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Thursday
December 10, 2009

Tip of the Day - Gift Cards Can Pay Off

Filed under: Tip of the Day

Wary of gift cards because they represent low margin opportunities? Think again. Recent reports from suppliers point to solid margins (as much as 40% in some cases), making gift cards a potential jackpot for distributors. Read on to find out how gift cards can be a potential cash cow.

  • Vanishing fees. It used to be that end-users holding, say, an American Express card would find that an unused card lost value over time, thanks to monthly maintenance fees imposed by AmEx. Not exactly attractive to clients hoping to market through gift cards. But that’s no longer the case. AmEx said it will drop those fees now that it’s found a cheaper way to make the cards, plus the newly-passed federal Credit Card Act of 2009 limits companies from charging these types of fees.
  • Increasing popularity. A new study by Archstone Consulting reveals that gift cards are becoming more popular than ever, even if gift card values are declining. The key for distributors is pitching the popularity of low-value cards.
  • Breakage is good for business. It’s no secret that plenty of gift cards received by end-users never get redeemed. That may be bad for retailers, but it’s a positive for distributors, since suppliers can sell gift cards at reduced rates, knowing they’ll make money through breakage.
  • Personalization pays. Personalized cards are a new way for distributors to charge extra on gift cards when quoting pricing to end-buyers. Personalization also adds a high perceived value to gift cards that the product category can’t otherwise achieve. Clients will pay extra if they know their brand name will remain in front of their target audience for as long as possible.

From Counselor’s December 2009 issue.

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Thursday
December 10, 2009

Interactive Power 50

Filed under: site updates

With last month’s announcement of the annual industry Power 50, we here at Team Central thought, “Hmmm, how can we spice this up online?” After all, it’s just a list of names …

And Since Counselor magazine was doing an extended spread in their December issue on every Power 50 player, we figured it might be kinda fun to add an interactive element to the package. So, with a little creativity and some technological finesse, the Interactive Power 50 was born!

In this cool, new ASICentral feature, you can learn about each of the Power 50 players — including their rank, reasons for ranking, comments about important industry topics — just by clicking on their headshots! Best of all, you control the tool simply by moving your mouse left or right on the screen, so you can pick who you want to learn more about and click on them. It’s that easy!

So check it out by clicking here, or on the image above.

Hope you enjoy it, and don’t hesitate to let us know what you think by emailing us at feedback@asicentral.com.

– VINteractive

 

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