Digital gifting showed its value last Christmas

Gift card distributor InComm said digital gift card purchasing peaked on e-commerce sites the day before Christmas 2013, with shopkick Inc. reporting that it delivered nearly seven times more digital cards on that day via its mobile app than it averaged on the biggest overall holiday shopping day known as Black Friday.

The Atlanta-based prepaid card provider compiled data from the InComm Digital Solutions platform, which is used by shopkick for virtual gift card purchasing and processing, to conclude that:

• 57 percent of consumers purchased digital cards in December
• 43 percent of consumers purchased physical cards in December
• 80 percent of consumers purchased digital cards in the six days leading up to Christmas
• 20 percent of consumers purchased physical cards in the six days leading up to Christmas
• Sales of physical cards peaked on Dec. 17, with sales decreasing every day after that
• Sales of digital cards began a marked upward trend beginning on Dec. 17, with sales increasing after that and peaking on Dec. 24

"The results show that retailers who sell both physical and digital cards from their ecommerce sites versus those who sell only physical cards saw similar sales in the first half of the month," InComm said. "However, sales of digital cards spiked significantly the six days before Christmas, allowing those offering both cards to extend the sales lifecycle by almost a week and drive significantly higher sales overall."

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