Why This Year is the Year For Gift Cards in Your Pharmacy

The Holidays this year are going to be a little different. In the early days of November, we’ve already seen early “Black Friday” sales. Shopper budgets, fulfillment concerns and continued social distancing recommendations will no doubt continue to change the holiday season landscape.

These new circumstances might call for an adjustment in strategy for retail pharmacies during the holiday season. One that leverages the essential nature of your business but also promotes retail purchases.

An amazing way to accomplish this is through gift cards.

Gift cards represent an easy way to drive revenue and create new customer relationships. And they are an added convenience for your existing customers too.  Here’s why they work so well.

• Over half the people who receive a gift card come back multiple times to spend the balance. This is a built in start to a loyal customer. Not only are you reaching new customers when someone who’s never been to your pharmacy receives a gift card, those new customers have to keep coming back. Take this opportunity to sign them up for your customer loyalty program so that the benefits keep coming
• Gift card recipients overspend their gift cards. Customers with gift cards buy more than they usually would because it’s like a built in coupon.  The best part for you is that it’s a coupon someone else paid for. Most gift card recipients overspend their card balance by at least 20%.  Of those that overspend 75% spend 60% more than the card value.
• Gift cards are better than gift certificates. A quality, well designed gift card is way better than a flimsy piece of paper stuffed into an envelope.  Stores that move to gift cards over certificates sell more of these items.
• The gift card transaction doesn’t cost anything. Many small businesses balk at the cost of having gift cards printed.  It’s an automatic hit on the value of the card because you had to pay to have those cards created.  But once you have the cards, there are no transaction fees to use them. No credit card network taking a piece of your transaction. No interchange fees or chargebacks.  It’s a transaction that’s completely processed within your Pharmacy POS system (at least with a POS from RMS).
• While Gift Cards are a popular holiday season gift, Birthdays are actually the most popular reason people buy gift cards. This means that even though you might stock up for the holiday season, you’ll sell gift cards year round.

Once you make the decision to sell gift cards in your pharmacy, the next step is to optimize gift card sales. Here’s a throw back article with some still great tips for gift card sales.

Let us know how gift cards work for you this holiday season. And as always, we’re here to help if you have questions.