GiftCard Partners Blog

Nearly 90% of employers offer wellness incentives, or financial rewards or prizes, as a means to engage their employees in creating and sustaining a more health conscious lifestyle, according to a recent survey from Fidelity. Rewards offered today are growing from $260 per employee to an average of $521 per employee. That's an increase of 57% from 2009.
Learn How Your Company Can Optimize a Successful Wellness Rewards Program

Your front line retail associates are often overlooked. The store associates are the people who interact with consumers the most and ultimately have the greatest influence on your brand representation. That’s why it’s critical for you to make the investment in training and education so your employees are representing your brand  as it should be. There are a 
handful of traits that can make truly great retail employees. Here are my 4 favorite traits that create real leaders on your brand's front line.

For the 18^th time, Whole Foods Market was recently listed as one of Fortune’s 2015 “100 Best Companies to Work for”. Coming in at #55, this honor demonstrates a high level of trust between employees and management.

Mobile is up and coming in the quest to define the omni-channel shopper who shops across devices and digital channels and the omni-channel customer experience. While retailers continue the quest to meet customers in all of the channels and on all of the devices they shop, mobile has prevailed as possibly the most critical of both channels and devices. Mobile feeds into both in-store and e-commerce customer interaction and customer service, which puts mobile in a unique and critically important position. 
According to a new EConsultancy survey, only 50% of retailers believe they have a solid understanding of the mobile user experience. That means half of American retailers are looking to understand the mobile solution and the role it plays in customer-brand interaction. One of the most important components of the mobile question and the role it plays in the omni-channel shopping experience is
customer service. Mobile happens in real-time, as does customer service. It gives consumers the real-time gratification that can be the difference between great customer service and the negative customer experience that can cause retailers to lose customers. Take the plunge into omni-channel shopping through mobile customer service. With
53% of retailers planning to build a unified commerce platform in the next few years, your customer experience and customer service can’t afford to fall behind. It will accelerate your brand's customer focus and create 1:1 marketing opportunities by gaining insight into consumer behavior.

Consumer touch points can be risky for retailers. Customers are gained and lost when high-risk touch points are not taken advantage of and can result in negative consumer experiences.
LoyaltyOne's new study shows that high risk touch points get even riskier with certain demographic segments. One such example are return policies, they can be some of the most sensitive interactions brands face with consumers. While a smooth return policy, especially for gifts, may seem like smooth sailing  internally, it can make or break customer relationships. For consumers coming in to return a gift, retailers have the opportunity to acquire a new customer that may have never known about the brand. The opportunity here allows brands to build a relationship with a new consumer and create a lifelong revenue stream. At the same time brands have the opportunity to turn someone away who wasn't a customer and now will never be. Closing a consumer off to your brand forever because they had no loyalty to begin with and were met with a bad first experience. This high-risk high-reward interaction should be strongly considered for your business before being implemented, given the high stakes. Many retailers focus on female demographics as they tend to be the heaviest shoppers. However, in this case it’s really the men retailers need to worry about. According to the
 LoyaltyOne survey: