Recognizing and rewarding the positive contributions of employees at any company is critical to driving employee engagement, culture, morale and most importantly, retention. In fact, there are companies that help other companies drive employee recognition. And we’ve been partnering with one of the fastest growing ones for the past 6 years to help them innovate, differentiate and stay ahead of their own competition.
Category: Loyalty Rewards
How Do Businesses Use Bulk Gift Cards for Sales Promotions?
Promotions featuring brand rewards and gift cards offer an easy, efficient, and flexible way to drive sales and build your brand without discounting your product or service.
In many instances, using bulk gift cards is the simplest and most cost-effective way to build a prize pool to excite your target and incentivize purchase, participation, or whatever behavior you want to achieve.
Here are a few strategies to help you think through the opportunities bulk gift cards offer for promotions.
What kinds of promotions use bulk gift cards?
Many different types of promotions leverage bulk gift cards because they offer flexibility and provide consumers with something they really want—especially when you build a prize pool with a lot of choices. Some of the most common promotions that effectively use bulk gift cards are sweepstakes, games, instant wins, rebates, incentives, and buy X get Y promotions.
Why would I use bulk rewards in a sweepstakes?
There are a lot of reasons to use bulk rewards in just about any sweepstakes promotion. You can use them to build excitement around a large, aspirational grand prize while providing many smaller prizes to increase the chances of your target audience actually winning something.
In many instances, the promotion can also be themed around your grand prize. This makes choosing the appropriate brand or brands you offer very important from a messaging standpoint. And that should drive the rest of your prize pool.
With bulk rewards, creating a prize pool with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of prizes available is easy. This makes more people feel good about participating and expands the demographic reach of your promotion, depending on the partners you choose. It depends on your budget, but offering prizes in the $1-$5 range is typically less expensive than you might imagine.
Sweepstakes are also popular with consumers because there is a very low barrier to entry. In many cases, they are automatically entered to win as soon as they purchase the key item of the promotion. No forms to fill out or receipts to send in. It’s simple for them—and you. Even redemption is easy since the prizes can be delivered digitally.
What is the benefit of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions?
The benefits of using bulk rewards in games or instant win promotions are fairly obvious when you think about the world we live in—people like games. And people love instant gratification. This is particularly true of young adult consumers but pretty much everyone expects whatever they want to show up now.
When you use bulk gift cards that can be redeemed digitally, not only will consumers know that they won, but they’ll be able to have their prize in their hands almost immediately. This is a huge benefit all around. For the consumers, they get their prize. And for you or your partners, the prize can be redeemed right away, driving immediate sales.
While it’s possible to have a game-based promotion or an instant win promotion, many times the two tactics work together. Think about the classic Monopoly® at McDonald’s promotion. There was an overall grand prize, a game board and pieces to collect, which drove repeat purchase. At the same time, many of the pieces also added an instant win which was typically a free food item available right in-store.
How exactly you structure your game or instant win promotion should be determined by what you and your partners are trying to accomplish.
Why would I use bulk gift cards as rebates or incentives in promotions?
The main reason to use bulk gift cards for rebates and other incentives is they essentially let you add value to your product or service without actually discounting it. And to be sure, once you start discounting your offering, it’s a slippery slope into the bargain bin and very difficult to rebuild that value in either price or brand equity.
One of the best types of bulk gift cards for rebates and incentives is prepaid cards. Essentially, they function as dollars off and give consumers the flexibility to spend it however they’d like. Of course, you can deliver messaging or structure your promotion to encourage consumers to spend that prepaid card with you—in-store or online.
These types of promotions are popular with many electronics manufacturers, wireless carriers, big box stores, and even national restaurant chains. Here is an interesting case study if you’d like to see how one mobile phone company executed its promotion.
Are bulk gift cards effective for buy/get promotions?
Bulk gift rewards can be very effective in a number of buy X get Y promotions, but you definitely need to understand your audience. The reason for this is buy/get tend to be more specific offerings than many of the other promotions we’ve discussed here.
As the name says, the name pretty much indicates why: if you buy this, you get that. In some ways, this could seem limiting. But it also gives you the opportunity to really hone in on a message and an offer you think will drive a very targeted audience to respond positively. It all comes down to the size of the prize, who it’s from, and the required purchase.
Of course, one popular way to keep the basic mechanics and strategies in place while providing more choice to the consumer is to offer prepaid cards again with a significant value.
How can NeoCurrency help you drive sales and build your brand?
One of the benefits of working with NeoCurrency to help develop an effective promotion leveraging digital bulk gift cards is we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already. Our catalog has rewards available from thousands of brands worldwide, from the big ones you’d expect to some very targeted ones unique to us.
