The Gift of New Cusomters through Gift Vouchers

It’s been a long series of posts covering all aspects of gift vouchers/cards and now we are in the home stretch, how to create your own. This article will cover the practical side of designing for gift vouchers and cards to present your business in the best light and make people say wow when they get them

Logically the first step is heading over to our website and using our specialised gift voucher range, but don’t think you are limited to just that format. You can use a whole different range of options to be or present your gift vouchers to people. Let’s look at a few options that you could use. We are also going to assume you’ve the previous blog articles so you understand how gift cards / vouchers work and what should be in on them

What can be a gift voucher or card

Anything can be a gift card / voucher as long as it has a value, a trackable number, expiry date, and lists or links to the terms and conditions, which we explain in more detail in the previous article. So if you want to think out of the  box to make something more unique and attractive you can.  There are some things to consider when creating a more unique design.

It must be easy to carry around, if there’s more than one or you expect the customer to hold on to them for a while before. A common issue with vouchers is that they get forgotten about because they get left out of pocket for being too impractical because of the size. This has led to the rise of the loadable cards as being the common form of gift voucher for larger businesses. You don’t have to think that small.

While our largest gift voucher is DL size (210×100)mm it’s still easy to fold up to fit inside a credit card slot of a wallet or purse if you stick to just a heavy paper. We’ve found that our midrange size of 140x70mm being roughly the size of a $20 note is the most commonly used as it gives enough space for information but isn’t too bulky and stub style book still fits inside a note slot of a till draw. 

There’s still no limit in size depending on how you want people to perceive the ‘prestige/value’ of the voucher. People are fine with printing out pdfs on copy paper so why not offer an A5 or A4 voucher printed on premium paper that shows the real value of the gift people are giving to someone. Combine that with a printed envelope or a fancy paper one to add even more prestige to what is being given. Alternatively you can use it to create a self mailer (a sheet of paper or card designed to fold up to a mailable size and only needs tape or a mailing sticker to seal it. It gives something with more ‘weight’ to it over just an email attachment all for the cost of a flyer and postage.

If you want to have a voucher printed on a card then consider having it creased so it folds easier and takes up less space. Our greeting card range and folding flyers and creased rack card ranges can handle that sort of selection with ease. You can even create a self mailer which we explain below.

Here’s a few different ideas for gift vouchers to look at.

• Greeting Card Size
  With digital printing there is no problem adding serial numbers and value information to anything we print here at Copy Express. Since gift vouchers are gifts, why not make your gift vouchers look like the card you attach to one. Using greeting card sizes you can make it a surprise for people to receive. We can create a custom design just for your business with the type of tracking information you need on it (Not just serial numbers but serial barcodes if you require it.) You can also add to the gift look with a nice envelope with a printed message.
• The Presentation Folder or Envelope
  For a POS system voucher system, why not put it inside a folder or envelope. A 2 DL folded down to DL card or even an A4 folded to DL is the right size to hold most POS gift vouchers printed on standard 80mm wide EFTPOS roll. To attach the docket to the folder can be as simple as stapling or taping the two together. If you want a cleaner look we can sell you speciality glue dots or sealing labels, or even get the design custom cut to hold the paperwork in place. Another alternative is to have a nice DL envelope, printed with the business logos and information on it so it provides a bit more wow to the gift.
• Loyalty Card Style Gift Card
  For those businesses that make use of loyalty cards, why not have a gift voucher that works the same way.  They work best with a fixed dollar value and on the back have a grid marking smaller units of the total value. For example a coffee kiosk could issue a $50 voucher with 10 $5  or 25 $2 check values. Every time the customer uses the card, the staff marks off so many of the squares equal to what is spent. When all the squares are filled in the card can be thrown away.  If the total doesn’t match a whole value, the kiosk could decide that either the spend total is rounded up to the nearest checkbox value, or the customer pays the difference. The choice doesn’t matter as long as that is spelt out on the card before it’s used.
• The Multi Part Tear Off Voucher
  If you want to use a fixed value voucher, why not consider the idea of a multipart voucher. Using the same idea as the Loyalty Gift Card, but instead of being boxes to be checked off there are perforated sections on the voucher that get torn off as they are spent and put into your till draw. So a $50 voucher has 10 tear off sections of $10 each and each has its own sub serial number (i.e. 10001-1, 10001-2, 10001-3, etc.)
• Pre-printed blanks for Vouchers
  If you have an online system and want to do something more than just emailing a pdf. Use a preprinted flyer or rack card designed to have blank spaces that you can print the voucher details using your own printer. This will give you the best of both worlds, the flexibility of on demand printing and the cost effectiveness of commercial printing. We can easily customise any of our flyers and rack cards to match the output of your system’s voucher template.
• Self Mailers
  Self mailers are designed to be easily printed on a small office printer but are pre-creased to easily fold up into a DL or A6 size for standard postage. NZ post rules are flexible enough to allow for this sort of printed material as long as the address is easy to read by their sorters. Using the same process as the previously listed Pre-printed blanks, Copy Express can set up a pre printed voucher design that will be easy to load into your printer and pre-creased ready for folding when printed.

