Find out how gift vouchers can boost your bottom line (often for no additional work or cost)
These days you can get vouchers for virtually anything…
Backrubs, beauty treatments, music downloads, books, stationary, theatre tickets, you name it.
If you’re feeling particularly twisted you can even get someone a voucher for a day out drinking shots and shooting guns.
(Yes, that was a genuine promotion. The perfect gift for anyone you want to die from alcohol poisoning and/or friendly gun fire).
Why offer gift vouchers?
Simply put, if you don’t offer vouchers for your business you’re excluding a huge chunk of the market.
Vouchers are often bought by people who aren’t your typical customers, as gifts for someone who might be.
I’ve never been to a health spa, but I’ve bought spa vouchers for my mum for Christmas. Sophie isn’t interested in photography, but she bought me a gift subscription to a photography magazine.
A Christmas survey conducted by Deloitte found that a whopping 60% of respondents planned to give vouchers as presents.
Many of us prefer giving vouchers as gifts instead of cash for example. And of course it’s not just Christmas, there are also birthdays, weddings and other celebrations.
Here’s why offering vouchers should be a no-brainer for most businesses:
1. You can appeal to the widest possible audience
As well as your usual customers you’ll also appeal to an army of present hunters looking to get gifts for loved ones for Christmas, weddings, birthdays and other celebrations.
2. It gets customers through the door (and often paying more)
Vouchers are often just a starting point and customers will often spend more when they come to redeem them.
3. You still make money on unclaimed vouchers
Obviously you don’t won’t to set out to profit from people forgetting to claim vouchers, but the fact is if someone’s too lazy to cash in a voucher or give it to a friend (I’m not being sanctimonious, I’ve often been that person!) then it’s fair that you as a business should still profit.
4. It increases your brand recognition
Vouchers are easy and quick to market. They have your brand name all over them in a way that the items or services you sell may not. That makes them a good way to market yourself.
5. They’re low cost (even free) to produce
If you offer online vouchers that are redeemed via a code or barcode then the vouchers can be created automatically by a piece of software and are often free to produce. You don’t even have printing costs because the buyer prints it out for, or emails it to, the intended recipient. Of course you can get special voucher cards printed which will cost money but the outlay is still minimal.
6. They can be personalised
It’s almost impossible to personalise a product on a shelf or on a website, but a gift voucher can have the recipient’s name beautiful hand scrawled on it. We humans like the personalise touch, it makes us feel special and vouchers give many businesses a unique opportunity to do just that.
7. Because they’re time sensitive they give a sense of urgency
One of the best ways to close a sale is to have some sense of urgency attached to your offer. There are 2 effective ways to do this. 1) Scarcity – when there a limited number of the items in stock 2) Deadlines – when the offer must be redeemed by a certain date. Vouchers instantly offer the latter as they always have to be used by a certain time.