How Gift Cards Can Help Your Retail Season

It’s hard to gauge how COVID will impact the holiday season. With social distancing restrictions in place, new obstacles, and strange traffic patterns, there are too many variables to consider. But if you’re a small business owner, one thing is for certain: you still need sales.

That’s why we’d like to talk to you about gift cards.

At first you may envision a hard plastic card when you hear the phrase but gift cards have come a long way. Now with mobile and virtual options available you can email a gift card anywhere to increase your reach even when it means patrons can’t come in to your business to collect.

If you are navigating traffic around your physical location like with website sales or curbside delivery, then accepting gift cards will only improve your success.

Let’s look at these stats from GiftCards.com:

• 76% of shoppers typically plan to buy at least one gift card during the season.
• 59% of people prefer to receive them as a gift.
• 59% spend more than the card’s value.
• 90% of consumers who receive a gift card from a small business they have never visited said they would shop at that business and return there in the future.

And check this out:

“As much as 3% of gift card dollars are never redeemed, according to an estimate from the Mercator Advisory Group. In 2019, consumers spent about $98.6 billion loading up gift cards, which means almost $3 billion was left on the table, according to C. Sue Brown, director of the group’s prepaid advisory service.” – Megan Cerullo, CBSNews.com “Consumers waste up to $3 billion in unspent gift cards a year”

Keep it Local:

In our local markets, since COVID, we’ve seen a large increase in online and gift card sales. Many people in our communities DO want to support our local businesses. They are still buying gift cards for others—many of which are used simply to pay it forward for those in need or are purchased and saved for later use. There are also a variety of other ways that you can use them for your business.

We’re here to help:

Our Chesapeake Payment Systems team will be with you from the minute we receive your application. We’ll get you connected to, and maintain your relationship with, our provider, Valutec. The process takes approximately 7-10 days and in most cases it can work with your existing credit card terminal. This means, no new equipment is needed.

What are you waiting for? Calling to get more info is always a great place to start. Call our CPS team at 866-941-1335 or email us at sales@chespay.com.