The Gift – Savvy Merchant
A Must for Independent Retailers, Restaurateurs and Service Establishments
By John S. Harris
This is a guest post by John Harris (this is the third in a 4 part series)
Promotion Plan: Work the gift business both online (see table of online gift certificate services, below) and offline. Some proven strategies include:
- Give Free Gift Certificates to your best customers. Send them via mail or email, an actual Gift Certificate / Card with a personal message, e.g.,”Thanks for you business over the years.” Make sure you do it in a way that makes it very easy for the recipient to re-gift it if they want. Most recipients will spend more on the back-end, both in purchases and in referral business. If you’re too busy, some companies will do a special run of Gift Certificates complete with personalized messaging and complete fulfillment for a very small fee.
- Buy a Gift Certificate / Get a Gift Certificate. This promotion rewards the purchaser with an additional, or separate, gift of their own. This is particularly effective with office administrators, because when the purchaser buys a $50 gift card/certificate, they would typically receive a $10 one for themselves. The big chains do very well with this strategy – Smith & Wollensky’s is one of many examples of what a proven technique it is. Online gift certificate systems (see table below) are particularly adept at automating this and capturing all the buyer and recipient info.
- Presuming you already have some form of customer list or database, this is the season to think more professionally about how it needs to be happening all year long. You do not want to win new customers without capturing some basic contact info about them! Get your website up to speed on this. Ask whoever handles your website to add a simple online form for customers to join your mailing list – it’s trivial and very inexpensive.
- Send a follow-up “Thank You” via email or personal note to recipient and giver after redemption. If the recipient is a first time customer, thank them for coming to your store and reinforce your goal of personal service and product selection. Also, send a ‘Thank You” to the buyer for introducing a new customer to you and sending a best customer back to you. This simple courtesy is worth its’ weight in gold.
About The Author – John S. Harris has been a small business consultant for over twenty years. A former owner and operator himself, John is a principal in Lynch + Harris, a consulting firm specializing in operations management and marketing communications that helps independent restaurants and retailers expand their business and improve their operations. John can be reached at ircharris@gmail.com
