Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format. With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

There's plenty of growth left in gift card programs

Report explains omni-channel gift card opportunities

Of the major retailers evaluated for the report, 39% don't accept NFC mobile payments in their stores and only 4% give customers the option to pay for a gift card purchase by scanning a QR code or barcode with their mobile device.

The study, in its fourth consecutive year, was conducted in conjunction with payments provider Blackhawk Network and identified emerging trends, reveals areas of opportunity and highlights best practices for optimizing merchants' gift card and payment programs.

"We're starting to see evidence of permanent adoption of the shopping habits consumers tried or shifted to last year, including using contactless payments and digital gift cards," said Theresa McEndree, global head of marketing, Blackhawk Network. "Consumers have come to expect to be able to seamlessly shop with brands across in-store and online channels. For retailers, that means offering a frictionless omnichannel shopping experience is no longer a nice-to-have-it's a must have. Our latest report with NAPCO gives retailers a 360-degree view of how to begin or continue to evolve their processes and offerings to meet the changing wants and needs of their customers."

In assessing the complete gift card experience from discovery to fulfillment, merchants were scored and given points in terms of how they promote the omnichannel sale of gift cards to consumers and B2B buyers both in-store and online. The cross-channel assessment evaluated 100 leading merchants across 150 unique criteria and offers a comprehensive view into the progress and areas for growth in the consumer gift card purchase and recipient experiences. Key omnichannel gift card program trends from the evaluation include:

Retailers are slow to accept mobile payments
The more ways retailers give consumers to pay for products-including gift cards-the better chance of them making a purchase. Consumers are increasingly seeking out contactless shopping experiences as a result of the pandemic, but many merchants have been unable or unwilling to keep up with consumer demand for contactless payments. The assessment revealed:

• Thirty-nine percent of the merchants evaluated don't accept NFC mobile payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay) in their stores.
• Only 4% of evaluated merchants gave customers the option to pay for a gift card purchase by scanning a QR code or barcode with their mobile device.
• At just 1%, even fewer merchants enabled customer purchases via a scan-and-go app.

Brands offering contactless payments must inform customers
The brands that are offering mobile contactless payment options could stand to improve in making that known to their customers.

Evaluated merchants earned just 8% of the available points when measured on whether they had clear signage informing customers at checkout that they accepted mobile payments. Those numbers dropped to 3% and 0% for signage indicating they accepted QR code/barcode scan payment or scan-and-go payment technology, respectively.

Mobile apps are still under-utilised for gift cards
While merchants did make progress for the mobile app channel in 2020, they're still not fully capitalizing on this fast-growing opportunity. On average, the merchants evaluated that had an app earned just 42% of the points available for how easy it was to find gift cards within their app.

In perhaps an even bigger area of opportunity, some merchants aren't populating gifting sections of their apps with gift cards at all. Merchants earned just 30% of the available points when scored on whether the gifting section of their app featured gift cards for sale.

Easy, secure checkout experience gains new customers
Driven by the pandemic, many consumers turned to ecommerce for their shopping needs over the last year-some for the first time. Presenting a secure, user-friendly checkout experience is a critical in helping first-time online shoppers feel comfortable and much more likely to come back and shop with a retailer again.

Evaluated merchants performed well with an average score of 84% when judged on how easy, appropriate and secure the checkout experience was for the customer.

However, some are still missing the mark on taking the extra step and ensuring that all necessary payment data is collected at checkout, which would ultimately help ease any consumer fears and offer merchants additional protection from potential fraud.

The full report provides merchant scores and rankings in addition to data and insights to help merchants assess the strengths and opportunities for their own gift card programs, and prioritize areas for investment.

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)