Tag Archives: gift certificates

Merchant Tips to Keep Business Booming [2023 Update]

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As a merchant, things should be off and running for you right now. Black Friday has come and gone. Small Business Saturday has burned brightly. And Cyber Monday has counted its clicks. Holiday Shopping Season 2011 is officially underway no matter what metric you use to note the start.

The Official Merchant Services Blog is here to help you maximize on the rest of the shopping season. Just because Cyber Monday has come and gone, doesn’t mean your e-commerce solution is on cruise control. This is the time of year that payment processing bulks up as consumers still rush to find those perfect gifts for loved ones and friends.

It remains important to help continue to drive traffic to your website or through your front door, and keep the holiday shopping flowing. We’re going to offer you some tips on how to maximize that business and ride the wave of the holiday blitz.

Hire More Help

Whether you are running your business completely online, through a brick and mortar storefront or  both, the holiday shopping season will add a lot more sales for you to process. And that adds more strain and stress to your daily operation. Don’t be afraid to hire more staff, even temporary staff, to help see you through the season. The long-term benefits of a smoother, customer service friendly, holiday shopping season will offset the cost of the new help. And as numbers keep rolling in from Black Friday and its subsequent shopping focused events, it looks like 2011 is going to be brisk and bustling with business.

Give Your Customers Incentives

Just because the big “deal” hunting days are over, doesn’t mean the incentives stop for you. Continue to come up with new incentives to give your customers. Find new deals and new programs you can tie into the holiday shopping season. Seasonal coupons? Gift Certificates? Gift cards and loyalty programs? Bonuses for specific payment, such as Host Merchant Service’s Add Discover on Discover Program? All of these are ideas that can help you continue to attract more business through the holiday shopping season.

Continue to Push Marketing Campaigns

Small Business Saturday offered a lot of free and useful marketing materials. Black Friday practically markets itself. But the rest of the Holiday Shopping Season is wide open for marketing campaigns –– long and short term. Now’s the time to consider something quick and flashy like a coupon ad through Groupon or Living Social. Be creative and keep pushing the marketing. It will continue to drive your business through the holidays.

Pay Attention to Pricing

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales figures show that shopping is very healthy right now as consumers have hit the ground running with their holiday shopping lists. But many consumers themselves keep reporting to the media that they’re being much more savvy this year. They’re looking for the best deals and comparison shopping. The boost in online and mobile shopping –– which makes comparing prices as easy as opening a new tab and clicking a button –– has consumers looking at the price tag. So roll up your sleeves and do your homework. Now is the time where you find out what pricing adjustments you need to make (raising or lowering them) to stay competitive against the deals being offered. Just as it’s become easier for your customers to comparison shop, it’s also easy for you to stay on top of prices.

Keep Your Eyes Open

The internet is being used by your customers. And you can use it too –– for a lot more than just staying on top of what your competitors are pricing goods and services at. Learn what strategies and campaigns they are doing. Or what strategies and campaigns other businesses that aren’t competitors are doing. Be open to finding any extra information that can give you an edge. You can do this web surfing or participating in social media like Facebook or Twitter or even just talking to your customers face to face when they walk into your store.

These are just a few quick tips that barely scratch the surface of what you can be doing to keep this holiday sales boost going. What other ideas have you heard of? What ideas have you seen, or used, that haven’t been working? Do you think the brisk sales will continue or will the holiday shopping season start to fade quicker? Feel free to share any comments you might have on the topic.

Mobile Gift Cards

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The Official Merchant Services Blog continues its ongoing coverage of the upcoming holiday shopping season and how it will impact the thriving E-Commerce industry. Yesterday’s blog took a look at some of the statistics revolving around 2010’s holiday shopping profits as well as detailing a trend among online shoppers to begin their holiday shopping in the summer months. We also promised that today’s blog would show how gift cards and gift certificates were being taken a step forward.

Mobile Gift Cards

Gift Cards are going digital this year, with the onslaught of a variety of providers who will give people purchasing power of gift cards sent directly to their mobile phones. This Fox News story touts mobile gift cards as the “cool” and “sophisticated” new gift giving idea. The article cites the success of coffee giant Starbucks this year with Mobile Gift Cards, and suggests that others are following that blueprint. Starbucks had some compelling numbers to underscore the success of their mobile gift card program according to the article:

“”Within nine weeks of the national launch of mobile payment, customers paid more than 3 million times using our mobile payment application in stores and this number continues to grow at a steady rate,” says Adam Brotman, senior vice president of digital ventures for Starbucks Coffee Co.”

A mobilesyrup article features the Mobile Gift Card for apps from Toronto-based Mobiroo. And a San Francisco Chronicle article looks at Giftly and its Mobile Gift Card product. It’s a new trend that looks to make a big splash in the 2011 holiday season.

How Do They Work?

2011 Holiday Season logoThe standard way Mobile Gift Cards are designed to work is: The card is sent via email, Facebook or text. The recipient is notified that he or she has a Gift Card, and can take their smartphone into the store and use it immediately. The store clerk simply scans a bar code from the recipient’s phone, and the card is applied to the balance.

Unfortunately, as has been pointed out by Host Merchant Services in previous posts about Mobile Payments not quite taking hold in the U.S., this standard process doesn’t always work out. Many retailers are not physically equipped to handle such a process. So if the bar code can’t be scanned, Mobile Gift Cards can still be used by consumers if they print out the coupon prior to going shopping, or if they input the gift card number at a website or point-of-sale terminal.

The obvious convenience of Mobile Gift Cards is that they work seamlessly with e-commerce and online shopping. You get a coupon code on your mobile device, and then can input that number at the website where you are shopping.

Follow the Leader

The Fox News article noted that Applebee’s, California Pizza Kitchen and Target all offered Mobile Gift Card options this year. The mobilesyrup article about Mobiroo cited the old school hook of the idea, stating that “Gift cards are a symbol of a bygone time when analog ruled and retailers yielded more to foot traffic than mouse clicks. But according to Mobiroo CEO Vinay Chopra, old is new again.”

Mobiroo, according to Chopra, sees Mobile Gift Cards having quite a lot of potential in the marketplace because of smartphones themselves, specifically the apps people use and purchase for their phones. But Mobiroo is still using a physical Gift Card, with a scratch-off area that gives a code to redeem for use in an App store, and Chopra sees this as a stocking stuffer item for the holiday shopping season.

Giftly, on the other hand, is following the example set by Starbucks and others, and makes a completely digital process available. According to the San Francisco Chronicle article: “When a Giftly card is purchased, the buyer’s credit card is charged. When the recipient opens the card on their mobile phone in the store, Giftly check their location. Once Giftly confirms that the recipient is at the right venue, the gift money is unlocked.  Giftly then send the money as a credit card reimbursement to the recipient. The recipient then purchases the product at the cash register per usual. The merchant doesn’t have to be told about the Giftly — the service is completely a location-based redemption. Unlike most gift cards, Giftly allows the buyer to select up to three venues where the recipient can spend the money.”

All Giftly cards are delivered via e-mail and redeemed on a mobile phone. They allow you to send gifts unbound by location. It adds convenience to the shopping process, which is a core element that is going to make it popular with consumers. By allowing consumers to digitally forward purchasing power to friends and family wherever they happen to be, the shopping process gets that much faster and easier, making mobile gift cards an attractive option for holiday shoppers.

Tomorrow we’ll touch on a topic brought up by this blog, taking a closer look at apps as gifts in the upcoming holiday season.