How to Promote your Gift Vouchers
As an accommodation owner, Gift Vouchers are one of the most powerful features you can have at your disposal.
This feature supports your cash flow by securing you a sale now, for a booking in the future. The flexibility of voucher values also make it a great opportunity to upsell to these guests when a voucher is redeemed.
Now that you’ve enabled Gift Vouchers on your Property Management System, it’s time to let people know about it.
Marketing the sale of gift vouchers around a special occasion – like Christmas or Easter – makes this a perfect gift choice for customers who are looking for something different to spoil their loved ones (or even themselves!).
If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some ideas for you to keep top of mind when promoting gift vouchers for your accommodation.
1. Put them everywhere.
When we say everywhere, we mean it.
While “marketing” might automatically lead us to think about an online strategy, there are multiple touch points that are offline too: think registration desks, restaurants, outdoor areas, menu boards.
Guests that are staying with you are likely to purchase a voucher for a future stay if they have enjoyed themselves. You can take advantage of this by making sure your guests have easy access to information about your Gift Vouchers.
2. Sell directly on your website.
To encourage your guests to take advantage of this feature and purchase a voucher for your accommodation, you need to give them eye-catching information about how it works.
Your guests will want to know how they can pay for it, how someone can redeem the voucher, and when the voucher expires.
To make sure this information is easily accessible, you can:
- Make use of eye-catchers, or
- Create a page on your website, or
- Publish a blog post with this important information
3. Market your vouchers via email.
Do you make contact with your database of past-guest email addresses? If not, this would be a great opportunity to start.
Send out an email to your database of customers who have previously stayed with you, and offer them all the information they need to make a decision to purchase from you.
To sweeten the deal, you could offer a discount on a voucher purchase, exclusively to your email list – e.g. selling £100 voucher for only £80.
In the theme of packaging these vouchers around special events, you could use this in the introduction of your emails (i.e. why you’re getting in touch with them now).
4. Use your social media platforms.
Your guests – new or returning – won’t know about this feature unless you tell them about it. There are a number of platforms you can make use of to market your vouchers, including Facebook, Instagram and Google My Business.
Use your social media platforms to encourage your audience to purchase gift vouchers and provide information about how they can safely make these purchases online. Inspire your users by reminding them why a stay with you is one worth purchasing in advance.
When you have your information set up on your website, make sure you share these links with your following and community online.
5. Run a competition.
As much as we all enjoy giving… receiving is a good feeling, too. Incentivise the purchase of a gift voucher over a special occasion (e.g. Christmas time) with a mini raffle competition you’re running too.
Each purchase then stands a chance to be selected as a winner, and can then receive a gift voucher to the value of your choosing.
Enabling the feature is the first step, and letting people know about it is the next. If you’re getting stuck along the way with getting this set up, get in touch with our friendly support team for quick assistance.
Our team is always available to answer any questions you have, If you need any help with Gift Vouchers, get in touch with us.
Happy selling!