It recently occurred to me: SpaBoom is more than just selling Instant Gift Certificates (IGC's) on the Internet. Our platform is very robust, and provides a very complex (but easy to use) system our clients can log into to access a variety of tools, reports and features.

Unfortunately, if you have a business to run, you're probably not reading our documentation or spending much time getting a feel for the robust SpaBoom platform. Over the next few months, I'm going to briefly introduce some of the more powerful–and less documented–secrets of SpaBoom.

Print Retail Gift Certificates for Free

SpaBoom is a gift certificate management tool. Typically, when a sale is made over the Internet for an IGC, SpaBoom records all the details of that sale and makes it available to you when you log into your SpaBoom account. It was part of our design to enable you to do a number of things with an IGC, such as track redemptions, add value, void it, reprint it, resend it, etc. (see image on right).

When we first built SpaBoom, we recognized some organizations may want to use our system for selling retail-based gift certificates. So, we built this into the platform. With as few as 3 steps, you can use SpaBoom to produce lovely retail-based gift certificates:

1. Select "Add GC" on the left when you're under the GCs Tab.
2. Find the client purchasing the GC, and if they aren't already in SpaBoom, create a new client record by selecting "Add Client".
3. Fill out the "Add GC" form. Here's the trick: Make sure you select "Retail GC" as the Type. Retail GC tells us you want to use SpaBoom to generate a new, retail-based gift certificate for you. The other options in Type are available, if you want to use SpaBoom to keep track of your non-SpaBoom gift certificate sales, such as your pre-printed gift certificates (we do this for free, also).

Filling out the "Add GC" form within SpaBoom, is equivalent to buying an IGC on your website, except that we don't charge for any sales that occur this way. SpaBoom is smart enough to know when a customer is buying an IGC from your website or Spa Emergency, versus you ordering a retail-based gift certificate from within SpaBoom.

You will be given the same options to print or email the IGC, and if email, where to send it. You can also select a service-based IGC, instead of dollar-based, if that is something the customer desires.

Combine this functionality with a nice color printer and high-quality paper, and you have a professional, custom capability to print gift certificates right in your store. Next holiday season, consider turning your computer into a kiosk, and allow customers to purchase and print IGC's right in your store!

There are a number of reasons you might be interested in using this feature:

• An inexpensive way to provide professional, custom gift certificates at retail.
• A great way to provide custom, bulk gift certificates for corporate sales or promotional purposes.
• A great option, when you (or the customer) doesn't want a dollar amount on the gift certificate (service-based gift certificates just show the service, not the amount).

Excellent promotional opportunity (requires just a bit more work): Use this facility to print out a large number of special gift certificates you give away for promotional purposes. For example, cook up a special promotion with the local radio station or Lexus / BMW dealer, put in the To: line "Lucky Spa Goer" and the From: line "KOBZ Radio" or whatever appropriate. $25 or so each. Here's the great part about SpaBoom: You can change the expiration date of these promotional gift certificates to something short, like 2 or 3 months. Most states, even California, will permit expiration dates when the gift certificates are given away for charitable or promotional purposes (i.e. you haven't been paid for them). The only trick is, you will need to create a new Type in SpaBoom, and give this Type of IGC a different expiration date. You do this under the Setup Tab, using the "GC Types" task. Help is available.

Posted in Spa Marketing, General, Spa Gift Certificates • Share • Trackback

6 Responses to “Hidden SpaBoom Secrets: Print retail gift certificates for free!”

1. Lisa Hubbard Says:
   March 15th, 2008 at 9:45 am

   Dear SpaBoom,

   Thank you, thank you… this has been a question of mine for months but just haven't made time to call/or email.

   Keep the "secrets" coming.

   Lisa

2. Christine Says:
   March 17th, 2008 at 5:44 am

   I tried using these certificates for in office sales and had to stop. It was just faster to write out one of my own certificates by hand. I even printed out sample certificates and put them in a binder for clients to choose from. The problem was, the certificates looked better in my book since they were laminated and glossy, but when the real certificate was printed, it was flat.

   So, I nixed that idea. I just had too much to do with charting and changing over, that I couldn't waste the time to print and trim the certificate. Then, there was the problem of getting the certificate to fit into my gift certificate envelope without folding it twice, which I thought was cheesy.

   The time thing might have been okay outside of the Christmas holidays, but I just didn't like having the client wait around that long for a gift certificate. I suppose it would have gone faster if I just printed the certificate and handed it to them fresh out of the printer, but I thought that lacked a bit of class.

3. Brenda Says:
   March 22nd, 2008 at 7:22 am

   This sounds great. I will have to check it out, guess if I read more of your tools here I would find there is much to offer here. I do have to agree with the statement above on how the gift certificates look when printed. Is there anyway to make the gift certificates a full page so it gives a more professional look and not look tacky when you have to fold them to put in the envelope? Other then that I do love this service, it makes it easy for me when clients call and ask if I sell gift certificates and I can tell them they can go online if they like and have a more of a selection.

   Thanks, SpaBoom!

   Brenda

4. Brandy Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 7:52 am

   I've been doing this since I started using SpaBoom. It's very easy to make the gift certicates smaller and have them still look nice. I print them on post card stock and they look beautiful.

5. Jillian Hubbel Says:
   March 24th, 2008 at 9:06 am

   How do you make them smaller?

6. conni Says:
   April 9th, 2008 at 7:40 am

   We originally were very interested in doing retail Gift certificates through SpaBoom but nixed the idea. The reasons:

   • The size of the gift certificates when printed. We put our current gift certificates in an envelope with our brochure and would have to resize (a big pain) or fold it (that looks tacky). Plus there is the issue of trimming it.
   • The cost of printing each gift certificate individually if we were to keep the same quality. We current use a higher end paper and have them professionally printed except for the name, service etc. Besides we are always running out those expensive color ink cartridges. (Dang HP!!!)

   We still like the idea if the end product would look more professional with less work.

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