Earn More Revenue This Holiday Season With Facebook Gift Cards for Ads

The holidays are quickly approaching, and if new guests are on the top of your wish list, we have a treat for you. Promoting Checkfront’s Gift Certificates on Facebook is a great seasonal marketing strategy.

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Ramadan or Hanukkah— or are just looking forward to ringing in the New Year; people are in the gift giving mood. And as it becomes more common to gift experiences instead of things your tour makes the perfect present.

Holiday shopping trends are unique. There are more last-minute purchases, less brand affinity and a lot more money to spend. So your main goal is to stay top of mind. The best ways to do this is through Facebook advertising.

Facebook advertising costs can add up very quickly, especially when you’ll be competing with thousands of different brands to get in front of the same people. But if you choose your audience wisely and have a killer offer (like your gift certificates) it can be a beneficial channel.

Selling your activity gift cards to a cold audience is tough. They don’t know who you are, so why would they gift an experience with you to your friends and family? When promoting your gift certificates, you’ll find success with your repeat customers.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to set up a campaign on Facebook to promote your gift certificates to your customer list.

First, you’ll need to set up a custom audience on Facebook.

1. Download a customer report from Checkfront

• Go to Customers -> Directory in your Booking Manager
• Adjust the columns so only the names and email show
• Export the report as a CSV

2. Create a Custom Audience on Facebook

• Go to the Audiences section in your Business Manager
• Click the “Create Audience” button
• Add your customer file
• Name your list something you’ll remember

Now that you have your customer list on Facebook, it’s time to set up a conversion event to track the performance of your campaign. How you set this up depends on the way you have your gift certificates listed on your website.

The easiest and most accurate way to track purchases is if you have a thank you page on your website that you direct your customers to once they’ve made a purchase.

Here’s how to set up a purchase conversion on Facebook

1. Go to Custom Conversions section of your Booking Manager
2. Click “Create Custom Conversion”
3. Add rule for URL contains
4. Add the URL string for your thank you page URL
5. Name your conversion
6. Choose “Purchase” as your conversion category
7. Add the average value of your Gift certificates*
8. Save

If your thank you page if specific to your gift certificates you will get a better idea of your campaign’s performance by adding a conversion value. But if your thank you page is site wide— meaning the same page is shown for every purchase on your website you are better off leaving it empty. Or if you know the average value of your customers, add that value instead.

Now that you have your audience and conversion set up its time to create your campaign in Ads Manager to tie everything together.

3. Create a campaign

• Name it something like GC Promo 2017
• Set your campaign objective to “Conversions”

4. Create your Ad Set

• Choose the purchase conversion we setup
• Set your daily budget and end date of your campaign
• In the audience section, choose the customer audience we created earlier
• Choose the placements you’d like (we recommend Facebook Newsfeed and Instagram)

5. Design your ads*

• Name your ad
• Connect your Facebook page
• Choose your format
• Upload your image
• Link directly to the Gift Card page of your website (use Google’s Campaign URL Builder to create a tracking URL)
• Ad your copy
• Review your items and launch your campaign!

*For the best results, it’s always smart to test. The best thing to test is usually your images. To do this create 2-3 different ads. Keep everything the same, but use different images. After a few days, you should have a clear winner, and you can turn off the other ads.

You might also want to add a discount to your gift certificates for the campaign. In the craziness of holiday shopping, you want a way to cut through the noise and add extra value.

We hope our gift card marketing ideas make this your best holiday season yet, and helps you with your holiday campaigning for national shopping events like Travel Deal Tuesday.

If you don’t have Gift Certificates set-up, you will find them in the add-ons section of your Checkfront account. 

Want to send your guests Gift Certificates?