Things to consider when choosing your Gift Voucher / Card format

While it’s very easy to get extremely fancy with your gift voucher designs (holographic stickers, custom cut shapes, loadable plastic card, etc) all of which adds to the cost of them to your business. Remember you’ll be selling your voucher at it’s face value, so every expense in it being created and tracked means less profit in the end. While you could charge the cost of issuing / using vouchers as part of the purchasing price, most businesses do not as they want customers to have the best experience using them. 

• Chose the size to fit the use
  While I have suggested you can go from sizes as small as a business card to a full sheet of a4, there are sizes that best fit the way they voucher is to be used. Restaurants and retail shops use note sized vouchers as the spending process is a considered act. Bars and cafes use the business card sized vouchers as they want customers to have it with their wallet or fit inside a phone fold. Retail and service industries can go for the greeting card and large size forms as they are a destination store where people make a choice to spend time with their purchasing decision.
• Overloaded with Terms and Conditions
  We covered this in the previous article saying it’s acceptable to have the full terms and conditions available on your website or on a sign instore. Just keep the most important ones on it, in easy to read text on the voucher / card itself.
• Paper and Card
  The type of paper and card can effect how your finished voucher will look and ‘feel’ to a customer when they receive them. You should at least match the branding / style of your existing business material. Idealy you want it to feel even more impressive than the normal material, to show how valuable it is. That is why our gift vouchers default paper choice is silk finish 170gsm paper which is heavier and thicker than the normal 130gsm you find with normal brochures and flyers.
• Fancy Finishes and Formatting
  This is where you weigh up the cost of the voucher production against the value being issued. Beyond a simple rectangle of 4 colour printed paper or card, you add extra production costs that will not be justified if you are ordering only a 100 DL sized vouchers. Instead consider different types of paper or card to add ‘value’ to the feel of the voucher without adding much to the cost.
• Using Finishes To Add Security
  You may have seen gift vouchers with holographic plastic strips or stickers, embossing, or watermarking as forms of security. This type of security system is both very expensive to add to a print run, it is also largely unnecessary. While it is far easier to make fakes of vouchers with a modern home printer and the right paper, no one does. This is because a well implemented gift voucher system will track all vouchers back to the point of issue instantly. Even if you are using an old school manual process you can always look up the original stub or notebook entry to see when it was issued.

This completes our series on gift vouchers and cards. We have covered: their value of bringing in new customers, what you need to consider to see if they fit your business, how they can be integrated into the  business, the things they need to have to work, and ideas on how they can look. It’s now up to you and us to make it happen. Use our ready made gift voucher product range or get something custom designed. Need help implementing a system that works for you, we at Copy Express can work with you to make it happen