I work with gift cards. We are trying to prove the “incrementality” of our business. There is, of course, an ability to measure sales uplift–that being the amount spent above the funds on the card which equates to about 35% more than the baseline value. I maintain there are greater incremental sales gained from gift cards but don’t know how to measure. This would be the revenues we wouldn’t have otherwise gained from having the program. I think it is a fairly high incidence. Any ideas on how to measure or compute? Many thanks for your ideas.

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Jay’s Answer: You can also track: time from purchase to redemption (one of the hidden benefits to gift cards is not all the people who receive them ever use them), number of visits required to use up a card, cards with outstanding balances (people may not bother keeping cards with under $5 on them, for example), and interest (potentially) earned from having people prepay for cards.