How To Use Gift Certificates to Get New Customers

Gift certificates are a great marketing strategy to generate new customers.

You can look at certificates as a client paying referral program. They buy the gift certificates from you and they give them to family, friends, neighbors, work colleagues or employees.

Gift certificates negate customer acquisition cost except for the cost to print the certificates. 

Get More Customers
To get more customers all you have to do is create a gift certificate promotion that gets your current customers buying your certificates. To motivate them to buy; all you need to do is discount the certificates or offer a promotion like buy two get the third one for free etc.

Make your gift certificates visible to your prospects and customers; use signage, put display where they pay or wait. Plan promotions around holidays and events like birthdays or anniversaries etc.

High Probability Of Repeat Sales
If you understand life time value or know how many times the average customers buys from you; then you can easily figure out how much to discount the certificates to attract a new customer. Remember the more you discount the more certificates you will sell.

Upsell Gift Certificate
It’s a great strategy to upsell your new customer when they redeem their cerficate. Example 30 min chiropractor – upsell to 45 min for $20 more etc. So, when they call in to make an appointment to redeem their certificate be ready to upsell them at that moment.

Sell Your Gift Certificates To Businesses
A great way to get new customers is sell or give away gift certificates to companies. Certificates can be effective ways to engage employees and improve performance. Contact businesses that have many employees & offer to sell them your gift certificates at a reduced rate.

Here are some examples of how you can use certificates for employees

• Reward good job
• Sales motivation tool
• Offer as business gifts
• Offer as service rewards
• Consumer promotions
• Health & safety awards
• To introduce or maintain business relationships
• etc…

Gift Certificate Breakage

Between 15 and 30+ percent of certificates are never redeemed but you should always be prepared to redeem every gift certificate you sell or give away. This percentage varies depending on the quality of the certificate; the better the quality of the gift certificate the more likely it will be redeemed.

Remember track your responses and your redemption rates. You want them redeemed because of lifetime value & you want to track them so you know what type of certificate out-pulls the others.

Clearly gift certificates are a great marketing strategy to get more customers so I encourage you to get together with your staff & brainstorm a gift certificate promotion that suits your business.

Pick my brain: I can give you the marketing strategies & the marketing tactics you need, to grow your bottom line profits without you having to invest any money, time, or effort on your part. Or just shoot me a question & I’ll be happy to help you. What keeps you up at night or what problem are you trying to solve? Click the link to go to Drew’s Contact Page or shoot me an email at drew@ marketingwizards.ca (remove the space after the @ sign)