Considering using a gift card API to sell digital gift cards on your website? Now might be the perfect time.
Today, gift cards are much more than just birthday or holiday gifts. All kinds of businesses are integrating gift cards into their offering. They’re a great way to boost your income quickly and provide customers with flexibility and convenience. They can also help promote loyalty and brand awareness and bring new customers on board.
According to a Research and Markets report, the gift card industry is expected to grow with a cumulative annual growth rate of 8.8% between 2021 and 2025.
A digital gift card API is the best way to integrate gift cards into your business. Thanks to API technology, it’s easier than ever to sell digital gift cards online.
In this post, we’ll discuss how your business can benefit from selling gift cards and why using an API is the most convenient solution.
Get your Reloadly API keys and start selling gift cards to your customers today.
The growing popularity of gift cards
Gift cards are nothing new, but the popularity of digital gift cards has grown in recent years. This is, in part, due to the Covid pandemic. People needed a simple way to purchase and send gifts to family even if they couldn’t be together in person. Digital gift cards allowed people to send and receive thoughtful gifts that could be redeemed easily online.
Digital gift cards are flexible, as the recipient can choose exactly what they want to buy and when. They’re also easy to use and protect from fraud.
As well as selling gift cards for your products and services, you can offer vouchers for third-party retailers as an additional service or as part of your reward or loyalty program.
How companies are using digital gift cards
When most people think of gift cards, they think of vouchers for retail stores, given as gifts. While this remains the most popular use for gift cards, they are now used for many things beyond just retail shopping.
Here are some examples of industries benefitting from gift cards in their offering.
NGOs
Charities can integrate gift cards into their platforms, meaning that donors can make contributions in the form of gift cards. So, for example, they can choose to pay electricity bills or put money on a supermarket gift card to help people with grocery shopping.
Mobile games
Gaming companies have successfully integrated digital gift cards, which people can use either to buy games or for in-game purchases.
Digital research firms
To incentivize customers to complete surveys, digital research firms can offer a selection of gift cards as a reward for people’s valuable time and responses.
HR platforms
HR platforms can integrate digital gift cards, meaning that a company’s HR team could build an internal company reward system using popular gift cards.
Academic institutions
Finally, academic institutions and universities can use digital gift cards as rewards and prizes for high-performing students.
8 benefits of adding gift cards to your website or app
If you are wondering whether to integrate a digital gift card API into your business, here are 8 ways your company can benefit.
1. Increase brand awareness
When people purchase gift cards as a gift for friends or relatives, they may be introducing someone new to your brand. This means gift cards are a chance for you to reach a wider audience and increase awareness of your brand.
2. Low cost and effort
Selling digital gift cards requires little upfront investment.
There are no shipping or manufacturing costs needed to produce digital gift cards. All you need to do to sell gift cards on your site is use a gift card API or a WordPress plugin.
3. Flexibility
You can customize your gift cards for different values, currencies and locations to meet the needs of your customers.
This means you can provide a positive customer experience and give people exactly what they want.
4. Ease of use
People can easily buy digital gift cards from you and receive their gift cards instantly.
They can then spend them at their convenience online.
5. Repeat purchases
Customers who receive a gift card and spend it online could likely purchase again if the experience is positive.
You can use gift cards to promote customer loyalty by offering special offers and discounts for repeat purchases.
6. Overspending
There’s a good chance that people will overspend when they redeem a gift card.
If the gift card’s value is $50, they are more likely to spend it all and even overspend rather than having a few dollars left over on the card. Research suggests people spend 59 dollars more on average than the gift card value.
7. Upfront sale
When a customer purchases a gift card, the retailer receives payment upfront. This means that the company still profits, regardless of whether the card is redeemed.
8. Encourage brand loyalty
Offering gift cards as part of a reward scheme can help you build customer trust. They will feel that the experience with your brand is positive and be more likely to come back to you again and again.
What is a gift card API?
An API is a messenger between two software programs, allowing them to connect and send information back and forth.
There are many benefits to implementing APIs in your business. Many companies use API technology to add more functionalities to their software without needing to code everything from scratch. APIs allow developers to create new tools using existing frameworks.
With a gift card API, you can integrate gift cards for different retailers into your mobile or desktop app. If you don’t have developers on your team or don’t wish to invest in development costs, you can use a gift card plugin instead.
From one end point, the API gives you access to catalogs of gift cards, enabling benefits and features of global activation and redemption. You’ll be able to sell gift cards globally, with a secure activation process protecting against theft and fraud.
How a gift card API safeguards against fraud
Unfortunately, gift cards are an attractive target for scammers due to their ease of purchase, transaction speed and transferability.
According to data from the Federal Trade Commission of the USA, in the first nine months of 2021, almost 40,000 people reported gift card fraud, with $148 million stolen using gift cards.
However, the good news is you significantly reduce the risk of fraud when you sell digital gift cards using an API.
Gift cards sold through an API are more secure, and only the intended recipients of gift card transactions can use them. This is because when gift cards are activated with encrypted software, gift card retailers can verify that the card is being used authentically by the owner.
It’s also essential to educate your customers so they know exactly how to redeem their cards and are aware that they should not give away gift card details over the phone.
Creating a successful gift card API strategy
If you want to sell gift cards online, here are some tips for designing your gift card marketing strategy.
- Gift cards as rewards — Gift cards can be highly desirable and a great way to incentivize your customers. Use them as prizes for games or events or to reward responses to marketing surveys.
- Use lead magnets — Create landing pages for your gift card campaigns where you can capture emails and phone numbers. You can then use email or SMS marketing to send new offers to gift card recipients.
- Run social media or influencer campaigns — Use your preferred social media platforms and influencers to draw attention to your gift card promotions.
- Plan campaigns around the calendar — Promote your gift cards at strategic times throughout the year, especially in the lead-up to celebrations like Christmas or Black Friday.
- Create a loyalty or referral campaign — Gift cards are great for building customer trust and loyalty. You can reward referrals with gift cards or offer a gift card when people spend a certain amount in your store.
- Track gift card analytics — It’s important to track analytics related to sales of your gift cards. You can look at traffic and traffic sources and how much people spend when they redeem the vouchers.
How to use Reloadly’s Gift Card API
You can start your digital gift card strategy today using Reloadly’s API.
All you have to do is sign up to Reloadly – it’s free, and there’s no contract required. You can easily integrate your website or app to distribute gift cards in bulk around the globe in a matter of seconds.
Choose from more than 300 different retailers, including popular brands such as Amazon, Apple, Roblox, and more. Then, track and analyze your gift card distribution metrics in one dashboard.
If you need assistance getting set up, you can contact us or follow our quickstart guides to purchasing or sending gift card codes with Reloadly’s API, either by using a C# application, or a Go application.
Don’t miss out on the benefits of selling digital gift cards with an API
You can’t go wrong with gift cards for friends or family members, and now is a great time to consider implementing digital gift cards into your online business.
From increasing brand awareness, improving customer experience and boosting trust, there are many benefits to selling digital gift cards on your website or app. What’s more, with Reloadly’s API, you have a quick, easy and secure way to sell gift cards online.
Get your Reloadly API keys and start selling gift cards to your customers today.
