Setting expectations:
Coastal Magazine Advertisement February
I first built a website for Maison Esthetique back in 2009. Since that time gift card sales and marketing has changed drastically and online sales now play an important role in generating revenue. Online sales a particular focus on holidays such as Mother’s Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Christmas and Valentines Day.
- Did you know that more than $1 billion in gift cards go unused every year?
- 93% of all consumers will buy or receive a gift card this year.
- Gift cards are the#1 most requested gift for holidays.
- 72% of customers spend more than the value of their gift card.
- More than $100 billion are spent annually on gift cards and digital gift card sales are growing at a rate of 200%.
- 20% of gift cards are sold during the winter holiday season.
Build the Team & Secure Resources
This is a small local business so the team and resources are relatively small. Jayne Patrikas and myself create and implement the process. In the case of Valentines day, we utilized a digital billboard on Route 1 North, the website and blog, Facebook, Instagram, Coastal Design Magazine, North Shore Magazine and the Bourque Family Foundation annual gala conveniently timed for a promotional opportunity in the gala program. Communicate the plan: The plan included a special of 10% off gift card purchases two weeks prior to Valentines Day. We also featured a “Sweetheart Special” that was a facial, manicure/pedicure package as well as a enter a drawing for a free facial (essentially an opportunity to collect email addresses on the website).
Build Timeline & Tasks
There are deadlines associated with creating the artwork for magazine advertisements and billboards – businesses looking to make use of their own digital signage using LED ‘transparent’ technology may want to check here to see what can be achieved by some of the leading companies in this field. That process began in early January but this is not the first time that we have done this so some of the pieces are already in place. We posted daily on Facebook and Instagram. Although not all of the posts are about pushing our sales as it is important to maintain a healthy mix.
Set up a dashboard for Tracking Success
administrative area
Most of the platforms that we use have dashboards of their own to track insights and they sync with the WordPress dashboard.
Monitor & Check-in Regularly
My greatest concern is the website functionality and processing plugin. If something fails in the respect much will be lost.
Be Willing to Adapt
Jayne’s email stopped receiving emails so I added my email address to woo commerce and relayed the product sales to her until the problem was resolved.
Communicate results and celebrate success:
Gift cards sales of the two weeks of Valentines Day exceeded $12,000.