What is the value of gift cards and vouchers in your house?

gift cards

Do an audit and add up the total value of gift cards and vouchers in your possession. Some will be generous gifts from friends and family, some will have been earnt as part of loyalty schemes and some will have been free gifts with purchase. I even found one in my house which had been won in a sailing race!

If we just consider the traditional gift voucher or card which someone has actually paid the retailer full face value for, this is excellent business for the retailer for a number of reasons:

• there will almost certainly be a delay between purchase and spend when the retailer can earn interest on the money
• a proportion of vouchers and cards will be lost or simply never spent – pure profit
• many customers when they come to spend the voucher will exceed the value – increased sales
• customers who do not usually shop in a particular store may be encouraged in – increased customer base

Technologically there are three main approaches:

• traditional paper pre-printed vouchers – many will have serial numbers and scanable barcodes and stolen vouchers can be cancelled
• vouchers printed at the till with scanable barcodes – these don’t look as pleasing but are easily tracked by EPOS systems and don’t exist before issue so therefore cannot be stolen
• gift cards which can be charged with money at the till, the value usually being stored in a central database – these arguably look the most pleasing and are certainly marketing as being superior for presents. Gift cards can also be precharged to be sold away from the till, most often in so called “gift card malls”, where a retailer offers a selection of other retailers’ cards in return for commission.

I used all three types this weekend with equal success.

The third annual Retail Gift Cards Europe Conference lasting two full days in London in September is testament to how big this business is and considers the details and challenges of setting up a scheme. It also reports on creative ways of marketing gift cards. Even retailers with successful schemes might find some new ideas.

In the meantime, clear out your house, find out what you’ve got and go on a spending spree !