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  • Gift Cards Retail Trends

    Bizrate

    According to Bizrate Insights, a survey conducted among consumers of 5000 eCommerce retailers via an online survey presented immediately after completing a purchase, Gift Cards are seen to be preferred by Millennials, with over 70 percent of 18-34 years, hoping to receive Gift Cards. However, there is a gap among consumers hoping to receive a Gift Card and those who plan to buy a Gift card. The survey was, conducted among 11,067 online buyers, ages 18 and over, in the U.S. and Canada and carried out between November 1, 2015 and November 8, 2015.

    According to Card Hub, the size of Gift Card market is projected to grow over the next two years. In a research shared by CEB TowerGroup, Gift cards represent 18 percent of the money spent by consumers on Holiday purchases and eGifting is likely to trend upwards. The preferred  Gift Cards categories that buyers plan to purchase for Holiday season are Restaurants, Department Store, Coffee Shops, Entertainment and Electronics Store.

    GiftcardsresearchRetailers targeting Holiday Shoppers have designed offers on Gift cards that are focused on customers interests and build on the experiential gifting. The search queries for Gift cards increase in the first two weeks of December and the top search queries for 2015 thus far are restaurant gift cards, best gift cards.

    GCTrendsRising

    Consumer Focused Approach

    Walmart’s robust offering of Gift Cards targeted at Movies and Music fans as wells  restaurant gift cards, provide a wide choice to buyers who want to buy Gift Cards that are likely to be preferred by the target audience. The choice of  retail gift cards provide an offering for consumers that are looking at choosing gifts based on interests. The gift cards value proposition offers a complete suite of gift options for different categories from Apparel, Dining to Entertainment. Combining the products with an e-gift delivery option makes for a comprehensive Gift Card experience from product design to delivery stage. Gift card experience from Walmart is designed around the consumer, with Branding and Design and the User Interface enhanced for Discovery.

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    Key Takeaway 

    Design your Gift card strategy around your core target audience buyer persona, offering different options, with branding and content experience enhanced for mobile discovery. Create a special icon to flag products that have an email delivery option or a special price offer, as can be seen for Walmart’s eCard.

    Pricing Focus

    Amazon has designed special offers targeted at buyers of speciality cards, with a 20 percent off for buyers of gift cards, with special packs designed for up-selling. Target has also focused on creating special price offers for gift cards and running special offers to promote gift cards.
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    Amazon’s gift cards strategy focuses on creating a value proposition based on pricing and the choice of shopping all gift cards at one place. The choice that is available promises at reducing stress usually associated with finding the right gift.

    Spltygcoffers

    Key Takeaway 

    Design your Gift card strategy around the different Gifting needs of the consumer. Usually customers looking for deals and offers around holiday season tend to buy into value offers that can be redeemed after the Christmas sales.

    Giving a choice of retail brands adds choice for consumers with the possibility to find the right gift for different recepients.

    Experiential Rewards

    Sam’s  Club has created experiences for Motor Sports Enthusiasts, that features racing Experiences and different Drive packages. Sam’s Club includes  Gift Cards rating that lets customers choose and decide from popular cards that are featured in  “Popular Products” section.

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    Key Takeaway 

    Designing experiential rewards gift cards engages audiences for your brand with one of a kind offers that are not likely to be available off the shelf. Offering Experiential rewards Gift Cards are likely to create greater buzz and social media sharing for Gift Cards.

    Price Match Guarantee

    Best Buy offers consumers to choose from the options available with a Price match guarantee.

    SGCBestbuy

    Key Takeaway 

    Offering Price Match Guarantee on Gift Cards is likely to resonate with audiences as it takes the stress away for Gift Card Shoppers.

    Limited Edition Gift Cards

    Starbucks  Limited Edition holiday cards, embellished with Swarovski crystals in Silver and Blue are aimed at engaging audiences with a Lifestyle aspiration, where the card design is the reward itself. The Gift cards are an extension of other merchandise available at Starbucks with Crystal and Gold embellishments.

     

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    Starbucks continues to promote Holiday cards with Gift Cards Messaging.

    Key Takeaway 

    Designing Limited Edition Gift Cards are  a way to engage audiences for key occasions that reward your loyal customers.

    Gift Card As A Reward

    Target

    Offering a Gift card linked to a purchase as can be seen from Target’s USD 100 Card linked to an Apple Watch purchase. Linking a free gift card offer with a purchase can help retailers boost sales with a special pricing offer linked to Gift Cards. Allowing time bound offers on Gift cards can further help retailers divert spend in lean sales months.

    Key Takeaway

    Gift Cards can increase sales when used as an incentive and increase sales during low season months.

    Gift Card Statistics
     
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    Giftcardsresearch

  • Key Retail Insights and Mobile Trends For Holiday Season

    GrowthAccording to a comScore report, Digital will account for half of Retail growth during the holiday season with mobile device sales bringing in quarter of growth, making Mobile a Key shopping channel.

    RBF

    Mobile contributed to a majority of retail online traffic on Black Friday, while share of Desktop visits was higher for Cyber Monday.

