The complete guide to win Gift Card campaign for Magento site

Listed as one of the hottest items for year-end sales season, Gift Card plays an essential role in

the successful final quarter of every business. According to the National Retail Federation, eight

out of ten shoppers will buy gift cards as a Christmas present this holiday. Why do you stand

behind this chance? If you are still confused about how to use and how to optimize this extension

for your business, don’t hesitate to scroll down these 20 pages with a lot of secrets revealed for

your demand. The complete guide to win Gift Card campaign for Magento site is for every

Magento gift-card-wanted store owner. There are five main parts in this paper:

1. 3 must-have elements for winning every Gift Card campaign

2. Hottest Gift Card trend in 2013 and lessons for 2014

3. How Magento Gift Card visualizes your dream

4. Exclusive features of Magestore Gift Card extension that you can find nowhere

5. Conclusion

Do you want your store

to be crowded like this?

The complete guide to win Gift Card campaign for Magento site 3

Must-have Elements for

Winning Gift Card Campaign

Good plan = 50% success

Personalization is a key

KPIs & how to measure

3


Do you know in two recent years, there have been 10% gift cards unused or unspent? If you want

to stay away from this buck list, don't forget to check out 3 must-have elements before running

any gift card campaign.

Objective: Set your target based on your store performance. It can be the percentage of

revenue you can gain from Gift Card campaign or percentage increase compared with the

previous year.

Customer research: To understand your targeted customers’ behavior, you can come

one step closer to the success. Making a short survey to know their preferences and

expectations is a hint. After that, use that data for your campaign ideas.

Detailed plan of what to do: There are a lot of things you have to do, write it down, make

it a very detailed plan so that you don’t forget anything important about that. Here are

examples:

For in-store merchandising, create a to-do-list including gift card campaign displays,

design, inventory. Set a target, involve in-charge employees.

For promotions, pay attention to which channels you want to use, who is in charge,

special promotions or campaign for a period of time (Father’s Day, Mother’s Day,

Christmas, New Year Event, etc.), cross-selling (buy a specific item to get a free or

discount gift card).

Budget: Set a budget to run your campaign to balance your effort and get higher return.

A schedule for different projects: You don’t run only one campaign for gift card.

Schedule it carefully and follow up until it’s done.

It is a plan for you to follow during the campaign time, but it can be changed for better result. So,

test and make improvement if needed while you run your campaign.

Element 1 A detailed plan for your Gift Card campaign


After having a good plan that you think it is attractive enough. It’s time for you to run it officially

on your site and promote it to others. Don’t forget to combine social channels and your store.

Gift card should also be shown as a menu item and highlighted so that your visitors can know

about your offer.

If in your marketing strategies, you always try to focus on “personalization”, your customers are

also interested in this aspect. They want to send a personalized and special card for others with

their own image or message. Therefore, give your customers options to choose among a variety

of templates, allow them to upload a preferred picture and insert custom message. Don’t offer

just standard one!

A beautiful template of Magestore Gift Card extension

Remember to follow your plan flexibly and smartly.

Element 2 Running your Gift Card Campaign


Your Gift Card campaign is worth your effort to promote if it brings a return on your investment.

Don’t forget to track your campaign usually to make sure your current Gift Card project can meet

your target. Here are some important metrics that you should follow:

Online gift card sales. Always keep this metric on your mind because thanks to it, you

can find whether your customers are attracted or not. Then put it in comparison with the

number of gift cards redeemed to make some changes if needed.

Percentage of customers buying gift cards. How many percent of your current

customers buy gift cards? This is important for you to measure your customers’

confidence to your store. They will only buy and share it with their friends if they really

love your products or services. Therefore, prove to them and don’t let your potential

customers leave.

Percentage of first-time customers who become the repeat ones. People receive gift

card and use it in your store. This metric helps you measure the effectiveness of your gift

card campaign in encouraging people to stay after the gift card is used up. The rate is low,

so invest more in strategies to better meet people’s needs once they step through the

door.

New customers from gift cards. Is your gift card campaign attractive enough? This

metric tells you. If the number is not very high, you should take the campaign into

consideration for deeper promotion. Try to find out which steps have problems and

concentrate on adjust it.

