GiftCard Partners Blog

Chances are, you have European employees, customers, business partners, resellers, or affiliates in Europe. Rewarding those constituents for a job well done or recognizing that they’ve gone above and beyond is important to keep them engaged in their work, loyal in their business dealings, motivated in their camaraderie, and incentivized to succeed.

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, many are gearing up to figure out just the right gift for their significant other. Why not take the worry and stress out of finding that “perfect” gift that usually comes with a gift receipt and another trip to the store. Calling all employers! Valentine's day is a great time to exercise that wonderful incentive or loyalty program you’ve just put in place. Show you care by rewarding your employees with gift cards to 
CVS/pharmacy so they can reward the ones they love. While the gentlemen are scratching their heads on whether to grab the Small shirt, so not to offend their wife, or trying to decide if her favorite color is purple even though she’s been wearing a lot of black lately, there is an easy solution. A gift card to Catherines or Lane Bryant
 will ensure she gets exactly what she wants and leave him out of the dog house this February 14th. The women in the office may be having some trouble of their own. They can get their guy the gift that keeps on giving with an
AutoZone Gift Card…for the other love of his life. Or give him the chance to revamp his wardrobe with a gift card to
Burlington Coat Factory. Use this Valentine's Day as an opportunity to reward your employees hard work and let them reward their loved ones.    

Internet and social media immersion is without a doubt second nature to Gen-Yers, AKA, Millennials. As a Generation X-er and an early technology adopter; I can clearly see how our most recent generation of college grads were born 1 step from where I was.  We've seen some recent research around shopping habits, customer loyalty, and working tendencies of Generation Y; I’ll bring these findings together here to offer insight in the realm of employee motivation, incentives and loyalty. “45 percent of Millennials would accept a lower-paying job with more flexibility towards social media access, remote work and technology choice than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
¹” This is a pretty big number, but should not cause much surprise. As an entirely remotely operating company, GCP expects people to work this way, it’s in our company DNA. But we did not expect that almost 50% of a generation would prefer it. (YAY for us/GCP). Are you an employer who will rise to this challenge, knowing that embracing a remote working situation is a core motivator and a recruiting competitive advantage? In a recent national poll conducted by the No. Carolina firm of Public Policy
²; It was found that generations precluding Gen-Y, are skeptical about younger workers' work ethics, motivation and engagement in their workplace. Gen-Yer’s said this about their own generation:

Most employees will say that they are not expecting much from their employers for the holidays. But, in their heart of hearts, most of us feel the pull towards recovery and hope for something extra for our hard work. What kind of gift will employees consider fair recognition and reward for the year to date, while offering encouragement for the year to come? A recent Parago survey indicates that for a whole year’s worth of work:

There is a very basic property of gift cards that can be easy to forget in the rush of holiday giving, whether giving to your family and friends or company giving, to customers, employees and partners. The general public doesn’t tend to know the difference between open loop gift cards and closed loop, but if you are buying gift cards in bulk; you need to know which yields you the best deal. Credit card issued gift cards are open loop and they most often charge a fee to purchase the cards, they tend to have expiration dates and often, a diminishing balance over time without even using it. Retailer or merchant issued gift cards are retailer specific but there are no fees for purchasing, in fact a sliding scale discount is given for levels of bulk purchase. There are no expiration dates or diminishing value for the recipient to manage. GiftCard Partners  is offering one of the best deals possible on CVS/pharmacy gift cards through December:
Get $100 in free gift cards for each $1,000 you spend*. You’ll see on the site a deadline; just give us the following code to redeem this offer through the month of December, 2011: CVS 10%
The savings don't end with $100 in free gift cards...spend $2,000 and get $200 in free gift card, spend $3,000 and get $300 in free gift cards...save up to $500 in free CVS gift cards.