GiftCard Partners Blog

Most companies' biggest "cost" is personnel. Manpower is expensive to the organization and the workers always feel they could be making more money. Employees that are less satisfied with their jobs are less helpful to the end consumer, who then spends less with the organization. Keeping your workforce happy is correlated to your profit margins. Offering employees incentives is a great way to set guidelines for employees to work for certain incentive rewards. Based on what behavior is fulfilled incentives can range from a small denomination gift card to a popular retailer such as
The Cheesecake Factory, to a paid vacation, or extra time off. Keeping your employees happy will keep your company healthy.
For more information on why keeping your employees happy can help cover your profit margins check out this article from the New York Times.

It is great in today's business environment to see a large national brand sticking to its roots, what made it successful. Whole Foods is doing just that with its Local Producer Loan Program.

Gift cards were at the top of shoppers' lists again in 2013, and while we are still waiting on total evaluation of the 2013 holiday season there are some stand-out data points from NRF's initial holiday survey in October. Gift card spending was up again, with consumers averaging $45.16 per card, up from $43.75 last year. Men were forecast to be bigger spenders  than women, averaging $171.35 vs. $155.42 respectively. Gift cards' continued popularity lies in the 43.1% of consumers who think it is more meaningful to allow the gift recipient to choose their own gift. 25.3% of consumers still find gift cards too impersonal, but the former group hold the largest share of the buying power. Gift card popularity looks to be a big part of the holiday mix, and doesn't seem to be at risk of losing popularity in 2014.
For more information on gift cards' holiday popularity check out this article from the NRF.

We know gift cards are an effective employee gift or reward and make a great addition to an incentive program for employers. In this space we rarely talk about how effective gift cards are in driving sales for retailers. First Data just released a new study which uncovered convincing evidence that gift cards provide major advantages to retailers too.

Gift cards have been a hot topic in the news over the past few weeks. The holiday season is a big time for gift card shoppers and sellers alike. The National Retail Federation released survey results indicating that this holiday season 8 in 10 shoppers would be reaching for a gift card, totaling a spend of $29.8 billion. That’s a lot of plastic! We’ve seen gift cards used as a go-to for celebrities like Beyoncé, who handed out more than $37,000 worth in Walmart cards in Massachusetts last month to promote her new album, as damage control from companies like UPS and Amazon to apologize for late packages, and also the unfortunate side of what happens when technology goes wrong as in the case of Target’s 40,000 faulty gift cards, which were not activated properly.