When you purchase gift cards to support your customer, employee, and research programs, it’s obvious that you have to budget for the value of those rewards. But you should also be budgeting for a gift card platform, which creates a much more streamlined process for managing digital rewards, in comparison to ordering directly from the retailers.
How much you should budget for a gift card platform depends on many factors — and given the current economic uncertainty, cost will likely influence your purchasing decision. Here are three important questions to ask.
READ MORE: Why a Gift Card Platform Belongs in Every Team’s Tech Stack
Different rewards tools have different pricing structures, so start by asking about upfront costs. Any subscription fees are easy to budget for, since you know exactly what they are and how often they will be billed. Make sure you’re clear on what features are included at that cost and what add-ons may be available to tailor the tool to your needs.
With any type of digital rewards program, there will always be some recipients who never redeem their reward. What happens to those unclaimed rewards can greatly affect your budget. Check to see if the gift card platform refunds you the value so you can put that money toward future rewards. If the provider keeps those, as many do, then it will be much more difficult for you to fully understand your cost, since it depends on the claim rate.
No matter what type of technology you’re purchasing, your leadership is going to want to see the ROI before they agree to keep budgeting for it in the future. That’s why it’s key to consider the reporting capabilities of a gift card platform. Without the right data tracking, it won’t be as easy to demonstrate the value of the tool. For instance, many platforms don’t allow you to see the claim rates and reward status, so you don’t know how many recipients actually redeemed their gift card. That means you can report only on the number of rewards sent, which leaves a big hole in determining the success of the program.
Another way to show the ROI of purchasing a gift card platform is by calculating the amount of time that it will save for your team. Collecting email addresses, juggling spreadsheets, buying gift cards directly from each retailer, and manually distributing those codes is a big hassle. When you add up the hours that would be taken away from other, more business-critical tasks, a digital gift card platform will likely pay for itself just in time savings.
Cost still a concern? Check out these four tips on protecting your reward incentives budget so you can make your dollars go further.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
