3 Ways To Profit With Personalized Gift Certificates

This is a fun marketing tactic I’ve personally and successfully have used (and have helped many clients use) over the years to drive in business.  It combines the excitement of a “gift” with the power of personalization to create a powerful one-two marketing punch.  And what I love about it is that you can easily create a Web or print version right from your own computer!

These personalized gift certificates are big attention-grabbers because they look unique and powerful response-boosters because they are personalized to the person receiving it (who can resist not wanting to use a personalized certificate?).  Let me show you a few ways you can use the idea of a personalized certificate in your own marketing.

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Smart Idea #1: Attract New Customers!

Whether you own a brick and mortar business or an online business, you can use a tactic like the Savings Certificate above to get prospective customers to make their first purchase. You can customize a gift certificate and send it to them in the mail, email or on a web site and each of these three scenarios, you can personalize the certificate for the recipient!

Here’s something you can try… create a gift certificate as an email optin offer on your web site.   Show the certificate in your opt in page so people know what to expect when they opt in.  Then as soon as they opt in, you can display the certificate on the thank you page and personalize it by inserting the person’s name right on the certificate image.  All the recipient has to do is print it off and bring into your location. Now this might sound complicated, but it’s really not and any savvy web person can do this for you easily (and inexpensively).

Or if you prefer direct mail, create a letter or postcard with the personalized certificate front and center on your mail piece.

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Smart Idea #2: Get People to Your Event or Location

In this case, I tweaked the gift certificate and made it a personalized raffle ticket for the individual to bring to an event I was hosting.  Again, I can use this strategy either in a direct mail campaign or email campaign and in both cases I can personalize the raffle ticket to make it more irresistible for the recipient to use.  A strategy like this can have a positive impact on your attendee show-up rate!

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Smart Idea #3: Customer Birthday/Appreciation Gift:

My final smart idea for you is to use personalized birthday gift certificates, like the one above.  If you collect the birthdays of your customers, you can easily create a system that sends out mail or email for the birthday gift automatically.

Who could resist redeeming a special birthday gift like this, especially when you created it just for them!

If you’re sending out “generic” type of marketing, consider how you can start tapping into the power of personalization, which you can easily do yourself.

If you want the above certificate images (plus several others), all you need to do is become a SMART Ideas subscriber!   These certificate images are available for a limited time as a BONUS for joining the SMART Ideas family. The SMART Ideas newsletter is all about savvy marketing and response tools and ideas for business owners and marketers around the world!

It’s the only newsletter publication I’m aware of that not only shows you what to do, but also gives you the files, copy, templates and more to implement them!  This means you can take the ideas I share in each issue and literally implement them quickly and easily by using the templates and content included with your monthly subscription!

 

2 Comments

  1. Ted Peterson on February 24, 2012 at 8:10 am

    Hey Mike…

    I love this idea. Anytime you can make your marketing more personal you will get a better response! I’ll definitely be S & Ding this one!

    Ted Peterson
    http://bit.ly/FreeTrainingCall



  2. Bill Thomas on March 5, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    We often give out discounts but this idea will add value to the discount and allow for easy tweaking of the promotion.