A Guide to Shopify Gift Cards

What are Shopify gift cards?

I am sure everyone reading this has received a gift card at some point in their life. You know, that thing you sometimes get that is kind of like money but not as good because it only works at one place? Well, joking aside, these things can actually be pretty sweet for your business, especially with the super flu doing damage to business bank accounts the way it is.

Fortunately for users of all Shopify plans, they have decided to give their gift card feature away, normally reserved members paying more for their Shopify store. This is awesome for long time eCommerce websites and brick and mortar businesses that want to give people away to support them. Even a coffee shop can benefit from selling a gift card to help pay the bills now, just as long as they have the coffee beans later to fulfil the order.

The reason for Shopify’s generosity is that gift cards are proving to be a right boon to businesses during these crappy times, allowing customers to support businesses they love, help ease people and businesses into online commerce and to potentially increase the lifetime value of customers by using them as rewards and incentives.

So now anyone with Shopify can easily create, manage and distribute gift cards for people to purchase and use on their store. Cheers Shopify!

Why should you use Shopify gift cards?

As mentioned above, gift cards are a great way to get more money upfront in these tight times, helping your business stay afloat to sell another day. As people share the Shopify gift cards around, new customers will be introduced to you which will help grow your audience and you business. The ability to distribute these gift cards as rewards for purchasing is awesome too, massively increasing your return customer rate.

The biggest reason for selling gift cards on your Shopify store is the ability to get cash up front for the stock you can sell later. This is going to help lots during these troubling times and is the whole reason that all Shopify plans have been given this option. And of course, the obvious possibility that someone may buy a gift card and forget to use it later, or give it to someone who doesn’t ever use it. In this case, free money!

How can you create and manage Shopify gift cards?

Creating a gift card is very similar to creating a product, it is even filed under the product menu. So you can head over there to get started. Shopify’s intuitive interface makes it very simple with similarity, and you should feel instantly comfortable with it. Pick the denominations that people can buy or receive and they will be set as product variants. It really is incredibly easy. Of course, instead of a product being shipped to them, they will receive an email with a unique code that you can use to track it’s use.

How can you distribute Shopify gift cards?

There are two main ways Shopify store owners can distribute their gift cards, they can…

Sell gift cards

When you create a gift card, you have the ability to make it available as a product on your site and add it to collections. This is the way to do it if you want to use gift cards to get money now for sales later and improve your current capital situation.

Issue gift cards

Another way to distribute Shopify gift cards is to give them away for free. You can do this by going to Products > Gift Cards and hitting the Issue Gift Card button. Then just follow the instructions to input the data of the person receiving the gift card and away you go. You might want to make these of a lesser value that they can use towards a purchase, or look into discount codes instead.

How can you track Shopify gift cards?

Once created and sent out, you can find a menu in the gift card section of Shopify which includes all the gift cards you have sold or issued. From here you can go in and see all the customer and current credit information related to it, including how much of the card they have already used and what remains. You can edit all of this from here too.

What ways can you market your Shopify gift cards?

Personally, I would use the following two ecommerce marketing strategy staples...

Email marketing

A strong source of potential sales built from a strong audience, your email marketing list is always a go to when it comes to getting the word out about anything. After you have created a gift card or two, spread the word to your supporters with a friendly email. You can also use this to promote competitions where you give them away as prizes.

Social media

Another go to for spreading the good word to fans of your eCommerce enterprise. You can get things started organically with some public posts but if you really want to kick things off then a couple of cheeky campaigns to boost them by targeting your fan lists and remarketing audiences about your gift card sales or competitions related to them will greatly accelerate your results.