Grow your business—offer gift cards!

by Larry Meyer
MRA Chairman and CEO

Your Association’s new gift card program is such good news we’re trying some new ways to get the word out.

For the months of June and July, we’re using a combination of radio, billboard and print advertising in the Kalamazoo area to communicate how gift cards can grow your retail business.

We’re limiting the campaign to the Kalamazoo area right now because we want to test market it. While the multimedia strategy is hardly a novel approach, it is a departure from MRA’s heavy reliance on direct mail.

The ads are targeted at two audiences: existing members who have not yet signed up for the program, and potential members who will recognize the benefits of gift cards and sign up for the service along with MRA membership. Growing our membership helps everybody, of course, by increasing MRA’s strength and financial clout in negotiating the best services at the lowest cost for members.

Top service, low cost—that’s one reason why MRA’s electronic gift card program is so exciting. It enables smaller retailers to sell customized gift cards and compete with their larger colleagues who have found gift cards to be a highly popular—and profitable—new product.

And there’s no doubt that the credit-card-size, plastic gift cards are big sellers. Last year’s $38 billion total was 20 percent more than the year before and double the figure for 1998. The average family will buy six gift cards this year—if not from you, then from someone else.

In fact, gift cards can be merchandized just like any other product that’s subject to planned or impulse buys. Contrast that to time-consuming paper gift certificates that are kept out of sight and out of shoppers’ minds.

The administrative ease of gift cards also tops gift certificates in all respects, making it both a profitable and easy-to-maintain program. You can sell cards with pre-set denominations or allow customers to add any value to the cards.

Gift cards sell all year and are especially hot at Christmas. But here’s the closer—don’t wait until Halloween or Thanksgiving to realize you need a gift card program. Because it takes several weeks to get you up and running, especially if you want your store’s name and logo or some other custom design on your cards, you’ll want to start right away to avoid the pre-Christmas rush.

So if you live and work in the Kalamazoo area or you pass through there, look and listen for the new ads in the local media. Let us know what you think of the campaign and if it would be effective elsewhere in Michigan.

You’ll also need to call MRA to set up your own gift card program. You know the number: 800.366.3699 or www.retailers.com.