How to sell Christmas gift vouchers: a six week plan for local businesses
Every December, people ask at your counter if you sell vouchers. Most of them would have bought one weeks earlier if they had known. Here is a week by week plan to sell Christmas vouchers online, with or without your own website, and to turn every recipient into a regular.
Every December, the same scene plays out at hundreds of counters. Someone walks in on the 22nd and asks: "Do you do vouchers?" If the answer is a handwritten note in an envelope, you make one sale. If the answer is "yes, and you can buy one online tonight", you make that sale and every one you would have missed at 23:40 on the 23rd.
Gift vouchers are the easiest revenue of the year. The money arrives in December, the visit comes in January, and the person who walks in is often someone who has never been to you before. But they only sell well if people can buy them online and know about them early. Here is a plan that starts in November and runs to Christmas Eve.
First, decide what you sell: a gift card or a pass
There are two kinds of voucher, and they suit different businesses.
A gift card is credit. The buyer pays €50, and the recipient spends it down over one or more visits. It fits restaurants, salons, shops and any place with a varied menu. Let the buyer pick from a few preset amounts, or type their own.
A pass is a set number of uses: ten coffees, five lunches, three blowdries. It fits businesses with one hero product or service, and it is easy to give because the gift is concrete. "Ten coffees at my favourite café" is a better present than "€32 of credit".
Set preset amounts from your average ticket, not from round numbers. If dinner for two costs €48 on average, presets of €30, €50 and €80 cover a light meal, a full dinner and a generous one. A €25 voucher that buys half a dinner feels stingy to the person receiving it.
Then, decide where people buy it
Selling vouchers online does not require an online store, a developer or even a website. You have two options, and you can use both at once.
Option one: a ready made voucher shop. Rewardly generates a mini online shop for your vouchers with your logo, colours and terms. It has its own link that you can share anywhere: Instagram bio, Google Business Profile, a QR code at the till, a WhatsApp message to regulars. This is the fastest route, and it is the right one if you do not have a website or do not want to touch it.
Option two: the same shop inside your website. If you already have a website, you can embed the voucher shop into it with one line of code. Customers buy without ever leaving your site, and the checkout looks like part of your page, not a third party tool.
Most businesses do both. The embedded shop catches people who visit your website, and the shop link travels everywhere else.
Want to see what your customers will see? Configure a voucher, go through checkout and watch it land in the wallet, with no signup needed.
The six week plan
Before you start. Set up your vouchers and your shop, add your logo and colours, and decide whether you want the shop link, the embed on your website, or both. Then redeem a test voucher at the till with your staff. The first real redemption should not be the first time anyone sees one.
Week 1: put the shop everywhere. Embed it on your website if you have one. Put the shop link in your Instagram bio and your Google Business Profile, and a small QR code by the till. Every place a customer already looks should say "gift vouchers available".
Weeks 2 and 3: tell your regulars. Your best voucher buyers are people who already love you. They are the ones who will give your place as a present. If they carry your loyalty card in their wallet, one push notification reaches all of them on the lock screen, and 90 percent of people read it. Something simple works: "Our gift vouchers are here. Buy one in a minute, delivered by email." Link it straight to your shop.
Week 4: add paper for the tree. Some people want something to wrap. A printed voucher with a QR code covers them, and the recipient can still add it to their phone when they scan it.
Week 5: make gifting the easy option. Remind people that a voucher can go straight to the recipient’s inbox with a personal message. For the person who still has six presents to buy, that is the whole appeal.
Week 6: the last minute push. From December 18 to 24, send a second push and pin a post with your shop link: "Still need a gift? It is in their inbox in a minute." This is the week an online voucher shop earns its keep, because the high street is closed and yours is not.
January is where the real value is
The sale is nice. The recipient is better. Many of the people who walk in with a voucher in January have never visited you before. They arrive already inclined to like you, because someone they trust chose you as a present.
Do not let that visit be the only one. When a voucher is redeemed, offer the recipient your loyalty card. It takes ten seconds to add to their wallet, and now the €50 gift is the start of a relationship instead of a one time visit. Keep an eye on how many vouchers are still outstanding, too. It tells you how much January and February traffic is still coming.
How this works with Rewardly
Rewardly generates a branded voucher shop for you. Share it as a standalone mini shop with its own link, embed it on your website with one line of code, or do both. Customers pay by card online, and the money goes straight to your own account, because Rewardly takes no commission on voucher sales. The voucher arrives by email instantly, can be sent as a gift with a personal message, and lives in Apple or Google Wallet, so nobody forgets it at home. Staff redeem it with the Rewardly app, or automatically through a connected POS such as Dotykačka, Storyous, PapayaPOS or Portos. One overview shows what you sold, what was redeemed and what is still outstanding.
Start this week and your shop is ready long before the first person asks.
