To mail or not to mail?
April 11th, 2007 • Posted by Bill Bice • Permalink
There is a feature for Instant Gift Certificates that you may not know about: the ability to offer a mail delivery option. This is a bit of a contradiction, of course, since mail removes the "instant" part of "Instant Gift Certificates".
We created this feature as an alternative for SpaBoomers who were previously using the "shopping cart" method of selling gift certificates — where the only option was to mail it. Some SpaBoomers told us they didn't want to leave out the mail option, and were leaving the shopping cart on their website in addition to Instant Gift Certificates. That kind of confusion reduces sales, so we created a mail delivery option.
Since we're all about Instant, we also left it turned off by default. The setting is in Setup, Basics:
- In Setup, Basics under Instant Gift Certificates, check "Provide mail delivery option" to turn it on. You'll then see your Instant Gift Certificates page change to ask for the delivery options at the top, with mail delivery as a new option.
- Specify a "Mail surcharge" if you want to charge extra for mail delivery.
- You can change the default description from "Mail delivery, please allow 4-7 days" to whatever you'd like.
Should you do it?
12% of SpaBoomers offer the mail delivery option and 5% of their purchasers choose it. Two-thirds of SpaBoomers add a mail surcharge of an average of $3. A surcharge of more than $5 cuts the use of the mail delivery option in half.
If you're committed to offering a mailing option to your clients, this is the way to do it. It provides a consistent user experience, which will increase your sales by reducing the confusion that comes from having multiple ways to purchase GCs. Otherwise, you can stay completely Instant.
How do you know if someone selects mail delivery?
The email you receive for the purchase will start the subject line with "[MAIL]", so you know you've got some extra work to do. When you go to the GCs tab in SpaBoom, you'll also see a mail icon next to GCs that need to be mailed. Click on the GC, and you can scroll down to the mailing address. Once you've mailed it, change the Status from "Not Mailed" to "Mailed".
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