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In today's competitive digital landscape, customers are bombarded with a constant stream of advertisements and promotions across various channels and platforms. Customers are increasingly discerning, no longer settling for mere freebies. Instead, they're seeking genuine connection and familiarity with your brand.
When you're brainstorming marketing strategies and loyalty campaigns for your business in 2024, it's crucial to have a deep understanding of what values truly resonate with your customers to make that meaningful connection. And, while small tokens of appreciation like swag were once a popular choice, customers now expect offers that provide versatility and choice, like digital gift cards.
So how to determine the best digital gift card promotions for your business to foster loyalty among your customer base? In this article, we’ll first explore two distinctive strategies that can help guide all your offerings. We'll then highlight the top 11 digital gift card promotions that are working for our clients in 2024.
Digital gift card promotions boost your marketing efforts
In 2024, digital gift cards have emerged as a top choice for fostering brand loyalty among businesses. With their unmatched convenience and flexibility, coupled with seamless distribution and redemption, they easily appeal to a diverse customer base.
Additionally, by offering customers the choice as a reward, in one simple step, your business can effortlessly provide a full catalog with hundreds of well-known brands to choose from. This gives your customers the ultimate control over their rewards and a personalized experience.
Specifically, when it comes to planning your marketing strategy, using digital gift cards to support your customer loyalty programs provides key advantages:
Convenience and flexibility: With one simple click, send a full catalog of reward options to recipients. Bonus: Easily integrate and automate the entire rewards process for an even more seamless and personalized customer experience!
Choice is the reward: By offering hundreds of gift card options from their favorite brands and full autonomy on how they choose to spend their giftcard, you empower customers with full control over their reward experience!
Tracking and cost efficiency: You can view real-time data and tracking of your customers' reward experience, including redemption! Gain complete control over your budget and make more informed decisions for future incentive programs.
Determine your strategy: Incentive Program vs. Project Campaign
How you structure your gift card promotions can significantly impact their benefits and outcomes.
So you'll first need to decide whether an incentive program or project campaign will best help achieve your company's goals:
- An incentive program is a long-term program with no end date. For example, you can implement a gift card incentive program encouraging customer referrals. This program is ongoing, and customers can participate whenever they want.
- A project campaign is a short-term loyalty program with an end date. You might implement a project campaign that allows customers to earn a $100 gift card when they successfully refer three friends to your business before a specific date, for instance.
Looking to scale your incentive program? Integrating with reward software like Giftbit can help streamline your processes and customer experiences. Automated reward sending is key!
The best digital gift card promotions to test in 2024: 11 great options!
Get creative with your customer loyalty promotions to better target your customer base and maximize your ROI.
Here are 11 great digital gift card promotion ideas that are working for Giftbit clients:
- Giveaways: Give a gift card to a random customer to show your appreciation for their loyalty. Customers can enter the giveaway by making a purchase, signing up for your email list, or completing any other action they see fit.
- Holiday promotions: Celebrate the holidays and engage your customers with a holiday gift card promotion. Customers can use their gift card toward a future purchase through your business.
- Thank-you campaigns: A thank-you campaign is the ultimate way to drive customer loyalty and show appreciation. Send your most loyal customers a small gift card just to thank them.
- Referral campaigns: Encourage customers to refer their friends to your business through a gift card referral program. Your current customer and their referral can receive a small gift card reward when the referral makes a purchase.
- VIP rewards: You can use digital gift cards as rewards within your VIP loyalty program. Customers can earn a gift card when they reach a certain reward tier after spending X amount of money on your business.
- Second-purchase rewards: Motivate first-time customers to become loyal members of your brand family through second-purchase rewards. Customers can receive a digital gift card once they complete their second purchase.
- Bonus offer promotions: Drive more sales among your customer base by offering a gift card bonus when customers spend a certain amount of money. They can use the gift card toward their current purchase or the next one.
- Social promotions: Host a social media giveaway that customers can enter by following your social profiles, commenting on a post, and sharing it with their followers. One lucky participant can win a gift card.
- Discount gift cards: Instead of providing a percentage discount, allow customers to earn digital gift cards when purchasing your sale items.
- New service or collection promotions: Digital gift card promotions are a great way to promote new products and services. Customers can earn a gift card when they buy from a new product line.
- Sign-up rewards: Encourage customers to sign up for your newsletter, email list, or VIP program with a sign-up gift card bonus. In addition to earning their trust, this keeps your brand top of mind.
With Giftbit, you can give customers access to thousands of different brands, allowing them total control over their gift card redemption. You can also easily automate the entire rewards process, integrating it into your existing customer portal.
So ... what's the most popular gift card to give?
Once you've decided to use digital gift cards in your marketing efforts, it's time to decide which cards you'll actually be using. For some inspiration, here are the top digital gift cards our Giftbit customers redeemed in 2023:
- Starbucks
- Amazon
- Apple
- Walmart
- Visa
- Doordash
- Target
Protip: choice matters, but narrowing the selection down for your recipients can help them better envision the value they'll receive from their rewards.
Promoting these gift cards as part of your customer loyalty program can further incentivize customer participation. No matter how you choose to organize your digital gift card promotions, you’ll instantly benefit from the convenience, automation, and flexibility of these digital rewards
