Seize the Holiday Spirit!

Christmas is on the way bringing hustle and bustle and lots of money to retail establishments! Families are preparing their holiday plans, purchasing gifts, and readying themselves for the most expensive time of the year for consumers. Are you ready to seize the moment?

People often express anxiety as to how to bless their friends and family over the holiday season, and you can make it easy to ensure their money is spent at your establishment.

Globally, companies have been grabbing the moment to cash-in on the holiday season. United States companies like Facebook and Amazon.com have formed partnerships to allow their clients the added bonus of giving gift cards to their friends and family.

In South Africa, plastic gift cards are rapidly replacing paper gift certificates for their ease of use, fraud prevention and the added benefit of data collection.

Other benefits include:

• Frequent shopping and convenience - Cards can be reloaded, creating opportunities for repeat store visits.
• In-store credit - Instead of using paper credit vouchers or cash back, plastic cards can be issued for merchandise returns and in-store credits.
• Advertising - A card in the customer's wallet is a constant advertisement. We like to call it the 'mini-billboard'.
• Promotion - Plastic cards are great as a marketing tool! Gift cards can be treated as a new product line that you can broadcast to your customers and clients. The added option of utilising a cleverly designed hang-tag gives more promotional weight to your card system.
• Increase Sales

Studies have shown that establishments that have gift cards as part of their product line have increased sales turnovers. For example:

• 61% of customers spend more than value of gift card
• 10-20% of a card's value may never be redeemed
• Stores acquire cash upfront before delivering the product or service
• Client money is turned into store credit
• Customer's cash kept in-store
• Store gains new customers
• Gift cards encourages repeat business

Truth is, there is no better time to launch your Christmas Gift Card programme than today! CardsPlus has all the tools you will need from plastic cards printed in a jiffy to a manage-it-yourself gift card programme, RewardsPlus... all at a very reasonable cost!