectively
Promotions and discounts create a sense of urgency for customers, and as a result, your business is more likely to experience a boost in gift card sales. Time-limited promotions and discounts increase the perceived value of your marketing item. 37% of customers made purchases sooner than expected because of discounts.
Likewise, 35% of customers bought more than they would have without a discount. Here are nine tips to help you make the most of your gift card promotions and discounts:
- Conduct a flash sale: A discount or promotion offered for only a short time, ideally four days or shorter.
- Reward existing customers: Give gift or comp cards to return customers to reward their dedication.
- Host a holiday weekend or end-of-season sale: Loop gift card promotions with your scheduled sales. For example, customers who spend over $100 earn a $10 gift card.
- Buy one, get one (BOGO) free promotions: BOGO sales allow customers to get two gift cards for the price of one. You can also run a buy one, get one half-price sale.
- Offer discounts to teachers, students, veterans, and seniors: By offering discounts to certain demographics, you can invite those individuals to purchase a gift card.
- Share vouchers and coupons: Vouchers and coupons encourage customers to return. 27% of gift card holders plan to spend more than the card amount.
- Special promotions as part of loyalty programs: For a limited time, reward customers with a gift card when they join your rewards program.
- Joint promotions with another local business: Partner with another local business to promote each other, similarly to coalition loyalty programs. Customers who purchase over a certain dollar amount at one store may receive a gift card to the partner business.
- Social media contests or giveaways: Social media giveaways or contests offer advertising for your business and gift cards, which gets customers excited about your business.
Every discount and promotion aims to attract customers’ attention and drive revenue. When linked to effective rewards programs, these tactics not only help drive sales but also encourage repeat visits and draw new customers.
Implement These Strategies for Marketing Success
As you start implementing various gift card marketing strategies and tactics, it’s important that you choose the right gift card provider. You want it to be secure, reliable, and easy to integrate with your existing business. Make sure you properly vet each possible provider to make the right decision for your business.
Additionally, you should regularly analyze the performance of these gift card efforts. Define how you will track each tactic as part of your strategy preparation.
Along with the measurable numbers, seek customer feedback. Input from customers is one of the best ways to determine how your marketing strategies resonate with them. Based on what you learn from customers, adapt your marketing techniques to keep your offerings relevant and appealing.
The Bottom Line
There is much trial and error when starting new gift card strategies. You may predict one tactic will work well, but find that another performs better. It’s best to remain flexible while continuing to invest in strategies with proven performance. Be willing to change course if a different tactic or approach works better.
Ready to kick off your gift card marketing strategy? Paytronix is the all-in-one platform to help you make impactful progress in your gift card marketing. Request a demo now.