Gift Cards provide a clear way for your customers to recommend your business to potentially new customters, while also giving a gift that provides the receiver a choice to buy exactly what they like.

Merchandisable for helping increase sales, secure so fraud and control are not an issue and driving customers to your website are just some of the reasons the traditional gift card has now become a $90 billion a year business globally.

Gift cards can motivate customers to make the first of many purchases. 41% of consumers have visited a retail store, hotel or restaurant they had never been before because they received a gift card for it. Furthermore, 72% of those first-time customers went back to the business at least once afterward.

• Gift cards were the most-requested gift of 2010 and 2009
• 48% of gift card recipients spend more than the amount on the card

Whether you produce online-only gift cards or enable your traditional gift cards to be used online, they can acquire new customers for your ecommerce website. Many customers are hesitant to use credit cards for online purchases or belong to a demographic without easy access to credit (teenagers, the unbanked).

By purchasing an online gift card in-store or having one given to them by a friend, these customers will be able to experience the ease and convenience of buying through your e-commerce site for themselves. Online gift cards can create more online buyers who spend more and cost less to service.

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) Gift Cards are designed for merchants to promote specific products and/or services. These cards can only be used to redeem items of the merchant’s choice over a set period of time. They are often used when working together with a supplier to promote its brand, so the costs of these promotions can be covered by the supplier.

Your customers are now using their mobile phones more than ever, and with our new SUN (Single-use Number) technology now you can have your own custom mobile app allowing your customers to make payments and much more! Your customers will be able to perform cardless transactions at the POS from their Gift/Stored Value/Loyalty accounts with no additional hardware or upgrades required. Once they’ve registered their accounts to your new app, they’re then able to generate a 6 digit number, barcode or QR code on their phone for quick payments at the POS. To ensure this unique number remains secure, it’s only valid for a few minutes.

Stored value cards are most often seen in quick service businesses, as they draw in new customers who value time and convenience. These cards are typically bought and used by the same customer, as opposed to being used as a gift card.

The reason for this is because stored value cards result in payment transactions that are much faster than cash or credit card payments. They eliminate the timely requirement of providing change with cash payments, and with stored value card transaction processing takes only 1-3 seconds on average , this is much less than credit card transactions, that also require the need for the entering of a PIN number or obtaining a signature.

For quick service businesses, this can be an essential tool for winning a potential customer’s business, as especially during peak periods, a successful program can lead to shorter line ups and faster service.

Opening traditional gift card sales to corporations who will use them to reward and incentivize their employees significantly increases gift card sales, and is therefore another proven way to acquire new customers. Givex provides a complete turnkey solution, from your own branded secure ecommerce website with shopping basket, to fulfillment of the cards to their destination.

Acquire customers by making your gift cards available through gift card malls which are high visibility installations displaying a selection of gift cards from local businesses in high traffic retailers such as supermarkets and drugstores. Selling gift cards through another retailer increases your brand exposure and gift card availability. Our network includes over 225,000 grocery, convenience, drug and specialty stores with gift card malls.

A great coupon offer can convert a browser into a buyer. Money-saving coupons are increasingly popular in tight economic times and a coupon can be the motivation for a person’s first purchase from you. Coupons for a new product are a great way to introduce people to it, turning them into customers.

Givex coupons are just as secure as gift cards, with unique numbers and special features to prevent fraud and duplicate use. Coupons can be printed on cards with special promotional artwork, printed on the POS receipt when the customer makes a purchase and more. To make administration easy, coupon redemption rates can be tracked in real-time using Givex’s secure reporting interface.

Getting new customers to make their first purchase on your e-commerce site, whether it be enticing existing bricks-and-mortar customers or turning online window shoppers into customers, is an ongoing challenge.

One of the most successful ways of driving these customers to make their first purchase online is by giving them the ability to go through your online shopping experience using a one-time use coupon, that they either earned from making a purchase in your physical location, or received as a promotion. Once the customer is able to actually see the real value and convenience in using your ecommerce site, they are more likely to use it again with their own money.

A coupon that is only valid for a limited time can entice online window shoppers to make their first purchase. Givex’s technology allows you to easily run reports on the success of these coupons and it uses the same secure and reliable technology behind all our tools.

SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) Coupons are a quick, low-cost way to get a large audience to sample a specific new product or service. They provide single redemption for a specific product/service during a specific period of time, whereas SKU Gift Cards are more suitable for longer term promotions and multiple product or service purchases. SKU Coupons can also drive the purchase of complementary items, as in the case of an appetizer coupon bringing customers to the restaurant where they will also purchase beverages and entrees.

Emailed coupons are a very cost effective way of communicating an offer to a new audience. Coupons can give a fixed monetary discount or a percentage discount off a purchase. Carry out large-scale, email coupon promotions at low-cost using our online reporting and administrative site. Upload your customer database to our secure interface and our system will send out unique email coupons to each contact. Easily monitor the success of each offer.

Grow your customer base among mobile phone users. Use SMS coupons that compel customers to make that first purchase in-store or online. This audience can be hard to target with other types of couponing, especially if they dislike clipping and saving coupons. Mobile coupons take the form of a text message (SMS) that contains the coupon number. Because the phone is always with the customer, your coupons are instantly accessible. This results in a mobile coupon redemption rate that can be 3 times higher than paper coupons.

Uptix is a revolutionary new product that puts the powerful tool of stored value in the hands of stadiums, concert halls and other event venues. For years, retailers, hotels and restaurants have been using gift cards and coupons to acquire customers. Now, this technology is finally available to the event and entertainment industry through Givex. Uptix augments your existing tickets with cash balances or other stores of data so they can serve as a payment method for concessions, loyalty cards for stadium patrons and instant-win coupons. Patrons spend more, season ticket renewals increase and venues sell more tickets.

Uptix is provided in partnership with both the Paciolan and Tickets.com platforms.

Click here for more information on Uptix.