Not so long ago, you were doomed if you realized at the 11th hour that you had left someone off your holiday list. There wasn’t much recourse other than finding a cheap box of chocolates or a funky tourist gift at the convenience store. Digital gift cards and gift certificates didn’t yet exist to rescue challenged gift-givers.
Today, however, 97 percent of the nation’s top retailers and restaurants sell gift cards online, and sales of these digital gifts are growing by 29 percent each year.1 How does this impact the MT in private practice?
To start, if you don’t offer traditional gift certificates in your practice, well, we need to have a chat—you’re ignoring one of the easiest ways to secure lucrative holiday (and yearlong) sales. And, if you don’t offer digital gift certificates or gift cards, you might be forcing clients (and potential clients) to look elsewhere for that immediate “oops-I-almost-forgot” gift they could be buying from you.
Did you know that more than one-quarter of digital gift card and certificate sales for the month of December happen between December 21 and 24?2 Are you ready to meet the needs of your clients and prospective clients, and are you ready to market yourself as a gift-giving safety net?
If yes, fantastic! You will likely reap the rewards of being able to meet the hurried holiday shopper’s needs. If not, let us help. ABMP partners with several gift card providers, including TheGiftCardCafe.com and MassageBook, to bring you options for instant gift card sales. Log in to ABMP.com and look under “Member Discounts.” Do it today, so you can be a lifesaver for your busy clients come December.
Convert Gift Certificates Into Repeat Clients
Your loyal clients appreciate the work you provide, so it makes sense they would think of you when putting their holiday gift lists together. According to ABMP’s 2015 National Consumer Survey conducted by Harstad Strategic Research, Inc., 78 percent of consumers who received a massage in 2014 are likely to purchase massage as a gift for someone else this year, with 26 percent of them being “extremely likely” to do so.
While many gift certificates go unused each year, the vast majority are redeemed. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get those gift certificate recipients to not only book that first session, but to return for many more.
How do you convert a gift certificate into a repeat client? Make sure the language you use on your gift certificates is laced with value. Your current gift certificates might read: “Enjoy a luxurious one-hour massage,” which is fine, but a newcomer to massage might only attach the word luxury to the massage experience, and think that while their session was wonderful, they better not indulge themselves more than once a year. Better benefits-centered language might read something like: “This certificate is good for a one-hour massage. Decrease your pain. Recover from injury. Manage your stress. Relax.” This tells the client, before even setting foot in your office, that massage is much more than just pampering and luxury, and might be something worth considering as part of a long-term health-care routine. This increases your chances of turning a one-time client into a longtime client.
Notes
1. Giftcards.com, “Gift Card Statistics,” accessed October 2015, http://partners.giftcards.com/statistics.
2. Thad Reuter, “Many Digital Gift Card Buyers Are Last-Minute Holiday Shoppers,” accessed October 2015, www.internetretailer.com/2012/04/25/many-digital-gift-card-buyers-are-last-minute-holiday-shoppers.
Karrie Osborn is senior editor at ABMP. Contact her at karrie@abmp.com.