In March, Ventureburn reported that Nigeria’s premier gift card startup SureGifts was targeting the corporate world (they still are) with a unique bouquet of services – including a personalised way of rewarding loyal customers and hardworking employees. The startup’s unique selling point is its ability to allow gift recipients to choose what they really want, thereby putting an end to the era of unwanted gifts.
Today however, the startup has upgraded its platform with the goal of making its already personal experience to become more personal.
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So what’s new?
According to Adeoye Ojo, the co-Founder of SureGifts, the startup changed how gift cards are ordered on the platform.
“All products are now displayed on the homepage,” he explained. “Once a gift card is selected, a customer goes to the personalisation page where they can now choose an occasion and add a greetings card.”
On the previous platform, individuals buying gift cards could only write special messages. The new version now supports more functionality.
“Aside from writing a special message, gift cards can now be sent with video messages. Basically, while buying the gift card, you can record a video message along with the gift. This is a cool feature for Nigerians in diaspora or celebrities who want to add a personal touch to gifting fans,” Ojo said.
The startup has also redesigned the gift card delivery process. Before, cards were delivered via email but now, such card could be delivered via SMS — this becomes useful when the recipient is not in area with internet access – or, as it is very common in Nigeria, the recipient is economising data, only coming online when there is need to.
“With our SMS delivery, recipients can get their vouchers on their phone and view the special message in their browser,” he said.
Ojo also told Ventureburn about the new Print-at-Home delivery method where customers who want to personally handover the gift card can print a PDF attachment, fold it themselves and present to the recipient personally.
We also now have a dedicated Corporate Gifting page where we want corporate customers to make direct enquiries, and a custom wedding gift registry. The wedding registry is a unique take-on registry as couples create their own page on their own and share the link with friends and family who then contribute. At the end, the couple then decides to transfer the money received to their wallet and buy preferred gift cards or request a cash out which is on a customised prepaid debit card.
Gift cards remain unpopular
Justifying the redesign of SureGifts, Ojo admitted that they took the decision with the aim of improving the gift card buying experience.
“Gift cards are not yet popular in Nigeria or Africa with the exception of South Africa, so we wanted to make the experience worthwhile for customers who likely are having their first experience gifting with gift cards.”
Aside from making the process of purchase fun and easy, the startup also worked on the redemption process — training cashiers at partner retail outlets on how to use our POS devices so that recipients enjoy the experience of redeeming gift cards, and can in turn become customers themselves.
Customers demand personalisation
He said they also redesigned the platform to satisfy customers’ demand for more personalisation. According to him, they don’t want to just send gift cards, they want it to be special and they want it to be personalised.
Individuals want to write long stories or attach pictures, so that the recipient sees beyond the value on the card, but see that an effort was put in. Corporates want to put their logos, sometimes they want the CEO’s signature or add a special message. So we saw this trend.
When asked if the co-founders are worried about how the customers — 90% of which visit via desktop — could grumblingly react to the total overhaul of the platform, Ojo expressed total confidence that their customers would love the new site.
“I think the new SureGifts is self-explanatory and once customers get on it, they will get it,” he concluded.
Image via Naija Enterprise
