With the pandemic disrupting how incentives are delivered to recipients, there has been a significant uptick in companies using digital gift cards as rewards, according to new findings from prepaid technology company NGC.
In its annual survey of gift card usage in B2B incentive
programs, they reported that they were already seeing a heavier shift to
digital gift cards in Q2 of 2020 as many brick-and-mortar retailers and
restaurants are closed or operating under limited hours. Digital card offerings
are out-pacing physical card distribution. At Ultimate Choice we have seen over
80% of our redemption for electronic cards.
It just makes sense for companies to use digital as it the easiest, most
cost effective way to recognize performance on the spot. Awards are often given to a worthy employee
who receives it and spends it all within just minutes. It is the truest definition of immediate
reinforcement for positive performance.
It helps to turn those performances in habits that the employees will
repeat.
This has continued a trend that NGC noted last year where
digital card redemptions rose from 30% of the total cards redeemed by B2B
customers in 2018 to 45% in 2019. It was found that big box retailers (Walmart,
Target etc., and the large discount chains of Costco and Sam’s) were the top
categories of redemption with 31% of total redemption volume.
Many clients
are taking advantage of this trend by using electronic mail merge to issue gift
card rewards to home office employees which makes the process very easy with
little effort for the client, quick turnaround and instant reward and
tremendous choice for the employees.
