Think that summer isn’t a busy season for buying gift cards? Even though we’re far away from the peak gift buying season of December we’re not so sure. There are a growing number of occasions throughout the summer months where it makes sense for your business to be gift card ready.
From treating teachers and carers, to employee gifts and summer parties, to wedding celebrations there are numerous situations where we believe businesses being gift card ready is extremely important. We’ve shared our thoughts on each of these below so have a read through and please do let us know what you think.
End of school year gifts
If you’re responsible for children then you’ll already be familiar with end of term gifting to the favourite teachers and carers of your little ones. Of course there’s no obligation to give these gifts but it has become commonplace to give a token to teachers at end of term.
We know that boxes of chocolates, best teacher mugs, and bottles of wine are well established favourites, but more and more people are opting for gift cards. If you’re a business who operates near a school why not run an end of school year campaign for your gift cards? Everybody wins as parents get the convenience of a gift card, they support a local business, and you potentially get a new customer in the form of a teacher who works in the area and is likely to become a repeat customer.
If your business is selling gift cards to parents you might be interested in some of our A+ crave.cards features. With our cards you can decide when gift cards are active from, which is great for gifting to teachers. Your customers can be organised parents or guardians and buy gift cards in advance, and then set them up so they’re only active from a date of their choosing. This a super handy way to make sure the cards are valid from the last day of the school term.
Employee summer holiday tax free bonus
You might remember that last year there was an expansion to the small benefits exemption scheme where employers are now allowed to gift up to €1,000 tax free to each employee in one year. Under the current scheme employers can gift a maximum of two vouchers per year to a total maximum value of €1,000 a year to an employee. We wrote about it at the time, you can read our post here if you’d like some more detail on the scheme and how to use it for your gift cards.
If your business is targeting gift cards to employers, for example to give their employees a tax free summer holiday bonus, you might be interested in our corporate crave.cards feature. We give people the ability to batch order gift cards, cutting down on the resources needed to organise and deliver gift cards. Employers can either order all cards to go to one person in an organisation for them to dispense or upload individual details for each employee and they’ll get their card directly.
We also have a function that allows employers to make unlimited top-ups so they can instruct their employees to register and hold onto their cards. If employers want to give a second tax free gift later in the year they can easily do this using the same card details as their earlier gift.
Summer party gifting
If you are a business who hosts corporate parties you’ll already know that the summer months are prime time for work parties. If you’d like to give employers an alternative to putting a tab behind the bar why not offer them the option to give each employee a gift card that’s already topped up with a set amount to cover their food and drinks?
With our crave.cards you could even create a bespoke card that’s tailored to the event itself and includes their food and drinks for the event. It cuts out the hassle of food and drinks tokens, makes it easier to make sure each individual gets a fair share of the party, and takes the headache out of settling a tab at the end of the event.
Wedding gifting
Wedding season is coming up and if you’ve ever been invited to one you’ll know that the topic of what to bring as a gift can be a tricky thing to navigate. While some couples are happy to receive any gifts, others follow a ‘your presence is present enough’ model, and more recently there’s been a movement where couples will ask for cash only gifts.
If you have a business or products that people think of as wedding appropriate then this is prime time to offer gift cards for your business as wedding presents. If you’re a retailer who people create wedding registry lists with it makes sense to offer gift cards as an option for the registry. If you’re a hotel or restaurant, especially if you’re a honeymoon destination, you can create a bespoke wedding gift card to offer to your customers.
Wedding vendor gift cards
If you’re a business who offer wedding related services like hair and make-up, wedding cakes, florist, suit hire, wedding planning services, hen or stag events, why not consider offering a gift card option for people? It can be a great way to help couples to manage their costs, pre-pay part of their bills, or just help them to cover their expenses in general.
With crave.cards we have some features that might be of interest for wedding gift cards. We have digital and physical options available for gift cards, both of which are great for wedding gifting. If you can’t attend a wedding but still want to send a gift, a digital gift card is an ideal option. If you’re attending a wedding and want a physical card there are lots of beautiful presentation boxes to choose from that will elevate the look and feel of the gift.
Whether you want to offer gift cards for end of school year, employee rewards, or wedding gifts we believe that crave.cards is the right gift card provider for you. If you don’t already have a gift card provider why not let us give you a demonstration of what we can offer you. Sign up for a demo here and the team will be in touch soon.
If you already have a gift card provider but are interested in learning more about crave.cards and potentially switching we’d be happy to have a chat with you. Drop us a line here and we’ll come back to you soon.
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