Gift Cards Campaign

Gift cards can serve as digital wallets that store customers' credits. In this article, you will learn how to create and manage gift card campaigns in Voucherify.

With Areas and Stores (enterprise feature), you can create gift card campaigns targeting specific markets or shops within one project. You can create areas representing your regional structure and stores representing your points of sale. Additionally, you can manage your team and assign permissions to store or area managers. This way, they can run gift card campaigns independently without the risk of affecting campaigns assigned to other areas or stores.

Contents

1. Glossary
2. Create a gift card campaign
3. Send gift cards to customers
4. Manage gifts balance
5. Gift card tracking

Glossary

Here are the key definitions you need to grasp to understand how gift cards work.

Gift card code

Voucherify generates only digital gift cards represented by unique codes. Each gift card in the Voucherify project is unique.

Case-sensitive codes 

This option is set per project, and it's enabled by default. It means that Voucherify differentiates between capital and lower-case letters in your codes.

Code formats & patterns

Voucherify creates a standard text code, barcode, and QR code for each code. When creating a gift card code (bulk codes campaign), you can use advanced code settings to define the code pattern (length, postfix, prefix, and so on).

Gift card balance

Each gift card code has a predefined monetary balance loaded onto the card. Balance defines free credits assigned to a gift card code.  

Discount effect 

The discount effect defines how the gift card is applied to the customer's cart. You can choose between applying a gift card to the whole cart or to specific items.

Create a gift card campaign

You can release gift cards in two variations:

• Public gift card – standalone code shared between customers. Not recommended for gift cards. 
• Unique gift card – a single code that can be assigned to individual customers.  

To create a campaign, open the Campaign Manager and click the Create campaign button.

Select gift vouchers as the campaign type. 

In the Campaign Manager, go through the following steps:

Step 1: Campaign Details – Program Size 

First, decide whether you want to create a standalone gift card or a campaign of unique gift card codes. 

Standalone gift card

If you select a  standalone code, you need to define a gift card code. Next, set the redemption limit and the code name.

Note that the redemption limit is set to unlimited by default.

Bulk gift cards

If you select  bulk codes, you need to provide a campaign name, code count, and redemption limit per unique gift card. The Manager will create a batch of unique gift card codes grouped in a campaign.

Note that the redemption limit is set to unlimited by default.

Define the remaining settings:

• Code redemption limit defines the redemption limit per single unique code/standalone code.
• If you create a bulk code campaign, the code count defines the initial batch of codes that you'd like to generate.

• Advanced code settings – you can define your code pattern.
• Decide if a customer can join only once – when the same customer requests another gift card code, Voucherify will not generate a new code for this end-user. Therefore, one customer can only receive one gift card assigned (published) from a particular campaign.

Other settings

You can also add a Category to the campaign. Category and its hierarchy govern how discounts behave when they are stacked together.

Also, you can add a short description with notes about the campaign.

Step 2: Campaign timeframe

Define the optional time limits of your campaign:

• Start and expiry dates.
• Code validity timeframe (recurring time periods when codes are active).
• The timer on voucher validity after publication (code is active X time after its delivery to the end-customer).
• Codes are valid only on particular days of the week.

Step 3: Gift credits value 

Provide the gift card value (prepaid balance loaded on each gift card):

Project currency

The currency is set per project. If you would like to change your currency, go to Project Settings, set new currency, and log in to your account again. Each project supports only one currency. Our API is currency-agnostic, and currency settings do not impact the way Voucherify calculates amounts and discounts. 

Next, you can establish validation rules that model your desired redemption conditions. Create new validation rules or choose from the existing set of rules.

When creating new rules, you can define if the gift card is applied to the whole order or if it's applied to specific items only. 

If you choose  apply discount to items effect, you need to define the criteria for discounted items. You can also exclude particular products from the campaign.

Below discounted and excluded products, you can see validation rules that model required redemption conditions. You can add product- or order-specific limits or decide that only customers from the selected customer segment can redeem the gift card. 

The details of building the validation rules are described in this guide.

