With the holiday season kicking in, it is that time of the year where we exchange gifts with our loved ones. This lovely gifting gesture ushers in a marketing spree the world over – both online and offline. The art lies in turning this spree into an opportunity to drive sales by attracting new customers while retaining loyal customers.
If you are a business owner, wanting to learn this art, this article is just for you! We will help you leverage one of the most reliable marketing tool, i.e. Shopify Gift Cards to not only bring in successful conversions but also retain your loyal customers. Go ahead and give this article a read!
What is a Shopify Gift Card?
A Shopify gift card can be understood as a prepaid card that is used for gifting when you are not sure what to buy for someone. The receiver of the Shopify gift card can redeem the Shopify gift card amount on their purchase from the Shopify store. This comes with the benefit of “immediate delivery” as it is a virtual product. Gift cards can be created with any denomination. During the pandemic gift cards were the only way for many retailers to sustain their business. Shopify was gracious enough to open up the gift cards feature to all subscription plans. This is good news for small businesses. Now, any one on any plan can use this simple but effective marketing tool to promote sales while offering flexibility and last minute gifting options.
What makes a Shopify Gift Card an Important Marketing Tool?
Shopify gift cards prove to be a great benefit for the business for it is a great marketing tool to stir customer loyalty and win repeat purchases. Some of the key features of adding a Shopify Gift Card to your online shopping are as follows –
- Gift cards are an easy way to enable users to send gifts to friends and family who are far away.
- Gift cards are an appropriate gifting option during holiday seasons and special occasions.
- Gift cards issued by merchants can be used to incentivize repeat purchases from loyal customers
- Gift cards are likely to bring more people to buy from the stores including the buyers who are not really sure about the color, size, etc.
- It can reduce the instances of exchanges and returns, because it allows the recipient of the gift card to ultimately make their purchases on their terms.
- It offers “instant gratification”. If you want to bring a smile to someone’s face or surprise someone, gift cards can do the trick.
Benefits of adding a Shopify Gift card
While the features are sure to convince you to add the Shopify gift card to your store, we think these benefits are sure to leave you adding the Shopify gift card to your stores immediately as the holiday season has already begun –
- Shopify gift cards unlike the physical cards are easy to deliver for it just takes an Email to reach the intended recipient(s)
- Gift cards come with no shipping fees or any additional logistics cost, and hence we can confidently say that the return on investment (ROI) is best for the merchant.
- Shopify gift cards can be used multiple times over a period of time as long as the “purchase amount” is lower than the value of the gift card.
- Users can use this gift card to shop from your site from the comfort of their home. Hence you can provide them a seamless shopping experience.
- Gift cards are a great incentive for generating post-holiday sales, for the customers who have brought the Shopify gift card from you during the holiday season, may likely redeem them after the season to take benefit of clearance sales.
- Although a gift card has a deemed value, there are high chances that the recipients are likely to spend more than the exact gift card value, thereby bolstering an otherwise slow retail season.
- Gift cards can be customized with branding to make them look attractive and occasion specific – birthday / anniversary / graduation etc.
- We saved the best for last – if you are a SHOPIFY PLUS store, you can do magic with Gift Cards API by writing your own private app or script to generate, issue, email or redeem gift cards. This can be put to good use for loyalty redemption or to reward loyal customers or surprise customers on their special day. We have put this to good use in several Shopify Plus to redeem loyalty points earned on the store through the MLoyal Loyalty solution.
How to add a Shopify Gift Card?
Well, now that you are fully sold on the benefits of the gift card, let’s get to work. We have curated a list of steps that you can follow to add a gift card to your Shopify store-
Step 1: Log into your Shopify Admin and navigate to your dashboard.
Step 2: Click on the “Products > Gift Cards” tab.
Step 3: Click on “Sell Gift cards” if you are new to this. However, if you already have gift cards, you can click on “Create Gift Card Product”.
Step 4: Choose the denominations you wish.
Step 5: Click on “View” to see the gift card you just created.
Step 6: For your new gift card, provide necessary information to enable your customers to find your shopify gift cards and add them to your appropriate collection and navigation.
Step 7: Since your gift card is now created, you can easily change the settings by clicking on “Gift cards > Gift Card Products”.
Step 8: To make the gift cards visible on your products, simply click on “Make Products Available”
Issuing Gift Cards
Shopify also allows you to issue gift cards to customers for any specific purpose such as a birthday surprise or as store credit for returns / refunds. You can email the Shopify gift card code to your customers. You can decide the value of your shopify gift card and your customers can redeem that against their purchase from your store. The following steps may be followed to issue a Gift Card.
Step 1: From Shopify Admin, select “Issue Shopify gift card”.
Step 2: In the “Issue Shopify gift card” dialogue box you can make changes to the initial value, the expiry dates, the customer’s name or email address and add any other optional notes. This is useful if you are issuing this as “store credit” in lieu of returned product(s).
Step 3: Now click on “Save” to generate the Shopify gift card code.
Step 4: The customer whose id you mention will receive an email with the shopify gift card code.
Power Tip: This is the “preferred” way to handle returns / refunds.
What after the Shopify Gift Cards have been Issued?
Once you have added the Shopify gift card to your store, you need to spread the word, by letting your customers know about the Shopify Gift card program. You can use the following modes to spread the word:
- Email Marketing – add a section in your regular newsletter or send out one just to announce this.
- Social media marketing on various platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Final Thoughts
Gift cards are a great way to increase sales, convert more visitors into customers, give users the added benefit of last minute gifting through last minute online delivery options (email) and boost post-festive-season sales. The other often overlooked part is how merchants can issue gift cards to retain customers, incentivize customers to purchase more or use it to handle returns and refunds. If Shopify gift cards are used effectively, they can turn into a money spinner for any store especially during the festive season.