Embracing Change: Upgrading Your Gift Card Program

Autumn is almost here. It’s a time when leaves begin to change color in many parts of the United States. I find that it’s a nice reminder that change is a good thing. Especially when it comes to business procedures and protocols.

Managing a business requires you to make many decisions on a daily basis. Some decisions are far easier than others. An easy decision for a restaurant, for example, would be creating today’s specials based on local, seasonal ingredients. For a retailer, deciding to put a slow moving product on sale for the week can also be an easy decision. Deciding to upgrade or change protocol for business procedures, such as selling gift cards, can seem daunting. However, this type of decision is equally important.

The processes you choose for selling and accepting gift cards can greatly increase (or decrease) your bottom line.

Take a moment and think about your current process for your gift card sales.

• Do you sell them?
• What is involved in your process?
• Is there room for improvement?

Like most businesses, you may sell gift cards or certificates in-house. Some may even be paper certificates in which your staff must hand write the denomination and get a manager to approve before making the sale. Or perhaps you sell plastic gift cards in-house and online. Chances are, you and your staff are spending more time prepping the gift certificates and cards for re-sale, rather than using that time for promotion; thus greatly decreasing your bottom line.

Like many restaurants and retailers, you think, “Well, that’s just the way gift card sales go. Besides, gift cards are integrated into our POS. We can’t change the process.”

Change is hard. Oftentimes, the status quo is comfortable and familiar. You are not alone in this thinking.

However, change is good. Despite what you may think about gift card transactions,the future of your gift card sales is not through your POS. In fact, technology is evolving, allowing you to make different and better choices; it will continue to do so.

Our eCommerce solutions give merchants the ability to sell gift cards online so customers can print or email them as gifts instantly. This means you don’t have to lift a finger and can spend more time on other tasks, like marketing!

Businesses are also joining the green revolution, restaurants are providing customers with farm to table experiences and many retailers are using recyclable products to reduce waste. If this sounds like your business, then you can also opt to redeem online gift cards right from a customer’s smart phone. No paper gift certificates means less in-office paperwork and leads to a reduction in your carbon footprint. Win, win.

In order to keep up with customer demands and to increase productivity, it’s important to embrace change. If that doesn’t convince you, then how about this fact:

Making subtle enhancements to your gift card process will lead to a decrease in the time it takes to sell gift cards and an increase in your overall sales.

Ready to learn more about how we can help you enhance your gift card program? Send an email to sales@instagift.com. We can help!