House of Gift Cards
November 19th, 2007 • Posted by Seth Gardenswartz • Permalink
The term “Gift Card” is a relative new comer to the lexicon of gift giving. Ten or more years ago most of us asked if gift CERTIFICATES were available. These were generally written by hand and tracked using a pen and a three ring binder. However, as predicted to Ben Braddock in “The Graduate,” plastic had a big future.
Magnetic striped cards have solved most of the merchant’s hassles with selling paper gift certificates in that they are track-able and redeemable right through most POS systems. They are also a nice money maker for the card providers, who generally charge a hefty set up fee, make the retailer buy the physical cards and charge a monthly fee for the hardware and service packages necessary to run the system regardless of sales. The card vendors like this program so much they want us to replace the word “certificate” with “card” when speaking of a gift voucher.
Predictably, success and greed have begun taken their toll on gift cards. In last Wednesday's USA Today, Mindy Fetterman notes that the plastic gift cards are loosing their luster for a variety of reasons including fees charged to the holders, the fact they are easily lost and general boredom with generic cards as gifts. Furthermore, many independent retailers are priced out of the gift card model. Our SpaBoom gift certificates suffer none of these weaknesses. Once set up, the SpaBoom system is pay for performance. This makes us committed to the ongoing success of your gift program. Furthermore, we charge you nothing (that's right zero) to sell our gift certificates in your store. Add to that the fact SpaBoom's online sales generally grow the total gift certificates business for our clients 25% in the first year with negligible staff resources, and Ben might want to look else ware for his big future.
Ms. Fetterman’s observations are a good reminder to make our instant gifts personable and special. A customized gift is a more personal and thoughtful expression thank a generic chunk of dead dinosaur. Perhaps there is there a metaphor there. While we ponder that, it's worthwhile to take a moment to update your holiday specials and packages. If you have any new logos or graphics make sure they are loaded into the system so they will show up nice and pretty on the gift certificates. Finally, don’t forget the staff training aspect. Make sure your staff knows how to redeem them so your new customer does not feel like they have thrown a monkey wrench into the operation of your spa or salon. After all, a National Retail Federation survey concludes that 88% of Americans plan to buy at least two gift vouchers of some kind this year for a total of 26.3 billion dollars. Let’s divert some of that into your spa or salon.
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January 20th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Ms. Fetterman’s observations are a good reminder to make our instant gifts personable and special. A customized gift is a more personal and thoughtful expression thank a generic chunk of dead dinosaur. Perhaps there is there a metaphor there. While we ponder that, it's worthwhile to take a moment to update your holiday specials and packages. If you have any new logos or graphics make sure they are loaded into the system so they will show up nice and pretty on the gift certificates. Finally, don’t forget the staff training aspect. Make sure your staff knows how to redeem them so your new customer does not feel like they have thrown a monkey wrench into the operation of your spa or salon. After all, a National Retail Federation survey concludes that 88% of Americans plan to buy at least two gift vouchers of some kind this year for a total of 26.3 billion dollars. Let’s divert some of that into your spa or salon.