1. Rewards planning
Many brands don’t get involved with promotions that offer bulk gift cards or virtual rewards simply because it seems difficult. People think it’s expensive, the process has too many layers to work through, and so on. It can be all those things, but that’s why we’re here.
We like to say that we’re marketers that just happen to provide rewards and prizes. With our long history of strategic rewards and prize pool planning, we can secure partnerships that normally take months to get approved much faster.
We simplify the entire process. We’ve negotiated everything—even creative challenges.
2. Prize pools
We have many different ways to help you develop a prize pool featuring bulk gift cards. We can help you create something strategically focused on one brand or many, with as many prize tiers that fit your strategy.
Our experts are here to help you create an appropriate prize pool, regardless of whether your promotion is a local, regional, or global effort.
3. Fast and simple bulk gift cards
NeoCurrency’s wholesale pricing is fixed with no hidden fees. You can manage everything from our intuitive reward dashboard or simply integrate it with our single gift card API.
Partner with NeoCurrency for your next promotion
NeoCurrency’s global catalog of digital rewards for over 2000 brands provides plenty of opportunities for you to run a successful promotion, regardless of the kind of program you want to run. We’ve been doing this for a long time and would love to put our experience to work for you.
Request a demo to get all the details about how we’ll help you develop and execute your next promotion featuring bulk gift cards by leveraging an extensive variety of brand rewards.
Recommended articles (Helpful links)
Best Practices for Leveraging Brand Rewards in Promotions
While there are a lot of ways to run a promotion, utilizing brand rewards offers an easy, efficient, and flexible option that drives sales and builds your brand while making your customers feel special and appreciated.
Plus, utilizing brand rewards in promotions doesn’t require a discount on your product or service. You’re adding value for the consumer without cheapening your brand. It’s truly a win-win.
Consider the following when choosing a partner for brand rewards.
What are the best criteria for choosing a reward or gift card?
Whether you call it a brand reward, gift card, electronic reward, or corporate gift card, we must consider five critical elements when creating a prize or prize pool: the purpose of the promotion, accessibility, target relevance, brand association, and brand recognition.
Why are you doing a promotion?
While developing a promotion to drive sales and build your brand is the main priority, it’s wise to think about overarching objectives.
Are you introducing something new? A new service? A new product? A new attitude? Whatever the reason, it should be the first thing on your list to figure out before you just go and pick a brand or brand to include. If you’ve been operating in the US but are expanding globally and want to make some noise—what brands would help?
Perhaps you’re changing lanes. Maybe you need to rebuild your reputation. Or you’re proud of who you are and how far you’ve come and want to promote it because you’re awesome. Whatever the goal, you should look at the brands that can help you accomplish it in the mind of your target audience.
Why is target relevance so critical to success?
Brand selection is key because the brands you partner with reflect on your company.
For example, brands like Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo have obvious similarities—but they create an opportunity for a brand like Axe body spray to play a role since it’s relatable to the target. You might even choose to include all of them to maximize the reach of your promotion while making it unique.
You know your audience. With all the data at our fingertips today, you know exactly how to reach them. But, for whatever reason, some companies come up with offers that make no sense and sometimes fly in the face of what they are trying to do.
It’s crucial to think about your target, brand, and goals to ensure the reward pool you offer makes sense in the big picture. This consideration is one of the reasons NeoCurrency’s catalog has thousands of brands to choose from, from the big ones you’d expect to some very targeted ones unique to us.
How important is brand association in a promotion?
Brand association is an essential element in developing a promotion.
If your company is about simplicity, the brands you partner with in your promotion must reflect this. If they don’t, you run the risk of confusing or even alienating your audience. Plus, explaining why you associate with a particular brand can make messaging difficult.
Choosing a brand because it’s cool, popular, or something else doesn’t make sense if it doesn’t match your company’s DNA (unless you are looking to change your DNA or the perception of your brand).
Picking brands that don’t fit may work against you and could have the opposite effect on your goal.
Is it better to partner with well-recognized brands?
Partnering with well-recognized brands can offer some significant benefits, but there can also be some drawbacks.
The more well-known a brand is, the more likely people are to want to get a reward or gift card from it. However, it can be costly to work with. It comes with a long list of mandates that can be challenging to navigate, especially regarding logo usage, creative guidelines, and approval processes.
On the other hand, lesser-known brands typically offer better savings or some other incentive to entice you to partner with them. If no one’s heard of them, their brand may not help drive the sales you’re targeting.
