Starbucks Gift Card Marketing: The Secret Behind the Brand’s Success!

How Does Starbucks Incentivize Its Customers?

Starbucks gift cards are available at designated Starbucks stores in China. Customers may also purchase cards at any sales channels such as the Starbucks mobile application and Tmall Store. Moreover, these cards are reloadable and can be used to redeem branded merchandise incentives.

For this year, the famous coffee brand is giving away free laptop sleeves and pouches to its Chinese customers for every purchase of Starbucks gift cards.

This promotion greatly incentivizes customers as they can use SB gift cards every time they make transactions with the brand.

Likewise, the freebie merchandise would be very useful for them. The fact that the items are branded with the Starbucks logo makes them more appealing to its patrons.

Note: 

Customers are encouraged to visit Starbucks’ official website for the gift card terms and conditions.

Gift Card Marketing: How Does Starbucks Benefit From It?

Using gift cards in marketing is undeniably a smart strategy to engage customers. But aside from this, here are a few reasons Starbucks gain many benefits from this promotional campaign.

1. Gift Cards Build Brand Awareness

Since most gift cards are branded with a business name or logo, they serve as an ever-present ad for your company every time cardholders open their wallets. Arguably, they are the most cost-effective marketing any business can implement as they offer a compelling incentive to visit their stores or websites. Moreover, cardholders act as brand ambassadors.

Starbucks gift card is printed with their iconic logo; thus, anyone who can see the card will recognise that this card belongs to the famous coffee brand.

2. Exclusive GCs Help Increase Foot Traffic

Gift cards are a good conversation starter. Likewise, they are positive word-of-mouth about a business. For instance, current customers are pleased with the products and services of the card provider, they more likely to want their friends and colleague to experience the same kind of satisfaction.

If this happens, the current customer will return to the store with their friends, thereby increasing store foot traffic.

Being a legend in the industry, there’s no doubt that the quality of service Starbucks offers in China helps them get more clients in-store. But offering gift cards to their customers makes them create noise in the country.

3. Gift Cards are Easy to Promote and Display

Most physical cards are offered over the store counter. A staff simply provide basic details about this promotion and encourages them to avail of the item.

In addition, it is not really necessary to allot a designated shelf or rack to display the cards and free merchandise. The space near the counter is definitely enough for them.

4. Physical GCs Minimize Fraud

The data breaches that have been happening the past year or so brought security of personal information to the forefront of people’s minds. Gift cards can reduce stealing personal information since gift cards don’t carry any, and they aren’t easily duplicated like paper gift certificates.

For Starbucks, customers do not have to provide your personal identity information if the total purchase amount of the Starbucks Gift Cards at any one transaction does not reach to RMB 10,000. Cardholders only need to provide certain identification documents if the total purchase reach RMB 10,000 or more for one transaction.

5. Gift Card Marketing Foster Customers’ Loyalty

Using gift cards in tandem with a reward program builds relationships with customers. For instance, a business can offer redeemable merchandise once customers purchase a certain amount of products. This strategy will give them more reason to visit the shop as they know they will gain something if they continue using their card.

For Starbucks, they immediately get their free merchandise once they purchase any Starbucks gift cards.

6. Gift Cards can Boost Revenue

Gift cards are certainly a good deal for businesses. These can guarantee that cardholders will visit anytime to purchase something in their store. Furthermore, statistics show that two out of three customers are more likely to spend 38% more than their gift card value.

With that said, the gift card marketing strategy can ultimately help business boost their revenue!

In another coffee shop promotion:

Nothing attracts consumers more than a bright yellow point of sale display that showcases your promotional coffee shop products like Ông Bầu! Find endearing merchandise like bags and mags here!

Wrapping this Up,

Gift card marketing is a concrete strategy to get new customers and retain current ones. However, though using gift cards as part of promotion has its benefits, it also has risks. And the best way to prevent such a possibility is to do your own research and seek help from those who have a background and deeper understanding of this marketing strategy.

What Can ODM Offer?

For almost two decades in the marketing and outsourcing industry, the ODM team has already witnessed how the market has evolved. We’ve seen what marketing strategies and promotional products have failed and succeeded in the market. Witnessing all these makes us understand and analyse what best fits different businesses in the various industries.

So whether you are in the cosmetic, healthcare, F&B or hospitality business and looking for a company to assist with your possible gift card marketing, we are here to offer our expertise. We can help your company to design and create the free or redeemable merchandise you may include in your GC marketing.

From seasonal promotional merchandise to premium packaging, our creative team from Mindsparkz will help you choose the design you need. Click the button below to see our previous works and our services.

Other promotional items to consider when running a gift card marketing campaign…

Starbucks gift with purchase ideas are surely tempting, however, the brand may also consider custom promotional products such as what we have below.

The intelligent heating warmer plate coffee warmer allows users to maintain a constant temperature (131°F / 55°C) throughout the day and enjoy hot coffee, tea, drink, etc., at any time in winter.

This promotional water bottle idea is powered by smart technology. This water bottle has a sensor that enables it to display the temperature of the drinks inside.

This power bank, designed as a phone holder, allows users to recharge their phones and watch movies or play online games hands-free. Geared with 10000mAh, it can power up multiple devices simultaneously.

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