3 Good Reasons To Get Your Gift Card Sales Going

In our last blog, we revisited the importance of selling gift cards in your store. As we’ve demonstrated, doing so makes your business better. Gift cards have been proven to be better than gift certificates because they insist that their dollar amounts be spent in your store. With certificates, customers may spend less than their values and end up getting change back during the transactions.

As well, the selling of gift cards is like getting mini loans. You get paid in advance for items you haven’t even sold yet. Those items, by the way, generally end up costing more than the denominations on the cards used. That puts extra cash in your pocket with every transaction!

So what reason would you have to not sell gift cards in your store? Here are three good reasons to get your gift card sales going:

1. Gift cards give your brand that “big time” appeal.

We all know that the most well-known brands in retail offer gift cards. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a major chain that doesn’t sell gift cards. If you want your small or medium-sized business to compete in its marketplace, then selling gift cards is for you. Doing so will immediately give the members of your customer base the impression that you are a major player in your industry.

“Gift cards have a wider appeal than a paper gift certificate,” says marketing specialist, Andrew Cauthorn on DataCandy.com, “Offering a gift card as opposed to a gift certificate at your business relays a certain level of professionalism. The branding opportunities are far greater, as companies with gift cards have the opportunity to change up the sleek designs based on the season (think Christmas) or occasions, such as birthdays.”

2. Gift cards create wider brand awareness.

As we just pointed out, gift cards will make your business look more prestigious. But, perhaps more importantly, they will inevitably make your business more prestigious. Word gets around. Especially in today’s social media-crazed society, it’s easy for news to spread about the fact that your store has gift cards available. Not to mention, the simple addition of a gift card display in your store will heighten customers’ opinions of your brand.

“What would you pay to have your brand delivered at eye level, to thousands of people who are actively shopping, daily?” asks Tom Sullivan of LEAD Marketing Agency, “Gift card racks inside of major retail stores, not only deliver a very desirable CPM (cost per thousand) to a highly valuable target, they directly generate sales.”

3. Not selling gift cards will give your competitors the upper hand.

If you don’t want to lose any edge you may have in your industry, you’ll definitely want to add gift cards to your list of available products. Sullivan points out that Persistence Market Research predicts that, by 2024, gift card sales will reach $698 billion. “Face it,” he writes, “In our increasingly busy and less personal world, we have become accustomed to receiving gift cards. We actually like it. In many cases we prefer it. It is convenient.”

At Canadian POS Corporation, our electronic gift card solution maximizes stored value card sales with a complete package of marketing features. For more information, call Canadian POS Corporation at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.