Loyalty Blogs

Customer Loyalty is what businesses look for to succeed in their ventures! However, it’s not a child’s play to be everyone’s favorite with the wide range of options available in the market today. Developing a dedicated program based on your target audience’s needs and preferences is what you need to boost your sales and increase customer retention rate. In this blog, we will discuss the top easy hacks to uplift business sales and loyalty programs using Gift Cards.

Before you hire experts to help you build the gift card loyalty solution, let’s see the importance of gift cards and how using gift cards along with a loyalty program will boost your revenues.

Growing Significance of Gift Cards

Talking about the marketing perspective, marketers always look for ways to increase sales and revenue. But it’s not easy which is why one needs time-to-time analysis of market and sales strategies. Research says a high rise in shopping behavior was witnessed especially through loyalty program perks or holiday sales season.

With the use of loyalty programs, many businesses witness tremendous growth in sales. Some merchants opt for a single loyalty program while others go for multiple loyalty programs aligned with a robust & strategic marketing approach. On the other hand, Holiday season sales have their pros and cons.

According to a survey in the US, people plan their spending on gifts and non-gifts items during holiday sales. Almost 60% of people prefer to buy a gift card or vouchers to gift someone & help them choose the gift of their choice. While 53% still prefer to shop for clothing and accessories. This means gift cards are the epitome of Seasonal Sales & Holidays, as they offer flexible choices to the loved ones receiving the gift cards. What’s interesting is gift cards are not restricted to only the periodic sales!

Gift cards are beneficial to both merchants and customers, which is why they are used to upgrade your sales and at the same time, to uplift your loyalty program.

Ways to Use Gift Cards with Customer Loyalty Program for Better Sales

Here are some of the ways to use your gift cards with your customer loyalty program and increase your sales-

1. Use Gift Cards with Loyalty Program

With the increase in the number of people who are loyalty program members and gift card buyers, combining gift cards into your loyalty program can offer immense benefits without the need of paying a huge amount.

For instance, there may be businesses that have loyalty programs running but with members that are not at all engaging. What could be the reason? One of them can be rewards that are not very appealing. Combining gift cards in your program will encourage members to shop more.

Using gift card loyalty software will not only increase the program membership rate but also boost sales. Go for a well-strategized plan to connect with your customers using a gift card and loyalty program. Another way is to reward program members with a gift card on special occasions, which is also a good way to build trust.

2. Loyalty Program Partnership using Gift Cards

Merging your loyalty program with other companies’ approaches and using gift cards can help you make better sales. One of the ways is to offer gift cards to customers enabling them to shop from the other company that is your loyal partner. Loyalty programs merged with two brands can benefit the partner brand with the help of cheat coupons.

However, coupons are not very effective as compared to gift cards. Gift cards offer more value as they are always used in shopping whereas usage of coupons is less. Using gift cards in loyalty programs can act as a great way to uplift the sales in your business as well as brand partners.

3. More Discounts for Program Members

The members enrolled in loyalty programs get the benefits of better discounts and deals as compared to regular customers. Introducing loyalty program discounts along with gift cards can be a great way to increase sales in your business. For instance, you can offer an extra 20% off on merchandise purchased against gift cards.

Using the sales technique that includes discount factor from gift cards makes customers grab more offers, which helps in increasing the levels of customer satisfaction & retention. Giving customers the chance to convert loyalty points earned from the program into gift cards of their brand choice and redeem them can be very interesting as well as beneficial. This not only encourages customers to spend more and earn points but enables them to redeem gift cards during purchase for extra discounts.

4. Offer Gift Card for Complaints Resolution

When a brand faces any technical issue that can lead to problems or expose customers’ data, they can come up with a plan to offer gift cards as compensation to victims of the breach. The famous eCommerce giant, Amazon once had a “technical error” that had inadvertently exposed customers’ email addresses and they offered gift cards to make up for the inconvenience.

Taking customers’ complaints seriously is very much needed to win their hearts and retain them for a longer time. Offer solutions to such issues that your customers cannot ignore but praise your brand for quick and thoughtful resolution tactics. Customers using your loyalty program must be treated well and you must be quick to act if they face any issues by resolving them at the earliest to gain their trust again.

In many cases, brands who resolve the query on time can retain customers, giving them a second chance to build trust. Though issues or bugs may harm your brand’s trust, you can make possible steps to reimburse their trust with loyalty program benefits and gift cards.

5. Boost Brand Awareness through Gift Cards

Another good way to build brand loyalty and awareness is through Gift Cards. Business owners especially startups need recognition in the market to sustain and be in the competition with big brands. Recognition is only possible when people are aware of your business and your services, giving them a chance to build trust and use your products.

For brand awareness, you can launch gift cards for your business and offer them to your target audience for free encouraging them to buy from you and become your customers. Starters may need to pay a huge amount for offering gift cards but this strategy can be quite useful to build loyalty among the targeted audiences.

For instance, the big brand, Reliance Jio came up with the free internet & calling service in the market, which help it slowly gain customers and build its empire. People now who are addicted to unlimited internet services pay for the recharges. However, this strategy cannot be followed by businesses offering different products and services.

Brands can make use of gift cards by running campaigns like “Get FREE Gift Cards” or similar offers to build interactive engagement. An increase in the engagement level will lead to a better chance of sales.

Closing Statements

Gift cards are no longer an option for last-minute gifting and shopping. They have a huge potential to offer various benefits for businesses as well as customers. Ensure that you consider the top ways stated above to help you boost sales using gift cards as well as a loyalty program. The more creative and better you will offer, the more the crowd you will attract, thereby increasing the chance of retaining customers.

For any queries related to gift card campaigns or loyalty program development, feel free to connect with the experts of Novus Loyalty and grab the benefits of the right Gift card loyalty program to win customers’ hearts.