In Hong Kong, a bustling shopping paradise, the retail industry holds a pivotal position, and consumers' pursuit of a superior shopping experience continues to grow.
In recent years, to cater to market trends and consumer demands, renowned retail brands such as Starbucks, Sephora, lululemon, DECATHLON, and Toys“R”Us have introduced their unique e-gift cards.
These thoughtfully designed e-gift cards are not only convenient and fast but also deeply loved and sought after by consumers, becoming a new choice for expressing sentiments and enjoying the joy of shopping.
Why have major brands launched e-gift cards? What's the business logic behind it? Let's check it out!
Why Are Major Brands Launching E-Gift Cards?
What Are E-Gift Cards?
E-gift cards, also known as E-Gift Cards, are non-personalized, virtual spending cards without a physical form, typically ranging in value from $50 to $3000. E-gift cards can be used at designated offline stores, websites, or apps to pay for goods or services. Users can purchase or receive e-gift cards and then use them online or offline.
The Benefits of E-Gift Cards: Revealing the Business Logic Behind Them
1. Giftable and Convenient: Customers can gift e-gift cards to friends and family, especially during festive seasons. This not only helps convey sentiments but also gives people more reasons to buy from you! Retailers can leverage holiday marketing to offer various discount promotions. The sender becomes your member, and the recipient is likely to become a member too, achieving a win-win situation. If the recipient has never tried your products, they become a new customer experiencing your offerings, potentially becoming a loyal customer in the future, laying a foundation for increased revenue!
2. Advance Spending and Cash Flow: Customers can buy e-gift cards for themselves, equivalent to pre-storing money in their personal member accounts. This pre-stored money acts as an advance consumption and binding consumption, helping retailers accelerate cash flow and ensure liquidity.
3. Customer Referrals: Loyal members who buy gift cards for others help you gain more members. Those who choose to buy gift cards are usually highly loyal to your brand. They know your products and your unique selling points, which is why they buy gift cards for others. When others receive the gift cards, they become curious about your brand. This interaction strengthens brand influence, aids in sales, and attracts more potential high-quality members. Moreover, the gift card mechanism helps you identify your most loyal and knowledgeable customers, allowing you to focus on sales and follow-up services to further solidify relationships with these loyal customers.
4. Corporate Use: Companies can use e-gift cards as holiday gifts for employees or target customers. For example, during the Dragon Boat Festival or Mid-Autumn Festival, instead of gifting traditional items like rice dumplings or mooncakes, e-gift cards allow recipients to choose their preferred gifts online or offline based on personal preferences.
5. Social Media Sharing: The exquisite design of electronic cards and the unexpected joy of receiving them significantly stimulate customers' desire to share on social media, effectively turning them into free advertising for you and achieving a secondary marketing effect.
Challenges Faced by Retailers with Existing E-Gift Card Platforms
1. Balance Inquiry Limitations:
Some platforms limit e-gift card functionalities, making it difficult for members to check their balance online. Users often need to visit physical stores or use cumbersome methods to check their balance, reducing user experience. In urgent situations, not knowing the balance can cause users to miss opportunities or overspend, wasting time and increasing costs.
2. Expiration Date and Reminder Settings:
Retailers cannot set validity periods for gift cards, which are crucial for financial planning. Without expiration reminders, users may forget the validity period, leading to idle and ultimately expired cards, affecting user experience and causing unnecessary disputes and losses between members and retailers.
3. Lack of Usage History:
Users cannot track their used coupons and gift cards, making it difficult to monitor the usage of multiple coupons or gift cards, leading to a lack of transparency and potentially affecting trust in the retailer.
Posify O2O Platform's New E-Gift Card Feature: Solving Problems with Unique Advantages
Posify O2O Platform's New E-Gift Card Feature: Solving Problems with Unique Advantages
1.Expiration Date Setting and Automatic Reminder: Merchants can set expiration dates for gift cards in the Posify backend to ensure that customers use the gift cards within the validity period, avoiding losses caused by expiration. Merchants can also set up an automatic reminder function to notify customers when their gift cards are about to expire.
2. Flexible and Diverse Discount Activities to Meet Various Merchant Needs: Posify's e-gift cards feature provides merchants with a wealth of discount activity setting options. Merchants can personalize and launch discount activities such as buy-more-save-more, discounts on discounted items, and multi-level member-exclusive discounts based on their own business conditions and market needs. Merchants can also specify consumption on certain products and combine with other promotional activities. In addition, the Posify platform supports the use of multiple gift cards together, giving merchants a variety of setting options.
3. Gift Transfer Function: E-gift cards have a gift transfer function, allowing customers to easily transfer unused gift cards to others. Recipients can choose to accept or reject the transferred gift cards, fully reflecting the merchant's humanity and flexibility.
4. Sales Tracking and Intelligent Management: Posify provides a detailed sales report function, allowing merchants to easily track the sales of gift cards, including sales revenue, sales volume, buyer information, etc.
In summary, Posify's e-gift cards function, with its unique advantages and selling points, not only solves the deficiencies of existing platform suppliers in gift card functions,
but also brings a better shopping experience to consumers while creating more sales performance for merchants.
With the Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, why not take this opportunity to contact our professional consultants to learn more about the details of Posify's e-gift cards feature?
We look forward to working with you to create a warm and unforgettable Mid-Autumn Festival!
