GiftCard Partners Blog

GCP’s
Vice President of  Sales,
Diane Freeland,
is back from Loyalty 360’s annual Loyalty Expo & shares the top discussions that caught her attention.
Social media and customer care: Social media has altered the role of customer service in an organization, from primarily a support function to an extension of marketing. Brands can listen to what customers are saying, they can be proactive and more widely solicit product or service feedback, offer incentives like gift cards or points for sharing product information. Many of GCP’s clients are taking social media seriously,
1-800-Flowers was one of the first retailers to use Facebook's platform. For more details on social media & customer care, check out:
How to Integrate Customer Service Into Social Media Marketing. It also includes 12 Ways Social Media Enhances Customer Service and 5 Ways to Measure Social Media Customer Service.
What’s next for loyalty programs? Are traditional points based loyalty programs dead?  The consensus was NO. However, significantly different redemption options need to be brought into the mix with gift cards, merchandise, and travel rewards (e.g intrinsic rewards like virtual game currency). We heard some interesting discussion around personalizing loyalty rewards for individual participants. Traditional loyalty programs offer everyone the same reward options; when rewards are personalized it starts a dialogue and treats the customer to rewards they’ve selected versus what is offered across the program. What if customers can select or “favorite” categories of rewards like gift cards for children’s clothes, brands of merchandise like “Apple”, and travel customized to “Inns on the east coast”? The learnings from programs like this could go a long way for the development of loyalty programs that listen!
Mobile Segmentation Marketing: Another interesting way to listen and respond to loyal customers; shaping customer personas based on their mobile usage. This allows thoughtful marketers to send the right kinds of messages to the right users and reward for loyalty via the right technology. The goal is to better increase the value of customer relationships based on how customers use their mobile phones, like m-certs (mobile gift cards). Carlson Marketing gave some great examples of how they are engaging in this strategy for the Hallmark Crown Rewards loyalty program; "Interactions turned into transactions". For more insights to mobile technology and gift cards, read GCP's article:
Why Mobile & Virtual Gift Cards are Becoming a Way of Life GCP will be launching our new website in the coming week, keep a look out:
www.giftcardpartners.com Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/GiftCardPartner

A major advancement in mobile payment came last week when Google announced that it will enable content monetization through Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile payment systems.  This could not only make a mobile phone into a payment system, but also maximize and transform the effectiveness of point of sale displays.  This announcement comes shortly after Apple made a similar announcement about implementing NFC mobile payment options on its mobile devices. This development enables phones to become as or more important than someone's wallet, because it adds the functionality of a payment system for goods and services, to the already multi-faceted smart phone market.  To learn more about Google and NFC technology click
here.  Any thoughts how this might affect the mobile gift card market going forward?

Mobile technology is heating up, especially within the gift card industry. GiftCard Partners' marketing team outlines how mobile technology integrates gift cards into our always on the go, mobile lifestyles.

Excerpt from Engagement Strategies Magazine:
Gift Card Landscape Has Shifted, Bringing New Vistas, Values
Four industry experts discuss how recent changes in the market are affecting the use of gift cards as a motivational tool
Gift Card Trends What other important trends are we likely to see in the use of gift cards over the near term? The experts we spoke to had some different views and suggested different opportunities, but all agreed that the use of gift cards as incentives and performance and recognition rewards will continue to grow. NGC’s Adam Van Witzenburg expects to see more use of gift cards – especially virtual cards – as incentives to get customers to come into stores or to come to the phone – “things like, ‘If you come in, we’ll turn this card on,’ and ‘If you take this survey, you can have this card’ more proactive marketing with the cards.” For the rest of the article:
http://www.engagementstrategiesonline.com/Gift-Card-Landscape-Has-Shifted-Bringing-New-Vistas-Values.1014.0.html

GCP's Diane Freeland is quoted in today's Business Wire release:
CashStar Introduces Enhanced B2B Digital Gifting Suite Mobile gift cards and eCerts are the hottest topic in gift cards, but combining technology with B2B applications is where it's at for GiftCard Partners.

CashStar, the digital gifting and incentives company, announced new enhancements to its suite of B2B digital gifting solutions. Composed of the eCorporate Application Programming Interface™ (API) and eCorporate Direct™, the suite provides an easy way for retailers to manage and distribute their bulk e-gifting programs based on their needs and preferences.
Click t o read the full article here