The big holidays for maximising gift voucher sales

3 min read

Try our marketing strategies for maximising gift voucher sales by taking advantage of the top 10 biggest holidays this year.

To maximise your gift voucher sales, you need a creative and reliable marketing strategy. Read on to see the strategies you can implement.

It’s a good idea to routinely have gift voucher campaigns throughout the year. Your customers will grow accustomed to your offerings, and will likely think about purchasing a voucher the following year if they had missed out this past year. If that sounds daunting, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered!

See below for our top 10 big events throughout the year to focus your gift voucher marketing strategy on!

 

Maximising gift voucher sales

1. January  New Years offers

January is often a time of year where everyone has no cash to spend leftover from a busy and expensive Christmas. But don’t forget the money-savvy crowd out there who can’t resist a tempting deal when on offer.

How to provide gift voucher offers? There are two options:

Offer a discount on vouchers

Discounts are a very lucrative way to sell more vouchers as there are many ways to offer discounted vouchers.  You can choose to give a discount off a group of vouchers, or you can give a monetary amount off a certain type of voucher. The best way to do this is to sell discounted vouchers for non-peak times. The best voucher sales should benefit your business in the toughest time periods.

E.g.

“50% off weekday stay vouchers”

Or

“Overnight Sunday stay with Dinner, bed & breakfast for two, was £450 Now £300”

Offer added value

Using words like ‘free’ or ‘complimentary’ creates a feeling of value to the customer (they get more than what they’re paying for). Offering tangible additions to the voucher creates a similar feeling of added value.

E.g. “Overnight night stay in our luxury suite with a complimentary 3-course dinner for two”.

2. Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is a huge day in the hospitality industry. Most couples celebrate by being whisked away for a romantic treat. As a hotel, you can capitalise on this by offering everything: spa vouchers, golf, a romantic dinner, an overnight stay – maybe even a package that includes a combination of the above!

It’s important to ensure that you make the offerings different from the standard for this one-off event. Creating a feeling of exclusivity to your guests, which they wouldn’t get otherwise.

You need to market appropriately, most men will leave valentine day preparation to the last minute, you can capitalise on this with intelligent well-timed campaigns.

e.g Romantic Spa getaway with champagne and strawberries exclusively for valentines

3. Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is an easy event to capitalise on, as it’s so much easier to create a marketing campaign with a direct persona in mind. A nice event that seems to be popular to offer at Mother’s Day is luxury afternoon tea, spa day, -anything girly that is a luxurious treat works well!

E.G “Say thank you in style this Mother’s Day by splashing out and indulging in an afternoon tea treat for two”.

4. Easter

Easter isn’t as popular of time as other events throughout the year, but still an event you can work with!  Easter campaigns tend to be more successful if your hotel markets to families with children. However, a simple marketing campaign for Easter to please most is to push out restaurant vouchers. Specifically vouchers with an Easter Sunday Lunch or an Easter theme Afternoon Tea.

Don’t forget to use enticing and descriptive wording to catch the buyer’s attention.

e.g. Treat the family to our special Easter Sunday afternoon tea including a delicious selection of sandwiches, nostalgic homemade cakes and pastries.

5. May bank holiday

The Bank holiday can be a useful filler event throughout the year to market your vouchers on offer again. Sales usually decrease this time of year as events die down.

Depending on your chosen strategy as in January, you can either offer vouchers with a discount or an added value if you don’t like to discount your vouchers.

Another great way to inspire a quick sale is to offer your vouchers with a limited offering only.

Limiting offerings of vouchers create a sense of urgency, especially on an area of sales that need a quick boost.

Using a subject line “Hurry, Ends Midnight”, works for both men and Millennials.

6. Father’s Day

Just like Mother’s Day. It is always easier to direct marketing for your vouchers for a specific persona. Choose voucher offerings that Dad’s will gravitate towards. E.g. Golf, food, overnight stay are always winners!

7. Summer holidays

Like May, the summer holidays can be used in the same way. Offer “Summer Sales” or bespoke packages that are only available throughout the summertime.  Considering the same techniques, whether it is discounts, added values or limited offerings.

8. Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Black Friday weekend is the biggest gift voucher sales weekend of the year.

In a short space of 3 days, gift voucher sales will skyrocket! Therefore, it is extremely important that your customers know about your discounted vouchers for Black Friday.

Great ways to get the messaging out is through email campaigns, and in- house communications. Customers will expect discounts here and the heavier the better.

9. Christmas- The Big one!

Prepare for Christmas early! In the UK alone shoppers spend over £78.580 billion on gifts! Send out email campaigns promoting your vouchers at full price from as early as October.  Keep a steady flow of campaigns and reminders of your Christmas voucher offerings each month, increasing the frequency in December.

Make a variety of vouchers available to all kinds of buyers to ensure as many sales as possible. - But be sparing on discount vouchers! People need to buy gifts for Christmas so are prepared to pay a little more than usual.

Be prepared, many digital vouchers get bought as late as Christmas Eve! Running a Christmas Eve email campaign will remind those last-minute panic buyers.

A little extra- When running Christmas email campaigns, it is always a good idea to wish your customers a Merry Christmas on Christmas Day, and you could even offer a small offer of something as a Christmas gift – rewarding their loyalty.

 

10. Boxing Day – forgotten gifts

You won’t believe how many people panic buy Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Usually, it’s to try and recover a gift for a forgotten relative, or maybe they feel what they bought wasn’t enough compared to what they received. Whatever the reason- people still buy gift vouchers on Boxing Day!

Again, these vouchers don’t necessarily need to be discounted but it will always provide a small boost in sales.

Try maximising gift voucher sales by improving your marketing strategy. For more help and advice, contact us here.

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