Selling gift cards
Tis the season for giving and as service professionals, selling gift cards for the holiday season could start your new year off with extra upfront revenue and the possibility of new recurring clients. If you follow the Launch27 model, you probably have the gift card widget on your website but it may not have netted you a goldmine… yet
(If you don’t, follow these steps to place it on your site now)
So to help jumpstart your new year and to end your holidays with a sales bang, we put together this definitive guide to selling gift cards for ANY service business.
Let’s get started.
1. The logistics
First things first… if you don’t have a way to sell gift cards, make it easy and install the Launch27 gift card widget. Don’t go out and get physical gift cards or a system or app specifically for gift cards… just navigate to promotions, choose the gift form widget, design and add to your site.
This will enable you to quickly get them in front of your visitors and allow them to purchase and redeem the gift cards without you having to work with multiple systems. With the Launch27 widget, the purchasers simply visit the site, fill out who the gift card is for and their email address and the receiver gets an email with details on how to redeem.
2. The landing page
Now that we have the logistics worked out, don’t throw your gift card on your about us page, design a simple, well-converting landing page that has ONE objective… you guessed it… to sell gift cards. The landing page should be free of clutter and shouldn’t even lead to your booking page because your focus and goal should be to get them to purchase a gift card.
This isn’t a Launch27 gift card, but it is a great example of a well converting and beautiful landing page designed to sell gift cards.
BONUS: If you are pushing the gift card for the holidays, use message and theme match and create a holiday-focused landing page.
3. Your gift card setup
Once you have your landing page and your gift card widget up and running, it’s time to optimize.
- Keep your form short- only ask for the information you need to know to get the sale and have a smooth transaction. This means ask their name, email address, the amount they want to send and the receiver’s name and email address. Keeping it short will increase your conversion rate.
- Create a smooth redemption process- don’t make it hard for the receiver book your service. Give them a simple coupon code and use the Launch27 widget to have a seamless transaction process.
- Scale your preset dollar amounts in relation to your service- you probably shouldn’t offer a dollar amount that is $5 or $5000. Make the preset amounts comparable to the service costs so that you give people easy and obvious choices when they are purchasing.
4. Your link
Again, when running a promotion, don’t make the gift card page hard to find. It shouldn’t be in your footer or buried on your services page. If your customer searches for you and comes to your home page, if they want to purchase a gift card, you need to make it as easy as possible. Part of that is having the link front and center to greet them when they arrive at your page.
5. The offer
If you are driving traffic whether through ads or your email list, make sure your offer is simple, clear and the landing page matches the message in the advertisement or email. Your offer may just be compelling copy to purchase a gift card or it may be a discount on purchases tied to urgency.
Matt Ricketts reminder– If you do add an offer, remember that the national redemption average hovers around 75% so that 25% that never redeems their gift card end up counterbalancing the discount you gave in the original offer.
Also remember that people with gift cards tend to spend more money. The term uplift refers to when a consumer will spend more than average because they have a gift card or what they consider “free money”… so instead of the standard clean they will opt for the deep clean (since it’s not costing them much) and you get an uptick in average sale revenue and the customer gets even more of your services.
6. Warm traffic: the email
You can’t just expect the traffic to appear, you have to generate your audience. Having a nice healthy email list is a great start. The email you design should be branded, clear, and only have one simple offer with a large call to action. Since your email list is already a warm audience, expect a decent response if it’s clear, well branded, and follows the above steps.
Matt Ricketts tip– don’t just email them once and forget about it… “we mailed four times. I accidentally set one of my emails to go out a week early on the Wednesday before the holiday week. We sold almost $9000 by Friday before Black Friday due to this mistake. Sold over $19,000 total collected revenue with a face value sold of $24,000”
Don’t just focus on growing and selling to your list during the holidays, give them value throughout the year and they will be much more receptive (and will open your email) when it comes time to purchase from you.
7. Cold traffic: Ads
If you don’t have a large email list or want to drive even more traffic, running ads may be an option. When running ads, think about your targeting and even consider running an ad targeting a lookalike audience to your current email list.
Ray Malaski’s Pro tip: Consider running ads for your gift cards. “I did a search for Christmas Gift Keywords and was blown away at the volume… Two things I noticed- the cost per click was low and the volume was through the roof! Just add your location/ service area to these and you will drive organic traffic.”
Adwords tip: Add a little holiday flavor to your site extensions and point it to your gift card page… then do what we mentioned above with message and theme match and modify your gift card image to fit your holiday theme.
8 . Offer to businesses
This time of year, businesses are looking for gifts for their employees and often purchase in bulk. Consider reaching out to local corporations and telling them about the ability to purchase gift cards through your website. This will not only be a boon for your holiday season but could benefit you year-round as corporations often offer gift cards as rewards for performance or incentives.
Tip: You may want to discount your gift cards for bulk purchases. I.e, if they purchase $5000 in gift cards, they get a 5% discount.
9. Put in your thank you page and confirmation emails
Even though they have booked your service, that doesn’t mean your selling process is over. Put a link to your gift cards on your thank you page and in confirmation emails. Chances are, since they already have their wallets out and trusted you enough to book your service, putting this offer in front of them will resonate.
Also, for every person that rates your service well, follow up with an email encouraging them to purchase an awesome experience for friends and family.
10. The follow up
Just because people have purchased from you doesn’t mean their holiday shopping is done. Follow up with them to see if they need to purchase another gift. Give incentives for purchasing multiple and thank them for being a loyal customer.
So it’s the holiday season. Start selling… and let us know if we missed anything. Do you have gift card strategies that have worked for you? We would love to hear them!
For more holiday promotion ideas, check out this blog post.