In an environment where businesses constantly compete to stand out and attract more customers, introducing or investing in gift cards can be an ideal move. Gift cards are common, especially during the holidays and festive holidays when everyone is scrambling to buy something.
Instead of the old ways of incentivizing sales, you can boost your marketing functions by offering the customers gift cards and making them feel loved and a part of your brand.
Not every business considers it a great marketing and customer attraction tool; however, previous uses indicate that it is like a magnet and can help you trap and make the customers stick to the brand. Therefore, it is perfect for businesses to kill two birds with one stone; however, it offers more than just two birds as long as its benefits are extensively exploited.
Let’s see how businesses can exploit the benefits of gift cards for growth needs.
1. A Data Collection Tool
Regardless of the industry, top-performing businesses heavily invest in data collection to aid decision-making, product development, and offering excellent customer services.
Whenever customers apply for gift cards, they must provide all the details necessary to get them, including address, names, and purchase behaviors. You can collect all the data provided through the application website and use it for future decision-making needs.
Secondly, you can monitor how every individual uses their gift cards, i.e., what they purchase, bulk and frequent purchases, etc. These details can be used for determining bulk sales offers promotion for specific products. Data such as address communication details collected can be used for mobile marketing to notify the customers whenever there is a promotion and offer sales for the products they prefer in bulk.
Although gift cards are a great way to collect data, use branded gift cards like Shopify for better results. With a Shopify bulk gift card, you can collect more consumer data and access other excellent management services, helping you increase the potential benefits of the gift cards to your business. For instance, you can get usage statistics data, acquire SMS and mail marketing details, and bulk card generation for particular periods.
2. Customer Attraction Strategy
A gift card can serve two main purposes: to help you retain existing customers, thereby promoting loyalty as most customers subscribe to the gift card for various sales offers. They can then help you spread the information through word of mouth to attract newer customers interested in gift cards. Advertising gift card offers can also help you boost brand awareness and recognition since most consumers tend to be attracted to shopping offers.
Through this awareness, you can create an impression on your customers, helping them market you to other consumers. Once provided with a gift card, customers are likely to visit the store or business more than once to shop; hence, you can use this to improve customer engagement. For instance, you can make them feel part of the brand by asking them to participate in various services and sales questionnaires about the services and products offered. Through effective customer engagement and service delivery strategy, you can also rely on these cards to boost customer management strategies.
3. Impacts On Sales
Gift cards are mainly issued during the festive and holiday seasons to drive sales and attract more consumers to the business. However, you can be creative enough to use them during off-peak season when product purchases and business visits are low. Through this strategy, you can attract more customers than competitors during the off-peak season and still retain more customers during the on-peak season.
Gift cards can also restrict customers to the stores where they can purchase products; hence, they are likely to visit one business till they deplete the cash in the card. In the process, they help you boost your sales volumes and decide to stay loyal to the brand. Based on the information collected about their satisfaction levels and brand loyalty, product opinions, and other needs, you can easily shape and drive other sales strategies.
When carefully used, gift cards can help you promote customer marketing strategies, especially word-of-mouth marketing, to attract more consumers to your brand, thereby increasing market share and product demand.
4. Impact on Business Strategy
Businesses not only provide gift cards to help them boost sales and attract customers, but part of the focus should be on the future and the impact of these gift cards on driving business growth. As a data collection and customer engagement tool, the card, customers, and application information can be used for future strategies. For instance, monitoring the expenses per card will help you determine the supply chain strategies, i.e., the amount of products to stock based on the customer demands and needs.
Secondly, data collected from consumers and their opinions can be used for product strategies, including pricing, product features, packaging, and after sales services based on consumer opinion.
5. Benefits for Small Businesses
Generally, most businesses that offer gift cards tend to be medium or large; however, based on the anticipated benefits, smaller businesses can significantly benefit from gift cards more than their competitors. First, it is one of the greatest tools for growth as it provides relevant data like customer feedback, reviews, data collected from websites, and other sources, which can be used for growth strategies.
Conclusion
As long as you learn how to exploit the benefits, gift cards can be the greatest strategy to boost customer engagement, drive sales, and boost the business’s competitive advantage. This makes it ideal for small businesses struggling to retain customers.
Attract new ones, enter new markets, and improve brand recognition. The secret is to use it as a data collection tool on customer needs, behaviors, preferences, etc.
The Search Engine Cage team is on a mission to educate entrepreneurs. We make things easier for the small business owner, by writing articles that help them to understand SEO and Digital Marketing.
