Dude, Where’s My $500 Gift Card?
By Scott Rewick
Direct Marketers
love to promise customers things like $500
Gift Cards and Free Computers. They secretly
hate to actually deliver on their promise (shhh).
Don’t get me wrong, giving a customer
gifts usually means something good happened (like
the Direct Marketer made money). How a Direct
Marketer handles the customer service and
fulfillment of these gifts can be the
difference between a happy customer and a
lawsuit.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
Coordinating
customer service and gift fulfillment can be a
daunting and somewhat complex undertaking.
Direct Marketers have to be increasingly
careful of what gifts they offer consumers, and
weigh the likelihood that consumers will
actually become eligible for and request those
gifts. And when they do (and they will) how
you handle those consumer requests can make
all the difference in the world.
Having a
customer service team ready, willing, and able
to deal with the occasional upset consumer is
becoming more of a necessity. Advertisers,
who ultimately pay for the cost of the gift
are increasingly making this a “must have”, as
without it, they often times take the brunt of
an upset consumer. Angry customers need to
be handled in an efficient and friendly
manner, or they may cause much trouble for the
unwary Direct Marketer down the line. In our
particular situation, we staff over 10 full
time customer support people to handle
questions, fulfill gifts and sort through
problems. Additionally, we are one of the few
people who post a customer service phone
number on many of our landing pages, which
allow customers to have any questions answered
in an efficient manner.
Shipping and
fulfillment are other interesting parts of the
redemption process. Gift Cards can be
purchased locally, and then dropped in an
envelope. Try doing that with a Pocket Bike,
and it’s not going to work. Deciding whether
to outsource this function or handle gift
fulfillment in-house is also a decision that
high volume Direct Marketers need to make;
whether they carry inventory locally, or
utilize a 3rd party service to
fulfill the gifts. At our company, we do much
of the gift fulfillment in-house (think of a
team of folks stuffing envelopes), and then
rely on a few key partners to fulfill the rest
The successful
Direct Marketer is one that is well organized,
and has an efficient customer support team. We all can agree that using
gifts as incentives can be a very powerful
form of driving customer conversions. Getting
these gifts out the door and handling customer
complaints will make all the difference in the
world in the long run. Now where the HELL is
my $500 Gift Card?
Scott Rewick
VP Corporate
Development
YF Direct Trust Network
