Have you ever bought a gift card as a gift? If so, you already know buying gift cards is a successful way for companies to boost their revenues and profits. I love gift cards because everyone enjoys getting them. It also saves you time and works great if you don’t know what to get someone.
Not everyone redeems a gift card
All businesses should start selling gift cards because of this one compelling reason. As a business, you’re constantly trying to figure out ways to increase the amount of money you make while controlling the amount of effort you put in. Well, what if I told you that around 50% of all gift cards purchased are never fully redeemed, and a chunk of that is never redeemed at all.
I’m sure the reason for that can be many things. It can be because someone has $30 left on the gift card and forgets about it. Maybe, they lose the entire gift card and forget about the whole thing in a few months. Who knows, and from a business perspective, who cares because you just got free profit without putting any effort in.
It can be easier to sell a gift card
Holidays and birthdays are great opportunities to sell gift cards. For example, a holiday where you email everyone something like, “Christmas is coming in a few days, make sure to get your home cleaned’ – some people may take you up on this offer because their home needs cleaning before guests arrive.
What about the other people on your email list who don’t need cleaning but still haven’t bought a gift for their loved ones. To them, a Campaign that goes ‘Give a gift of clean home this Christmas’ may be more appealing, resulting in more revenue for your company.
Having a gift card strategy that works for you on autopilot
Using BookingKoala, you have many opportunities to earn more money by selling gift cards.
Adding a gift card page to your website
You can create a page using the Website Builder that shows visitors you sell gift cards directly on your website. Even if they don’t buy the first time they visit your website, they will know that you sell gift cards if they ever decide to buy one, plus they will know where to buy them quickly.
Gift card page inside a customer dashboard
Each customer that books services with you will automatically get an account made for them. You can add a ‘Gift Card’ tab/page for easy access inside that account. Same as the above point, your already paying customers will have easy access to purchase gift cards from their accounts whenever they decide to buy one.
Adding a banner to all your emails
Customers already receive automated emails from the system, such as receipts, service reminders, etc. You can easily add a banner to those emails to constantly remind customers that you sell gift cards.
The above three strategies mentioned are more of a branding technique. Branding is essential and should be used subtly without annoying the user. You also never know when a user may need a gift card, so showing it to them as many times as possible without irritating them is a huge benefit.
Sending an automated Campaign regularly
The larger and more nurtured contact list, the more people will buy your gift cards when sending such Campaigns. For King of Maids, we’ve been growing our list for years. Our list contains previous and current customers who’ve had services with us and those that made contact and almost booked with our company. It’s crucial to grow such a list because it will result in more revenue for your company when you leverage it.
Using Campaigns, you can set up a recurring email or SMS to be sent out, let’s say once per month, pushing users to buy a gift card. For example, you can send something out every 4th Monday saying, ‘Give a gift of a clean home.’ The system will now automatically send the same email or text every four weeks, and the larger the list, the more people will buy a gift card each time the Campaign is sent out.
Manually sending a Campaign
This last one is not fully automated, but I added it because it will generate a lot of revenue for your company. Like the above point, you can leverage your list and send emails and texts to your contacts whenever a holiday or event arises. From my personal experience, Christmas is the best day to take advantage of when offering gift cards.
To learn more about Campaigns, you can click here.
Filip Boksa
CEO and Co-founder at BookingKoala, home to thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide. Grew his first business King of Maids, to over 5 million by 22 with $6,000 and no outside funding. Today focuses on helping businesses through BookingKoala.
