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October 28, 2005

Increasing Christmas Gift Certificate Sales

It's time to start thinking about Christmas. Every year I send out a mailing reminding my clients that massage therapy makes a great gift. However, gift certificate sales have declined for me. Is this a trend among my peers or just an example of chaos theory happening in real life (much the way it is difficult to track the trend of a slow business month.)

I'm trying to decide how to entice my clients into buying more gift certificates. Last year I developed gift baskets with useful relaxation items priced reasonably to go with gift certificate sales.

This year, after reading an article in one of my professional journals about marketing your practice, I'm considering another tack. Should I mail out discount coupons on all Christmas gift certificate sales? There are advantages and disadvantages to this plan.

One advantage would be increased sales of gift certificates. A possible disadvantage could be regular clients buying gift certificates for massage that they would get anyway, but with the certificate discount, I would be loosing money.

I'd be interested in feedback on this idea and hearing other peoples' ideas for increasing gift certificate sales.

Posted by linda at October 28, 2005 12:25 PM