Yet, there may still be benefits. If a brand aims to use your name to its advantage, it’s valuable to consider what you can gain from the negotiation, especially in terms of who covers the costs.
Is accessibility important when choosing a promotional partner?
Accessibility to easily redeem a prize is vital when using brand rewards as a promotional incentive. After all, the biggest reason gift cards and digital rewards work is because they’re so easy to use by the people who receive them.
NeoCurrency’s vast selection of brand rewards is overflowing with companies that are easily accessible online or in-store, making it easier for everyone to redeem their prize rather than let it waste away on a nightstand.
How can NeoCurrency help you drive sales and build your brand?
One of the benefits of working with NeoCurrency to help develop your next promotion is we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you already.
Rewards planning
Many brands don’t get involved with promotions that offer corporate gift cards or virtual rewards simply because it seems difficult. People think it’s expensive, there are too many layers to work through, and so on. It can be all those things, but that’s why we’re here; we simplify the entire reward process. We’ve negotiated everything—even creative challenges.
Prize pools
We have many different ways to run a promotion with brand rewards. You may want to create something strategically focused on one brand. So, you can offer various levels of rewards for that brand. Or, you could create a broader prize pool, which our experts can help you develop based on your goals and objectives, whether it’s a local, regional, or global effort.
Marketing strategy
There are also different ways to motivate customers. You might want to leverage an instant win element to build your promotion. We help with this! Or, maybe you want to keep them engaged for longer by developing a sweepstakes option where they can enter numerous times. We help with this, too!
Fast and simple bulk gift cards
Our wholesale pricing is fixed with no hidden fees. You can manage everything from our reward dashboard, which makes everything straightforward and intuitive, or you can simply integrate it with our single gift card API.
Partner with NeoCurrency on your next promotion.
NeoCurrency’s global catalog of over 2000 brands provides plenty of opportunities for you to run a successful promotion, regardless of your goals. We’ve been doing this for a long time and would love to put our experience to work for you.
Request a demo to get all the details about how we’ll help you develop and execute your next promotion by leveraging an extensive variety of brand rewards.
Recommended articles (helpful links)
The Power of Choosing the Right Gift Card API Provider
By Eric Thiegs, Head of Strategy & Growth, NeoCurrency
Over my 25 years in the gift card industry, I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of the industry. One of the most impactful developments was the introduction of gift card APIs.
In fact, I had the opportunity to be involved in launching one of the first gift card APIs to service real-time eGift distribution to both end users and corporate clients for B2B use cases in the loyalty, reward, and incentive industries. The revolution was on.
That was over 10 years ago.
Gift Card APIs in the present
Since then, APIs and gift cards have continued to change in myriad ways. So have the providers and the solutions they offer. It’s a dynamic and competitive industry, and choosing the wrong partner can cost a lot more than money. After all, the whole reason to utilize gift cards is to reward, engage or incentivize in some way, an employee, customer, member, participant or prize winner. Poor execution or under-delivery can have the exact opposite effect on your business or reputation that you were looking and paying for—and possibly even lead to legal issues.
“It’s a dynamic and competitive industry,
and choosing the wrong partner can cost a lot more than money”
In order to help you choose the right digital reward provider for your needs, I’ve put a checklist together for buyers and decision-makers who are looking to find a gift card API provider and solution both domestically in the US, internationally—or both, that will work best for their needs. The list is based on my experience over the course of my career, as well as what we hear from our own clients here at NeoCurrency every day. Asking providers to share details on each of the below API attributes, features, benefits, use cases and pricing will help you select the best gift card API.
1. What reward content does their Gift Card API offer?
A gift card API is only as good as its content, and so the most important feature of the best reward APIs is the ability to offer a wide variety of brands that provide flexibility and choice. Ask your gift card provider if the following products can be supplied through their API integration.
• Closed Loop Cards: Brands ranging from Amazon, Google Play, Apple, Starbucks, etc.
• Open Loop Prepaid Cards: VISA, MasterCard, American Express, etc.
• Cash-Like Rewards: PayPal, Venmo
• Digital Currency Rewards: Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, etc.
• Choose-your-own reward option: A universal reward link that allows the end recipient to select their reward/gift card
• What, if any, other prizes, coupon codes, or digital content can be delivered in their API?
2. What currencies and countries are supported by their API?
Some clients need content relevant in one country. Others need eGift Cards with popular brands across a multi-country regions, an entire continent, or all of the above. Beyond the brands, it’s important to be able to deliver rewards in the appropriate currencies for many reasons. Understanding a partner’s capabilities domestically and across the globe is key, especially if there’s a chance you’ll need coverage in a new region as your platform grows.