You may also track other metrics: Gift Card sales over total revenue, Gift Card sales trends for

designs.

There is a big advantage of online gift card campaign, which is to collect information of both

sender and receiver. Try to utilize this benefit, analyze it carefully to understand your customers’

tendency and behavior clearly. As a result, deeper-targeted promotional campaigns can be

created for different types of customers.

Element 3 Gift card campaign measuring and analytics


ottest Gift Card Trend in 2013

and Lessons for 2014

H


To be successful, besides careful preparation plan and tracking it closely, you should be smart

investors to know market trends of Gift Card for two recent years.

HOTTEST GIFT CARD TREND IN 2013

1. Gift card is one of 10 big consumer trends from the 2013 holiday shopping.

2. The percentage of respondents purchasing e-gift cards rose sharply from 21 percent in 2012

to 36 percent in 2013. The average number of e-gift cards per purchaser skyrocketed as well,

nearly doubling from 2.2 to 4.3 cards.

3. US retail gift card loads fell in 2013 for the first time in 10 years, but loads on virtual cards

began to grow.

4. Digital gift cards are on the rise and add revenue

78% of consumers have received a digital Gift Card

69% are more interested in purchasing digital gift cards in 2013 more than 2-3 years ago

74% agree they are likely to purchase a digital gift card in 2014

In an e-Commerce environment, physical card sales taper off as Christmas approaches

because shipping means gifts may not arrive for Christmas

Digital gift card sales rise as Christmas approaches because instant delivery means gifts

arrive in time for Christmas

The same concept applies to any gifting holiday

87% agree they prefer the option to purchase either a digital or a physical card.

5. E-Gift Cards turn slowest gift card sales days into busiest, after analyzing sales data from

hundreds of retailers. E-Gift Cards allow consumers to purchase gift cards when they're most


interested in buying, and provide them with a convenient last-minute gift solution. Additionally, e-

Gift Cards produce gift card sales for retailers when physical shipments are no longer feasible.

6. In-person gift card sales have decreased by 10 percent, from 61 to 51 percent of all card sales.

Online purchases, on the other hand, grew by 10 percent.

7. In just one year, the amount of people who bought e-gift cards grew by 15 percent, from 21 to

36 percent.

Source:

- firstdata.com

- business.time.com

- researchandmarket.com

- giftango.com


agento Gift Card

visualizes your dream!

How many percent of your ideas can you make it real? Even when you

have a tool, sometimes you just forget to optimize it. Little things can

create the big changes.

M


Every step contributes a lot to your success story. You know the trend, have a good plan and give

out the metrics to track. Now, it’s time to run your campaign.

Make the most of Gift Card template

As we mention in 3 must-have elements for your Gift Card campaign, you will remember one

tip that you shouldn’t offer your customers only standard Gift Card. More flexible it is, higher

customers’ conversion you can get. Gift Card extension of Magestore supports you advanced

features to customize and configure your template both easily and interestingly: no coding

involved, save much time on setting up, just go to backend and now, we are in an exciting game.

http://www.magestore.com/magento-gift-card-extension.html/?utm_source=whitepaper&utm_medium=white%20paper%20gift%20card&utm_campaign=White%20paper%20Gift%20Card


Here we would like to take an example of an online fashion shop offering its customers gift card

to buy anything, or send gift card to others on occasion of Christmas. So, we try to figure out the

characteristics of Christmas with snow, choose white and red as the typical color, use meaningful

and warm, twinkling star, candle pictures, etc.


In the template name, we simply set Xmas Left Style to differentiate with others. There are 3

template designs including Left, Top and Center. Here Left Style is chosen. The design is really

important because it will decide how impressive your Gift Card products are when being shown

in your store.

This step is for the knowledge of color scheme and your creativity. Pick the color you want to set

for Style Color and Text Color that match your Background image perfectly. In our opinion, the

background should be bright and simple so that the designed image and other factors will be

highlighted.

