GiftCard Partners Blog

Offering branded gift cards isn’t just for major retailers anymore. From boutique spas to fast-casual restaurants to software providers, more businesses are launching their own gift card programs to drive revenue, build loyalty, and reach new customers. Whether you’re selling physical cards in-store or digital codes online, setting up branded gift cards can be a powerful addition to your customer engagement strategy.

Although we all know that gift cards are nothing new, it's also clear that they're not going anywhere anytime soon. Much of their stable market has to do with the new digital trends and shifts happening within the gift card industry. With these shifts, comes a change in consumer perception of gift cards as well. Gift cards are a way for retailers to appeal to their consumers, making loyal shoppers out of many of their customers through gift card reward programs. But gift cards have also remained popular as purchases for, well, gifts. Much of this is due to convenience, especially with the growth of digital e-cards, which make it simple to purchase and send quickly and without waiting in line. For those retailers  looking to increase their gift card sales, however, they may have to offer a little something extra along with them. According to a new survey,
17 percent of consumers won't buy a gift card until they see a promotion of some sort happening along side it, and 23 percent take promotions into consideration when deciding where to buy their gift cards between competing retailers. But as anyone in retail or the gift card industry knows, no matter how the technology or promotions change, gift cards will always give customers an incentive to visit your store, a gift that's priceless.
Statistics are courtesy of Incentive -- read the full article here.

Our parents all taught is the golden rule. "Do unto others as your would have done to you." In instances of employee appreciation, we broke it down into 3 key rules. If employees are appreciated at the right times and in the right ways, their tenure with the company will be longer and no one will go home and complain about work or their boss or the annoying colleague two cubes down. Here's what we came up with. Have additional suggestions? Leave us a comment.

In our recovering economy it sometimes seems like there will always be more candidates than jobs. In some industries today that is already not the case. A talent war is looming, a time when companies are poaching each other's human capital and when employee loyalty should be at the top of your HR Strategy agenda. Here are three ways to build, maintain and teach loyalty in your organization.

Mobile payment is an increasingly popular trend. This makes a ton of sense when we look at the increase in overall mobile activity, from sales to marketing to everyday use. But when it comes to mobile payment, the steady rise is sure to affect everyone from retailers and merchants to those in the gift card business. In this
infographic, by e-complish, we can learn a lot about mobile payment trends and growth. In 2012 mobile payments only amounted to $1.5 million, but by the following year, that number had grown to $4.5 million, showing the exponential growth that the mobile payment industry is currently seeing. The U.S. and China are two of the leading countries in mobile use, meaning that they'll also be key countries for growth in mobile payments. Sixty one percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone, meaning that mobile payments will likely spread to many of those 61 percent, if they haven't already. Mobile payments crept into the payment systems and now have skyrocketed in popularity. It has been predicted that by the year 2025, as much as 20 percent of all purchases will be made on a mobile device. Because of the new trend, we're also seeing a growth in mobile payment apps and "mobile wallets." Keep your eye out for larger shifts in technology as we see more and more consumers paying for purchases on their mobile devices.