3. How easy is the integration of their Gift Card API?
Most Gift Card APIs boast a suite of powerful features from seamless ordering and robust security options to easy, free sandbox access for testing. Getting access to all of the great features; however, can be a challenge. You’ll want to ask your provider about how quickly the API can be deployed and inquire if the API documentation is developer-friendly. You’ll also want to know if it’s easy to work with the provider’s team to launch sandbox testing and move quickly into production. A tech call with your potential provider will quickly tell you how collaborative, supportive, and trustworthy the team is behind the API solution. If they don’t want you to talk to their tech representatives, it’s probably a red flag.
4. What kind of account support do they offer?
On-going account support is a key attribute that sets many Gift Card APIs apart. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise-level corporate client, the reward API you use should grow with you. And you should have the support you need to answer questions and troubleshoot issues. Whether it’s new content, 24/7 self-serve account access, or strong customer service, you’ll want to ask your potential partner to outline, specifically, how they will support your account.
5. What are the KPIs of their Gift Card API?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the lifeblood of every good API. Ask your potential gift card provider for metrics around the up-time, load tolerance, scalability, and error rate of their API. Because let’s face it, if the API doesn’t work, it will hurt you. You’ll want to understand the platform’s reliability, downtime risk, and other performance attributes that may impact the API service.
6. What are the costs and fees associated with their API?
Not all Gift Card APIs use the same pricing structure. To get a transparent understanding of the commercial components, you’ll want to ask your provider about all fees associated with their API including the cost of the eGift or prepaid products sourced through the API, setup fees, transaction fees, delivery fees, email template fees, email delivery fees, SaaS fees, or hosting/service fees.
NeoCurrency Stacks up.
Since I’m suggesting you ask all of these questions to any gift care API provider you are interested in talking with, here is a quick cheat sheet of how we would answer these questions at NeoCurrency.
1. What reward content does NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API offer?
NeoCurrency offers over 2,000 digital reward options from the biggest brands you expect, to more localized relevant brands that provide more unique offerings around the world—all through a single API integration.
2. What currencies and countries are supported by NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API?
NeoCurrency’s API content covers 140+ countries across six continents in 50 currencies. We offer a multi-currency, global API for clients who need just one country/currency or those that need access to digital rewards across the world. Among many other benefits, being able to redeem in so many currencies helps our clients save money on conversion fees they’d otherwise have to pay.
3. How easy is the integration of NeoCurrency’s Gift Card API?
The team here at NeoCurrency takes pride in our ability to quickly and easily support clients who are integrating into our gift card API. This includes:
• A four-tier account service support structure
• Fast access to sandbox account access with test funds
• Same day/24-hour turn time on technical questions during integration
• Fast production turn time
We’ve been grateful to have clients praise us on our integration support and turn-time. If APIs provide real-time access to rewards, the team supporting the integration should be as real-time as possible during the set-up, too.
4. What kind of account support does NeoCurrency offer?
Taking care of our clients is something we’ve prided ourselves on since we started the company. We focus relentlessly on providing:
• Global multi-time zone account service support
• 24/7 self-service access and control to your API via an account dashboard
• Real-time, self-service reporting available 24/7
• Full program assets available for download 24/7 (brand logos, T&Cs, card images, etc) within your dashboard
• 4-tiered account service support structure that includes customer service, client success, executive and C-level contacts
5. What are the KPIs of their Gift Card API?
At NeoCurrency, we work hard to make sure your rewards are getting where they need to go, when you want them to get there. We are proud to consistently track in the very top of some critical industry KPIS including:
• 99.999% uptime
• 0.002% error rate
• 1-2 second avg API response time
6. What are the costs and fees associated with NeoCurrency’s API?
We’re allergic to fees here at NeoCurrency which is why you’ll pay:
• NO set-up fees
• NO transaction fees
• NO delivery fees
• NO email template fees
• NO email delivery fees
• NO SaaS fees
• NO hosting/service fees
• NO minimums
Our pricing is simple. Our clients pay as they go for the reward content they order through the API. We have a global rate that can be sent for review, and pricing is accessed in the client’s API dashboard for viewing and reporting 24/7.
Summary
Today’s Gift Card APIs are very different than the ones I began implementing with clients 10 years ago. Your program deserves the best reward API provider; one that offers a comprehensive solution that not only meets but exceeds industry standards and offers you the scalability, security, content, and global reach to make your programs successful.
I hope you find this list to be helpful, and I’d be happy to answer any other questions you may have about the general gift card API marketplace or, specifically, our NeoCurrency reward API solution. All of us at NeoCurrency think we have something uniquely special here, and we’d love to share it with you in detail.