Gift card anti-fraud limits

You can assign each unique gift card to a particular customer. By using campaign limits and validation rules, the publication can secure gift cards from misuse and provide only gift card owners can redeem them. Read more about publication-related rules.

Step 4: Metadata

Attach (optional) custom attributes to your gift cards and campaign by using metadata. Read more about metadata.

Send gift cards to customers

The Distribution Manager allows you to send personalized messages with gift cards via many diversified channels. You can schedule workflows that trigger messages in response to predefined customer activities, such as birthdays, new orders, gift card redemptions, and more.

The Manager enables you to design message templates and send emails without any additional provider. Next to emails, you can connect external applications to the Manager or use webhooks as a distribution channel. Read more about distributions in this guide. 

Manage gift card balance

Each time a gift card is redeemed, Voucherify automatically updates its balance. You can monitor the current balance in the gift card details and load new credits anytime using the dashboard or API.

Gift card use

Please note that the gift card value does not have to be used in one order. Let us show it in the example. A customer has a $100 gift card and wants to use it to pay for a $50 order. It can be done in more than one way: 

• The customer can decide to use $50 from the card, so the final amount to pay would be $0. In this case, the remaining card balance would be $50, which can be used later.
• The customer can decide to use $25 from the gift card and pay the remaining amount with cash. In this case, the remaining $75 can be used in the next order/orders.

Depending on your integration with Voucherify, if you allow partial redemption, you can specify the amount of credits used in the  Redemption API call to choose how much money will be taken out of the card’s balance. 

Note that if you use the Redemption API call without specifying the amount of credits used from the gift card, Voucherify will use the entire balance to pay for the order as it is the default option. If the order value does not exceed the card’s balance, the remaining balance will be available for use in future orders. 

It is also possible to set a redemption limit on the card so that it can only be used a specific number of times. 

Under the' Budget constraints' section, a redemption limit can be set as one of the validation rules for the given campaign. It can be an overall use limit or a time-framed limit, such as once a day, month, year, etc.

• Add gift card balance in the dashboard:

Go to the detailed view of a gift card and add the proper amount to the current balance by clicking on the '$' icon.

• Add gift card balance with API:

Using the Add Gift Voucher Balance API, you can quickly add the proper amount to the gift card. The amount should be based on the total order amount. All you need to do is to include the amount and gift card code in the API call. 

Tracking and reports

Voucherify tracks your gift cards on many levels and presents stored data in the dashboard. Here's the list of all internal reports and functionalities that provide detailed information about your gift cards performance:

• In the main project view, you can see a chart presenting overall gift voucher spending.
• In the Campaigns view, you can see a list of your campaigns. When it comes to a gift card campaign, you can see the already redeemed amount and the amount left on the cards. 
• When you click on the campaign name, you will see a redemption summary, recent campaign changes, and budget management. From this view, you can also export campaign data to a CSV file and analyze results in external tools. 
• In the individual gift card view, you can see and export the list of transactions on a particular card.

Transactions tab

The Transactions tab within the General section of the Gift Card campaign dashboard lists all gift card transactions. You can view transaction details and export transaction data to a CSV file.

Each transaction entry includes the following details:

• Card: Identifies the gift card associated with the transaction.
• Type: Specifies the transaction type (e.g., points redemption, points addition).
• Source ID: The unique identifier for the transaction source.
• Reason: User's description of the purpose of the transaction.
• Amount: Shows the points used or acquired.
• Balance: Displays the current balance on the gift card after the transaction.
• Created At: Timestamp indicating when the transaction was created.
• Details: contains API response details that provide in-depth information for each transaction, including balance adjustments (type, total, points, operation_type), associated objects (such as related gift cards, order, and redemption IDs), and reward specifics.

With transaction details, you can consolidate the transaction data into a single view and simplify them for reporting or auditing purposes.

Voucherify only offers digital gift cards that act as gift card codes. If you would like to create a physical gift card, follow this short guide.

Campaign Calendar

Once you save your campaign or save it as a draft, you can see when it will be active in the Campaign Calendar in the Marketer Hub sidebar section. The Campaign Calendar shows an overview of all campaigns and their timeframes and additional information when you click on a given campaign bar.