It’s nearly done. Now move to the next tab named “Image”. To each template you choose before,

there will be a recommended size for your image shown with the best result. In our Left template,

the size for image is 250px x365px. After uploading a candle picture, we click on the “Preview” link

before making final decision to choose it. Okay, the first Gift Card is shown.


Gift Card is displayed on its product page

Do similarly for other templates, you will get the results.

Gift Card top style template

Gift Card center style template


We have done a great job together. Feel satisfied, right? But let’s review once more. Is there still

room for you to make it more interesting? Absolutely, Yes. Here are some tips for you:

1. When creating Gift Card products, offer your customers 2 or 3 templates that they can

choose as preferred.

2. Set the price and the value of Gift Card depending on your budget and target on sales

3. Upload more than 1 image for each template. By this way, your customers can vary their

choice in what they like.

4. Choose the simple and bright background image (remember?) so that other factors of

your Gift Card will be highlighted.

5. Don’t stop at your eye-catching image of Gift Card, copywriting does matter. Try to call

your campaign and your Gift Card title with a friendly name instead of Gift Card as normal.

You can also change your description of your products. For example, for the upcoming

Halloween, you can name your card as “Trick or Treat Gift Card” with the description: “Give

yourself or your friends a gift card in your own “trick or treat” game this Halloween holiday.”

5

tips you should keep in mind


he exclusive features of

Magestore Gift Card extension

that you can find nowhere

T


Not only Magestore but also many other providers offer Magento Gift Card extension for online

stores. However, Magestore Gift Card extension is one of the leading ones in the market. It is

listed as one the highest rated extensions on Magento Connect, a big extensions marketplace.

Highest rated Gift Card extension on Magento Connect

Magestore Gift Card extension offers exclusive features that can be found nowhere. That’s why it

is on the favorite list of many customers.

Customers can buy Gift Card at lower price than its actual value

Buy Gift Card at decimal value

View Gift Card condition before purchasing

For Customers to buy, send and share Gift Card

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/


Buy Gift Card for themselves without entering recipient information

Choose favorite Gift Card template

Upload images to customize Gift Card

Redeem gift cards to store credit

Add gift cards to a list to My Account for latter use

Split Gift Card’s value to use for many orders

Multiple users can use a same gift card

Use multiple gift cards for an order

View purchased gift cards and credit balance in My Account

Limit a number of times to enter wrong gift code

Hide a part of gift card codes when using for security reason

Notify when using gift cards to buy another gift card product

Set Gift Card price different from Gift Card value

Set conditions which allow/deny gift code application (similar to shopping cart rules)

Configure to limit number of users per gift card code

The only extension allows using and redeeming Gift Card

For Admin to create Gift Card and Gift Codes


View & change gift card credit balance of each customer

Enable/Disable Gift Card Module

Integrate with One Step Checkout, Reward Point Plus, Affiliate Plus, Ajax Cart.

Manage and Track Gift Card, Gift Code

Other configurations and extensions integration


Conclusion

Final quarter is “the hunting season” for boosting sales. Gift Card is still on the top of hot

products that people give to each other as a “thank you” present or showing appreciation. To

know this, we make our efforts to give out The complete guide to win Gift Card campaign for

Magento site as a helpful document for you this busy but interesting season.

We hope you find it useful; more than that, you can practice it to your store after that. We have

tried to make it clear and round up the most helpful information in this white paper so that you

will have can’t-put-it-down feelings when enjoying reading.

If you haven’t equipped your site with Gift Card extension, why not visit its product page to

discover by yourself?

Tell us what you think about this white paper. Are you satisfied with this document? Which

important content that we missed? How does this guide help your business? Drop a visit at

magestore.com, share with me any questions over your mind anytime. It’s our pleasure!

http://www.magestore.com/magento-gift-card-extension.html/?utm_source=whitepaper&utm_medium=white%20paper%20gift%20card&utm_campaign=White%20paper%20Gift%20Card

http://www.magestore.com/

The complete guide to win Gift Card campaign for Magento site

Technology

magento giftcard

magento gift card

gift card campaign displays

discount gift card

hottest gift card trend

campaign time

campaign ideas

gift cards unused