Gift Cards: The Gift That Keeps On Giving (To the Retailer, Too)

Over recent months, there's certainly been no shortage of media reports touting the burgeoning mass appeal of gift cards. According to gift card sales figures recently compiled by ABA, sales of Book Sense gift cards increased by 256 percent in December 2004, compared with the same period last year.

Less reported on, however, is how a little inventive marketing can push those numbers even higher. The significant advantage of gift cards is that they can be displayed throughout the store since they have no monetary value before being activated. And the card lends itself to creative, and sometimes publisher subsidized, promotions.

"The idea is to put the cards as many places as possible," said ABA Marketing Director Jill Perlstein. "Booksellers can use things from a stationery supply store or from home to display the cards. Anything that can be used to hold photographs can be used for gift cards--a wire tree, picture frames -- it can be fun to create different merchandizing ideas."

Promotion Ideas

Wisconsin's Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, which during the holiday season gave complimentary gift cards to their best customers, designed a new marketing effort that capitalizes on a publisher promotion from Hyperion. In conjunction with the release of PS, I Love You, by Cecelia Ahern, in trade paperback, a PS, I Love You Book Sense gift card and presenter was provided to booksellers in the Book Sense program by the publisher at no charge. Schwartz adds $3 to the card and gives it to customers who purchase Cecelia Ahern's PS I Love You, Irish Girls Are Back in Town (Downtown Press), or Rosie Dunne between February 1 and March 17. The promo will be modified and also used for St. Patrick's Day.

Mary McCarthy, vice president and COO of the Schwartz stores, told BTW that the promotion costs the bookstore very little because the cards are free from the publisher through Book Sense. She added, "We're trying to figure out how to do more promotions with the free cards." McCarthy reported that the sale of the featured books increased significantly since the introduction of the offer.

Another way to sell more cards is to offer incentives to staff members for reaching sales goals. At Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, booksellers were offered a party and a bonus if they could sell 1,000 gift cards during the holiday season. A bit shy of the target, Maria's sold 837 cards, nearly doubling the previous year's card sales. "We did go ahead with the party and bonus since we were so close," said inventory manager Cheri Jones.

Maria's developed other promotions and gift card programs that helped bolster sales as well. The store receives out-of-state orders for gift cards, and Maria's fills out a greeting card and mails it to gift-recipients in Durango. "It's a neat service we offer," said Jones.

During the holidays, Maria's contacted 23 local businesses to suggest the idea of gift cards as holiday gifts for employees, and a complimentary $5 gift card was enclosed. "At least five businesses responded by buying gift cards for their employees," said Jones. "We had one who bought 14 cards at $100 a piece. That's huge."

Jones reported that using the gift cards is much easier than keeping track of gift certificates and creating duplicates. "With Booklog, we just swipe the cards like a credit card to activate and redeem them."

Display Ideas

In Berkeley and San Francisco, Builder's Booksource's Sally Kiskaddon, who co-owns the store with her husband, George, told BTW that they custom designed a "presenter with presence," said Sally Kiskaddon. The presenter is bright yellow with the prominent placement of Booksource's and Book Sense's logo and exactly fits a standard greeting card envelope. "The presenter very much personalizes the card but still lets the Book Sense logo speak out," she said.

Kiskaddon added, "We felt we needed to let people know that a gift card was a really nice thing to give, and we wanted to make it feel more like a gift. Presentation is an extremely important part of a gift card."

Booksource took their design ideas to their graphic designer and were pleased with the results. More important, their customers were pleased. "People feel really good about giving our gift card," said Kiskaddon. During the holiday season, Booksource put the gift card and its presenter in a vellum bag. "It was a package in a package. It gave it a little more substance," she noted.

To help advertise the card, Kiskaddon attached it, along with an envelope and presenter, to a 12"x 12" board and placed it behind the register, in the window, and other locations around the store. "Bottom line," Kiskaddon noted, "The presenter lets people know that the card is not an insignificant purchase. It makes it a gift people would like to give."

Bookshop Santa Cruz used small gift tins to market their gift cards. The credit card-sized tin with a ribbon creates an extra noticeable display, as well as providing packaging that works very well for a gift. "Now it looks like a present," said Bookshop's buyer Felicia Gilman.

The small tin reaped big results at the cash register. Compared with last year's figures, gift card sales increased 20 percent once the store started using the tins, said Gilman, who added that the tins and marketing materials promoting them were displayed "in windows, on doors, on a big banner behind the register, and on 8 1/2-inch by 11-inch fliers with actual gift tins attached." Gilman noted that the tins work well with themed displays, including Valentine's Day.

Betsy Burton at The King's English was also using the store's gift card displays for Valentine's Day. The store uses "Page Ups," a paperweight with a slit in it to accommodate recipes, photos, etc. The King's English sticks gift cards in the Page Ups and puts them on the front desk and throughout the store. "It serves the dual purpose of selling the Page Ups and the gift cards," said Burton.

In addition, Burton uses "Grip Clips," clips with an adhesive backing, to attach gift cards to the walls. The King's English marketing blitz "puts the cards in front of customer's noses and makes them focus on them in a new way and the newness of it means it doesn't look like an advertising kind of display," said Burton, who summed up her selling strategy this way: "The more places you put 'em, the more frequently they'll see 'em, the more they'll buy 'em."

To order gift tins visit www.specialtybottle.com or call (206) 340-0459.

For more gift card marketing tips, click here. --Karen Schechner