Social Gifting – A New Buzzword

By Bijan Shahrokhi in Social Gifting

 

 

 

Social Gifting seems to be the next big thing. With Facebook’s purchase of Karma,  Social Gifting is going to become the focus of many social networking companies.


There are a couple of interesting companies in the social gifting space that I particularly like. Wrapp is my favourite so far.

 

Wrapp is a B2C social gifting smartphone app that is focused on Birthday eGift Cards – The app is heavily integrated with your Facebook profile. It pulls data (friends – birthday dates) from your account and lists upcoming birthdays with a list of egifts (i.e. gift cards or memberships) available to give  to them for free / buy for them.

 

Some of us will not use Wrapp because:

– Many smartphone users are not interested in downloading new apps very often.

– Wrapp is most suitable for Facebook delivery, which is less than 30% of the egift card market.

– Wrapp is focused on birthday gifts only – that’s less than 50% of  gift giving occasions.

 

Wrapp will be popular among the tech savvy social media lovers – 15 to 30 year olds – as a new, cool way of giving free / less costly birthday gifts. But selling a brand’s egift card via the brand’s online store will remain popular and relevant because of all the additional values an egift card solution offers. Here are a few:

– The consumer has the option to select delivery method: Email, Facebook, Mobile

– More control in the gifting experience by the retailer or restaurant – very important for branding purposes

– It is relevant to all gift giving occasions including birthdays

–  It is simpler to purchase / process among the mainstream (No iPhone or Android app is required)

– Based on latest First Data stats, More than 75% of consumers would still like to purchase their gift cards from the gift card’s brand owner

 

Our service will co-exist with companies like Wrapp. Wrapp helps retailers and restaurants give away free or low priced gift cards or even coupons by directly offering a gift giving app  to the Wrapp users. Virtual Next helps retailers and restaurants sell egift cards directly to their customers. A retailer should have both Wrapp and Virtual Next services in place.

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