Gift cards are a great way to treat your clients and generate more sales. Here’s how to weave them into your SMS strategy.
Rewarding clients with a loaded gift card can strengthen your relationships, improve engagement, and give your bottom line a boost with minimal effort.
Plus, gift cards are a great way to attract new customers and give them the nudge they need to make their first purchase.
Want to know how to send a gift card via text? Here’s the low down.
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Ping.
Your client receives a text message (first surge of adrenalin). They open it to find a personalized gift card loaded with cash, ready to go (second surge of adrenalin).
Gift cards are a nice treat for customers and can foster a positive perception of your brand. Even better, they are a relatively low-cost, low-effort marketing activity that can yield significant results.
Gift cards a pretty much a win-win for both sides. Clients get a little something to treat themselves with and you get to build better relationships that (hopefully!) lead to long-term loyalty and more sales.
So why are gift cards such a popular marketing activity?
Sending gift cards via text comes with many advantages. Compared to snail mail, text messages are delivered instantly and can be redeemed straight away. And, when consumer email inboxes are fit to burst with promotional emails and work threads, sliding into their SMS inbox can be a great way to stand out.
Your clients can instantly click through to their gift card and redeem it while the thought is still fresh in their minds.
Gift cards are a great way to connect with your audience and build loyalty, but they work best in certain situations.
Thinking about sending gift cards to your clients but not sure if it’s a good fit? Here are some examples of companies that send gift cards to their customers.
Vivid Seats rewards customers who purchase with them with a $30 gift card. They use an added time incentive to create a sense of urgency around cashing it in.
Clothing brand STYLEBOP introduces customers to its new product line with the help of a gift card when they spend over $300.
Clothing brand Lola Blu Boutique regularly runs giveaways on its Instagram account where followers can win a gift card. This increases the brand’s reach and introduces new customers.
Sleep Country offers a seasonal gift card to its customers during the winter months. It encourages shoppers to go in-store where they’ll be able to browse more products.
There are two ways you can send a gift card via text:
If you use a tool that creates gift cards for clients, you can copy the link and send it with SimpleTexting (the same as if you were sending a PDF via text). Alternatively, you can create an image-based gift card with a tool like Canva and send it individually to clients via text.
To send a gift card link via text:
From this:
To this:
To send an image gift card via text:
You can also add a GIF or video to your text to add an extra layer of engagement or attach an image to your SMS message.
If your business is relatively small, it’s not too much hassle to manually send each client a gift card text. But as soon as you start to grow, you’ll want to send text messages en masse to save time.
Mass texting lets you send your gift card link to multiple clients at once. However, you’ll need to automatically generate a unique gift card link for each customer or use a generic discount code that everyone can use.
One-on-one business texting lets you message one person at a time. This is a great way to build rapport with your best clients and interact with them directly in their message inboxes.
To send a gift via our one-on-one business texting service:
The last thing you want to do is spend hours each day manually sending gift cards to clients at just the right time. You’ve got better things to be doing. But if you set up SMS drip campaigns, you can automatically send out gift card texts when clients take specific actions.
You can automate a series of messages that are triggered based on specific events, like when a customer leaves a review, makes a purchase, or books a discovery call. The texts are sent automatically, giving clients a little adrenalin boost when they get a gift card they can use right away.
Let’s face it, gift cards are fun. They feel like free money and give clients a chance to try something new or treat themselves (they can’t just put it towards rent or bills). But, most importantly, they can help foster deeper relationships with your existing customer base and garner ongoing loyalty.
This is critical when you’re competing against multiple other brands in the same arena. Standing out means creating a delightful customer experience and showing your clients you care—nothing does that better than a well-thought-out gift card. And, when you send it by SMS, you bypass the hundreds of emails already clogging up their inbox. It’s a win-win situation.
Ready to start sending gift cards by text? Sign up for a free trial or book a demo with our SMS experts.
Lizzie Davey is a freelance writer for B2B SaaS and eCommerce companies with 10+ years of writing experience. She's written about marketing, SaaS, and e-commerce for brands like Shopify, CoSchedule, and Sprout Social.
More Posts from Lizzie DaveyWith a text marketing club nearly two years old, Delta Sonic communicates with thousands of their customers each week to promote deals and share important updates.
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