    For Retail traffic some of the key takeaways for 2015 Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales, from a comScore study are :

    Mobile traffic significantly outpaces desktop traffic every single day, including Cyber Monday.
    Mobile traffic peaks on Black Friday, while desktop traffic peaks on Cyber Monday.
    Cyber Monday is the peak day for overall multi-platform web traffic, but Black Friday is not far behind.
    Desktop traffic has a distinct weekly pattern with troughs occurring during the weekends, while mobile traffic is much more consistent across different days of the week.

    Mobileretail

    RBF

    According to a report shared by Facebook, Millennials, Moms and Multi-cultural shoppers are the key drivers of Mobile usage.Consumers on Facebook transacted on mobile 46 percent more during the Holidays than during other times of the year as seen for holiday season in 2014. Millennials, Moms and Multicultural shoppers in the US drove 81 percent of all mobile transactions seen on Facebook for Holiday Season in 2014.

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  • A Sleighful of Chocolate and Candies For Last-Minute Gifts and Shopping

     

    choccandyRecipes are all the rage this Holiday Season, however, Chocolate is the leading Search Term in Shopping category. For the Food and Drink category, Recipes, Chocolate Candies, Candies, Cookies and Chocolate are correlated. For Mass Merchant and Department Stores Category, bench-marking the search terms to Category shows positive trend for Chocolate and Candy (Search terms), where as the correlation is negative for Recipes, Cookies and Cake, showing clear segmentation for Gift purchases for Chocolate and Candy.

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    gifting
    Key Takeaways 

    To get your Holiday Gift Shopper’s attention for Candies in Mass Merchant category, it is important to engage audiences with Candy themed Brand content and optimize the campaign for “Candies” or “Candy” Search Keyword click-share in the category. Google now features an image recommendation in search results, prioritizing brand content optimized with related searches.

    Reccos

    Chocolatiers and Candy Marketers with a Gifts focused strategy are leading the Search trends in Food and Drinks category. Chocolate Candies and Cookies are over-indexing Food and Drinks searches.

    choccandies

    Candy retailers with a Gifts focused strategy have created social media buzz with content that is targeted at gift shoppers as can be seen from See’s Candies Facebook Post below. Though the buyer journey for Gift buyers during the holiday season may differ for segments, Content Marketing optimized with search keywords can get you results from your SEO.

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    Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, has a Gifts Focused strategy and is seen to be trending in December according to Google trends.

     

    Optimize Content and Products that are right for the campaign. If you are targeting Gift Shoppers for Shopping category then Brand Content that is most likely to engage the segment is the one that is Chocolate linked. Create exclusive Brand Content that features keywords that are likely to feature in the search intent for Chocolate such as peppermint, mocha.
    Walmart has identified a clear niche segment of Holiday Shoppers targeting the audience with Sweet-themed campaign. The most intersting addition is Star Wars merchandise that is available in Gifts Under USD 10.

    Candy

     

    Holidaysweets

    Shipping makes for an important part of Gifting, and engaging Gift Shoppers requires a clear shipping strategy.

    RMCF1

    Build interest in the category and your products earlier in the season with a Sweepstakes contest or a price-off as can be seen in See’s Candies post with a time-bound offer that was available till 12th December. The Sweepstakes was a weekly contest with winners announced every week.

    enhanced-buzz-10984-1449606761-19Recipes is the most searched term in the Food and Drink Category. Cookies are more popular than chocolate.

    Chocolate is also the most searched term for Shopping category. For brands targeting Audiences for in-home entertainment, Recipes, Cookies and Chocolate are most searched terms. Brand Content optimized with Keywords such a Chocolate and Cookies is most likely to feature in the shoppers’ feed.

     

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  • Five Ways To Sweeten Your Wish-list

    If you want to add something to your  wish-lists Hershey’s and Pizza Hut have the perfect offer: Pizza Hut’s new Triple Treat Box, a uniquely-packaged pizza “box” that features pizzas, desserts, sides and more.  Now Hershey’s Brownies are available for a limited time.

    Available while supplies last, the tri-level, holiday-themed Triple Treat Box includes two medium one-topping pizzas , an order of breadsticks or flavor sticks and a Hershey’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie, all for just  USD 19.99.

    “What the holidays are all about can get lost sometimes in the hustle and bustle of the season, but at Pizza Hut, we want to help make every day feel like a holiday,” said Jared Drinkwater, vice president of marketing, Pizza Hut. “That’s why we created the Triple Treat Box. It’s a delicious, easy meal to share with family and friends, and while it’s always fun to get pizza, getting pizza in a special gift-wrapped box can add even a little more excitement to pizza night.”

    The Hershey’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie, which debuted in 2014, is cut into eight slices and is loaded with an average of 165 Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chips per cookie, offering a delicious and sweet dessert as part of the Triple Treat Box.  Pizza Hut breadsticks, which is the company’s most popular side item, are available with the Triple Treat Box or customers can opt for the brand’s unique Flavor Sticks, which come in the following flavors: Hut Favorite, Fiery Red Pepper, Toasted Cheddar, Toasted Parmesan, Toasted Asiago and Honey Sriracha.

    Five Ways for Getting  content right for discovery with recipes and baking ideas, this holiday season.

    Share a Context for your Recipe Idea.

    Create a theme that resonates with a popular image.

    Use a Promoted trend or a topic that is being discussed.

    Use the most popular recipe that is favored by your audiences to promote other recipe ideas.

    Share a Recipe hack.

     

     

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