The credit card generation is still with us for now, and many folks are extremely comfortable with the idea of using plastic for purchases of items, either at the local stores or through the internet. Over the recent years, gift cards have become an interesting item to give that person who you want to reward or bestow a gift on, and MasterCard, Visa, and American Express have filled that void with dollar denominated cards for general use. Sometimes, you can go to a local store and receive a similar card for purchase at there premises.
But what about the person wanting to have the capability to brand a card to their company, a specific event or to a special promotion. They can now do just that. Promotional gift cards are available on which you can have your brand imprinted, highlight the current marketing plan, or just have an interesting one time event with that information lasting a long time.
Tied to e-commerce stores or to specific brands of merchandise, the customizable gift card is the way to have your company logo hang out there in the public domain and still provide a service of value to the recipient. It also can have other information emboldened on the card to make it a bit of marketing piece, company slogans or general information which may be of use to the holder for the next year.
Here’s an example using a minor league baseball team. Instead of the game day give away of a cap, where you need to have 5000 caps on hand, you do a promotional give away with the ability to get a cap, ball, or some other sporting good item related to your sport, branded with the team logo, and delivered to the customer. But on this credit-sized card, you have your logo, information about the giveaway, perhaps the rest of the home game schedule, and some trivia facts, all on the customized piece of real estate. Each card could be worth different values, so, one of ten lucky people may be able to get better value items, while most have the ability to get the cap. You only have to display a few of the items right there. The rest is sitting in a warehouse ready to be shipped to the fan, and then you can get the demographic of the people as they sign up to receive their promotional item.
It is easy to do. We have done gift card promotions as part of successful automobile test drive incentives for GM and Mercedes. These promotions combined our customized gift cards to select products from Nike, where the consumer who came into the showroom to test drive the cars received a gift card worth a defined value. They then redeemed products using the card. Merging recognized brands with your promotions is a great way to build some buzz around your company.
