6 Ways Gift Cards Can Help For A Successful Summer

With June now here, many business owners may begin worrying about what is often called the “summertime slump”. Even though the summer months bring more people out of their homes than at any other time of year, it also means that people can become busier than they are at any other time of the year. With the kids out of school and so many activities and events for people to get involved with, it can leave some businesses struggling to entice visits from customers.

At Canadian POS Corporation, our experience has taught us that there are always ways to entice customers to visit your store. And gift cards happen to be at the top of the list of ways! Consider the fact that gift cards present your business with an entirely new “product line” that is known to encourage customers to visit you. The summer is a time when many parties are hosted. Wouldn’t gift cards make for great gift ideas for party-goers?

Here are six ways gift cards can help for a successful summer:

1. They help you to make money for items you haven’t sold yet. Remember that when you sell a gift card, you are essentially receiving money for items that haven’t yet been purchased. Research has also shown that when gift cards are redeemed, customers usually spend more than the value of the cards. Therefore, you are not only making money “early”, but you are also securing more revenue in the future.

2. They help you make money for items you haven’t sold at all. While gift cards make for excellent gifts, the truth is they aren’t always redeemed. Some gift card recipients forget that they have them or aren’t interested in specific merchants that the gift cards represent. In such a case, you’ve still made money on the sale even though no merchandise will ever leave your store. It’s impossible not to profit from such a transaction.

3. They encourage repeat business. You can use your gift cards to provide customers with credits when they return merchandise. Doing so ensures that the money being returned to the customer will inevitably be spent in your store. As well, not all gift cards are redeemed for their full value. Remaining balances on partially redeemed credit cards encourage customers to come back to your store in future.

4. They help to reduce theft and fraud. In the hopefully-avoided, unfortunate circumstance of someone stealing gift cards from your store, you still technically have nothing to worry about. Why? Because gift cards have no value until they are activated. They each have unique identification numbers that cannot be duplicated. If you don’t activate the gift card in your store, it cannot be redeemed. Paper gift certificates don’t have such a feature.

5. They work as free advertising. Any time a customer purchases a gift card from you, it represents a referral for your place of business. It’s the same as someone saying “try this place out, I love it!” Gift cards are forms of advertising that people carry around with them. With your company logo printed on your cards, the very cards themselves function as little pocket-sized commercials for your brand.

6. They are easy to process. Gift cards are so much easier to process than paper-based gift certificates. This is because there is virtually no work necessary on your part in order to put through a gift card transaction. Accepting gift cards is essentially the same process as accepting credit or debit cards. With your Canadian POS Corporation POS terminal, you can simply swipe the redeemed gift card for the amount of the purchase in order to complete a transaction.

For more information on our gift cards or to order them for your business, call Canadian POS Corporation at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.