Whether it’s December, February, June, July, or any festive time of the year, holidays are annual events that people take their time celebrating. It is typical to have food, beverages, and—the best part for many people—gifts. Still, gift-giving is stressful for many people, as individual tastes and preferences interfere with the process. Therefore, many people opt for gift cards. Gift cards and gift certificates are versatile presents that recipients can use for any item or service from a business. While selling gift cards is a great way for businesses to increase their total sales, a holiday is a perfect time to capitalize on a customer’s uncertainty. Every business owner must know how to sell more gift cards during the holiday seasons to increase their total sales, increase their in-person or online traffic, and build their customer loyalty. These tips for selling during this stressful time ensure that any restaurant, retail store, or hotel sees greater profitability than before.
Make Them Visible
Gift cards are fully customizable to where you can choose their color, style, and design according to the holiday or event you wish to promote. These cards should be pleasing to look at and match whichever location you wish to showcase them. Pick colors and designs to fit window displays, hostess stands, menu boards, or other viewable locations.
Design
Gift card designs should reflect seasonal holidays and special events that meet customer expectations. You can include graphics for Valentine’s Day, birthdays, weddings, graduation ceremonies, or other special events. Ultimately, these cards’ customizations are perfect for any celebration. Don’t forget to include your brand logo or business name to increase your brand recognition and outreach. When you combine your unique style with any holiday spirit, you’ll notice people taking an interest.
Style
You can also promote your gift cards in different styles like envelopes, boxes, tiny bags, or an unconventional approach. Hardware stores, for instance, can sell gift cards encased in miniature cinder blocks with a little hammer that buyers must use to obtain the card from the cinder block. While this is extra work, it rebrands the gift card as a fun activity rather than a boring piece of plastic. The other methods—tiny boxes, bags, or envelopes—show customers that gift cards have merit and integrity. Their versatile nature allows you to customize how you wish to promote them. You can also send virtual or electronic gift cards for use on your store’s retail page.
Incentivize
A key metric to a strong business is how many gift cards you can sell. Naturally, many factors contribute to this, but a trick to increase this number is to incentivize staff and customers. This will strengthen customer loyalty and create a reliable team. No matter how you achieve this, these incentives will increase your foot traffic and sales in no time.
Staff
Frankly, commissions are a great way to motivate retail employees to push items. With that idea, use a commission-based reward system to push a specific sales quota. You can base rewards on the number of cards sold or their monetary worth, but ultimately, the reward system is up to you. You can also base the reward system on total sales goals—in turn, selling gift cards reaches those goals faster. Regardless, employees who feel incentivized to sell more cards will sell more cards.
Customers
You should also use this opportunity to incentivize customers to buy the cards. It’s common knowledge that gift cards promote customer loyalty. They create a strong bond between you and the customer, which encourages more long-term shoppers. Utilize a reward system for how often customers shop at your store and/or use gift cards. For example, for every $200 spent they might receive a $20 gift card for future use. Obviously, this ratio can differ depending on your preferences, but the reasoning stays. Alternatively, you can offer small items for free with big gift card purchases. With a $100 gift card from a restaurant, customers can earn a free appetizer or another food item. These rewards will improve customer’s happiness and satisfaction. Remember: with customer satisfaction comes customer retention.
Effective Marketing
Of course, you must have an effective marketing strategy to promote your gift cards during any holiday season. Since holidays and special events typically appear annually, you can create the best marketing campaign in advance to promote your gift card sales. No matter what, this is the most effective way to expand your marketing outreach to current and new customers.
Upsell
Upselling is a classic sales technique. You can encourage customers to purchase additional or more expensive items to maximize total profits. Gift cards are easily stackable with best selling items. People buy gift cards for recipients who like the restaurant or store it’s from but are unsure what to get from there. This is a perfect opportunity to suggest various items (such as appetizers, entrees, and desserts or clothes, makeup, and accessories) to put more ideas into the consumer’s mind as they shop. When done, the consumer will likely purchase more than they originally intended.
Social Media
Social media is another effective marketing platform. With it, you can show off your attractive gift cards and holiday styles through posts and messages. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all great social media platforms to promote your business. From there, you can show customers various items and caption it with puns, jokes, or hints to your gift cards. Not to mention, you can make posts relating to your gift cards and their functionality. With social media, outreach and marketability are limitless—when combined with the holiday spirit, it’s a surefire win.
Why You Should Choose Us
When implementing these gift card selling tactics, for the maximum profit, you’ve got to go with the best system possible. The BPAPOS system for your restaurant, retail, or hotel operation is designed with full integration and functionality. Our point-of-sale systems not only provide fast and efficient transaction management, but they also feature complete integration with your gift card sales. Our gift cards have no transaction feed, per-swipe fees, or reload fees unlike our competitors, and any unused balances are in your control.
Therefore, make sure you update your POS system with the BPAPOS gift card processing software. We sell the gift cards, software, and accessories—including inserts, displays, and sleeves—needed to boost your sales.
