GiftCard Partners Blog

They are all top of mind for consumers. As you read through this feature, consider what this could all mean for the B2B gift card market via incentives and loyalty programs. How can these programs be enhanced by social media and consumer trends like group couponing? Move over Groupon, Mr. 50 million strong. Facebook’s 600 million users are offered-up some of your group couponing action. But, is there really room for another Groupon?

Business Insider’s Groupon survey suggests YES, as they start to see Groupon’s regular users become less active over time…

Building upon our previous exploration of leveraging social media for employee recognition, we are thrilled to present additional strategies finely tuned for the contemporary workplace. In this article, we delve into innovative methods to acknowledge and appreciate employees, fostering a culture of recognition and engagement.

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

Everyone uses social media to communicate what they are doing and how they are feeling, good or bad, positive or negative.  It is a way to broadcast your thoughts in a largely unfiltered environment.  Furthermore social media is unescapable, and infiltrates our lives more and more as social media practices progress.  So why not use social media as a vehicle for employee recognition?  It gets the message out from an original source, there is a widespread audience seeing the recognition, and the employee gets recognized instantaneously for good behavior, or a professional achievement.  To learn more about
social media employee recognition click here.

Visit our Twitter page
http://twitter.com/GiftCardPartner#  to begin receiving our timely tips, gift card ideas, updates from our brands & B2B gift card news. As you know, a successful Twitter program is a mutual effort; We will also promote & re-tweet our customer & partners’ news through Twitter. Let’s work together to share & spread our brands’ news & information. GCP will be launching a new website in the coming weeks, join us as we ramp up our Twitter presence. Also, let us know where you live on Twitter & we’ll join you.
www.giftcardpartners.com