The pandemic has brought about a lot of different innovations. When stores needed to close, rapid advancements in technology were often needed. Players in the market that lacked their online presence now needed to ramp-up. Especially smaller players struggled in their pursuit to online revenue increases. With the holiday season around the corner, it is time to look at attractive ways to promote your business and increase engagement. One of the typical Christmas things you can do: sell gift cards. Lots of people are looking for a nice present, but sometimes it is just nicer to come up with one yourself!
How does it work
When you want to sell gift cards you can sign up for an online environment, such as SumUp. Once you have an account there, you are able to offer gift cards through the portal. Customers can add a gift card, for example when they want to check-out. They can insert the information of the person and the gift card will already be on the way. Talking about innovative! The funny part, you can add custom comments to the gift card.
Use case example of a takeaway restaurant
Imagine a funky restaurant in the city center of a major city. Here you can buy the nicest burgers, both vegan and traditional. You are on your way to pick-up a delicious burger for the two of you. After you made your order and conducted the payment, you see a message “Who else deserves a burger? Send a gift card worth a burger to one of your friends”. Cool! You can simply provide their phone number and add a funny message and send it to one of your friends. Intuitive to use and also an easy way to spread the love of burgers. More importantly: it helps small business owners through these challenging times as well.
It does not stop there
There are more and more options for you to explore when it comes to improving your revenues in 2020 and beyond. If you want to sell online, you can easily do so with SumUp by sending payment requests. For example, if a customer calls your store or restaurant and when they make an order, you can send a payment link. Once the payment is conducted, you can start cooking or delivering the service. This example where you sell online is a good notion of validation. It is always good to validate the order and receive the payment before you start the work.
Whether you want to sell gift cards or want to increase your online sales, there are many options around. Especially in these times it is important to think about the potential these technologies have. One of the upsides: the costs of trying these services is low, making it easy to validate if it works for your target audience. Hopefully it will help your business generate a nice additional revenue stream during the end of a challenging 2020.
