We all know that egift cards can serve as an effective sales and marketing tool. You can maximize the value of egift cards by having the right marketing plan to promote your egift cards. Below, we at Virtual Next have formulized the steps you need to take in order to boost your egift card sales, and their impact on the rest of your business.
1- Know your digital gift card purchaser / recipient.As a first step, you must know the demographics of your egift card purchasers and recipients. You should evaluate when and why (for what occasion) they purchase these virtual gifts, how they hear about your egift cards, and who they buy themd for. You must know if there is any difference between your core customer and your egift card buyer. If the egift card buyer demographic is different from your average customer demographic, your current marketing plans will not necessarily be effective for your egift card business.
2- Understand the customer egift card experience.
You need to know what type of items are purchased by the egift card holders. Knowing when they spend the egift card, what they buy with it, and how much they spend on top of the egift card value, helps you obtain a clearer picture of the ROI of egift cards. You can also enhance the egift card recipient’s experience and turn them into a loyal customer by offering a special promotion on certain items when they redeem the egift card.
3- Understand the effect of egift cards on customer loyalty.
This can be looked as a subset of step 2.
The first step in establishing a relationship with a client is to collect the client’s contact information. The beauty of egift cards is that the digital gift card purchaser and recipient’s email addresses will be provided for you. So, you now have a communication channel with two potential loyal customers. During your egift card notification emails, you can simply ask them to opt in to your newsletter, special promotion emails, etc. Measuring the effect of your promotions on the egift card recipients helps you offer the right promotion to convert them into loyal customers.
4- Develop your marketing plan.
Now that you have identified who the usual customers of your digital gift cards are, who they purchase it for, and how the egift cards impact customer loyalty and overall sales, you can craft a detailed marketing plan aimed at leveraging the power of both your marketing efforts, and the egift cards, to maximize sales.
Your marketing plan must focus on fulfilling the essential needs of the customers. When you analyze customer purchase patterns and other sales data, you will know how and where to promote your egift cards. You will also be able to identify additional benefits to offer with egift card purchases or redemptions, in order to achieve maximum sales impact.
Bijan- CEO and Co-founder of Virtual Next