MARKETING WITH GIFT CERTIFICATES

My gift shop is celebrating a milestone anniversary this coming month, and I am using that event to market my store.... I started out by emailing a free $5 gift certificate to my store and website to my entire customer email database (around 1200). Then I said, what the heck, and opened it up to the world...

I am giving away $5 gift certificates to EVERYONE. I am promoting it on Twitter, my store's Facebook Page, giveaway sites, my website. I posted announcements in local online sites, and I emailed my entire database their own copy. If they desire one, they can print it off my website. I have no minimum purchase requirement, the only restriction is a limit of one per customer per day, they cannot get cash back, and the one open to the world expires in 3 weeks, the one to my stores customer list expires in 5 weeks. My total cost=$0. Until they get redeemed - the point being that MOST people who are going to bring it in are going to actually shop and spend well over the face value.

I am also planning on an Anniversary Bash for in the store later in the month, and will be inviting personal friends, neighbors, pta friends, my fellow chamber members, and my best and favorite customers. There will be a $5 gift certificate in with each invitation.

This might make some retailers nervous, but I have done this before on a smaller scale with $10 gift certificates to my top customers, and it was successful. (For the faint of heart, only 1 person spent the face value, most spent loads more). I chose a smaller denomination of $5 this time to try it on a larger scale. I'll update as we go....