Govalo

Govalo makes it super easy to sell gift cards. By creating a unique giftable experience, you are encouraging your customers to spend more money while simultaneously inviting their friends/family to become customers. It's truly a great way to "go viral" and grow your business.

You can issue gift cards from their back-end manually or even import a CSV of customers to bulk issue gift cards. Perfect for say giving out gift cards to all your past customers, on their birthday or to entice a repeat purchase.

They also make it easy to issue store credit.

When creating a gift card, you can set the amounts to your liking - you may decide to match up certain amounts to be equivalent to very common purchased items or bundles, or maybe you actually make it just a bit shy of that full price... This really just depends on how you want your customers, and your gifters, to gift. For example, do they want to gift a full product, but are buying it as a gift because the recipient needs to make some size or color choices or the like? Or do they want to contribute towards something but not pay for all of it.

You can even gift subscriptions to say things like deodorant or cat litter (or maybe something a bit more fun). Their subscription integration makes it so that the gifter pays for it up front, and the giftee can easily claim the subscription and start receiving the product(s), and then the giftee will later on be able to continue the subscription if it is something they want to keep going with.

The gift subscription flow works so that the giftee will receive an email and must claim that subscription, give their address info, and the giftee may have to give their credit card information depending on the type of subscription they were gifted.

You can give out redeemable gift cards with a customer's first purchase and make it so that they are only claimable X days after that first purchase. This is a clever way to get first time customers coming back to you.

They have their own email template for sending out the gift cards with your own branding, or you can use their robust Klaviyo integration to trigger a flow and create the gift card sequence in Klaviyo. You would be required to use a Klaviyo flow to achieve the above idea of using the gift card to get that second time purchase.

Right now gift cards are redeemed similar to discount codes, on the checkout page the gift card number is copy/pasted and applied.

You can even give a "discount" on the gift card by selling $10 gift cards for $8. Just be sure to use legal verbiage that you can't buy gift cards with gift cards and you can't refund items purchased by gift card for their full value.

Currently all gift cards are digital (sent via email and redeemed using a code). You can redeem gift cards at live locations using Shopify POS.

*Boring side note: Gift cards are a liability on your balance sheet and it may be important for you to work with an accountant to track outstanding gift cards and outstanding store credit on your balance sheet.

They are only a gift card solution. They aren't loyalty, they aren't referral, they are focused specifically on (digital) gift cards - which is a space big enough to keep them well occupied.

The global market for Gift Cards estimated at $767.4 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of $1.4 Trillion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 11.1%. (Global Newswire), with Digital Gift Cards specifically expected to reach $1101.03 Billion, Globally, by 2030 at 15.8% CAGR. (PR Newswire).

Govalo has seen a massive uptick in Average Order Value (AOV) for customers redeeming gift cards. Increases in AOV lead mean increases in overall revenue.

You'll probably see an uptick in new customers as well, assuming gift cards are being gifted to people that haven't shopped with you before.

Govalo user Shop Latinx saw a 400x increase in gift card sales over the holiday season, and Felix Gray has seen a 3.5x increase in gift card sales since they started optimizing their gifting experience with Govalo.

Normally the head of Ecommerce and someone from the solutions/engineering team, or could be the CEO or CXO.

Gifting is typically not for essential products.

They work really well for fashion and apparel - where maybe you don't know the size or color preference of your recipient. Pets, beauty, skincare, homeware are also great categories.